[meteorite-list] (no subject)

From: mafer <mafer_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:08:23 2004
Message-ID: <005601c25941$17308fc0$6401a8c0_at_vs.shawcable.net>

Greetings list

I'm seeing many questions about presurvation of meteorites and am wondering
if what we do with opal and turquoise wouldn't help some. What we do is
place the rocks in a container filled with (not to the top mind you, just
enough to cover the stones) fracture sealer WITHout the hardener. This is
then place in a vacumm chamber and evacuated til the sealer starts
outgassing (bubbles and foams). At this point the valve on the chamber is
closed and the setup is allowed to sit for a few hours to allow all the air
and moisture to excape. When the valve is reopened and pressure allowed to
return to room normal, the stone sucks in the sealer where once moisture and
air was before. Then, remove the stones from the sealer and paint on
hardener. The hardener seeps in where the sealer went and hardens it and
thus we strenghen the stone and preserve it. On gemstones, this glossy outer
covering is usually ground away in the formation of a gemstone for jewelry,
but on a meteorite, it would also be removed from surfaces that were
polished to show structure.

Mark
Received on Tue 10 Sep 2002 11:12:41 PM PDT