A New Method for the Restoration of Palaeontological Specimens Mounted in Canada balsam

Many museums contain slides mounted with Canada balsam. If this resin is poorly prepared, it can become crazed. Examples can be found within the British Type Graptolite Collection at the Natural History Museum, London. These are delicate dendroids prepared using the transfer technique. A search of the available literature and communication with museum workers highlighted suggestions for methods to rescue the cracked slides. These methods were tested, and the most suitable method proved to be a double transfer technique utilising carbowax. This technique may be used to rescue any specimen which is mounted in Canada balsam and which possesses an exposed surface. It is particularly important for the conservation of fragile specimens.

Citation

Allington‐Jones, L. (2008). A New Method for the Restoration of Palaeontological Specimens Mounted in Canada balsam. NatSCA News, Issue 14, 28 ‐ 32. http://www.natsca.org/article/191

Type

Journal Article

Item Description

NatSCA supports open access publication as part of its mission is to promote and support natural science collections. NatSCA uses the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ for all works we publish. Under CCAL authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in NatSCA publications, so long as the original authors and source are cited. The attached file is the published version of the article. http://www.natsca.org/article/191
NHM Repository

License

openAccess

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