Amber Listserv / Amber Care

[JOHN FUDALA]

Since you have most pieces of Dominican amber, I will quote from the book by
Rafael Jie and Chiang Wu: "Dominican Amber and its inclusions".

"I have witnessed some situations in which a million-dollars-worth of amber
became worthless, with no hope of repair. A 1965 amber collection, for
example, was badly damaged because the owner kept it in open trays, exposed
to light and, worse still, to air currents. As a result of evaporation and
oxidation, the surfaces became crazed and the amber turned dark red and
obscured the inclusions. This was quite a waste, because some pieces of the
collection had been reported in the National Geographic magazine and Geo
magazine. The loss of such a collection is a sad story in the history of
Dominican amber. There was another case in which the owner was extremely
careful. All the amber pieces were well polished and waxed, tightly sealed
in black plastic bags and securely locked in a safety box. The amber was
found to have turned brown four years later. The owner found that the
problem was improper waxing. The wax contained cleaning chemicals, which
caused the damage to the collection. Luckily the amber was saved after the
wax was removed and the amber repolished."

What might add to the mystery is that the Dominican mines do not produce
consistent material- some yield a mix of amber and copal, some copal only.
Perhaps the pieces prone to crazing are "copal"?

Many scientists have turned to coating valuable pieces with epoxy resins.
Clear, virtually invisible and hopefully durable for decades, at least. I
believe in this listserve archives there should be posts on this referring
to methods used by Grimaldi (?), the Hoffeinses and Hans Henderickx.
Hans stabilises valuable pieces of Madagascar copal this way.

John

On 3/9/07, Maury Bramson < bramson at math.umn.edu> wrote:
>
>
> I have recently begun an amber collection (mostly Dominican), and have
> some questions about care/preservation.  Hopefully, some of you will be
> kind enough to share some of your experiences.  I have gone through
> literature on this, but still have questions.
>
> What causes the crazing in amber and how can one avoid it?  Exposure to
> sun and wind are bad and are easy to avoid.  Is it enough to keep the
> amber in a dark place inside the standard small rectangular plastic boxes?
>
> Is there still too much air there that can dry the specimen out?  Or is it
> the oxygen, or maybe its most active component, ozone, that causes the
> problems?  Is "stale" air (with the ozone having dissipated) okay?  Will
> packing in cotton to remove most of the air help?  Are the answers to
> these questions really known, or is there mostly just folklore?
>
> How important is temperature?  Will indoor summer temperatures in the 80+
> range cause more rapid decay?  Is the colder, the better (down to 50 or
> so) accurate?
>
> One can go through extra effort to preserve amber, such as keeping the
> surrounding air moist and perhaps applying a sealant to the amber.  Both
> mean more effort, and I'm not sure I'm in a position to do the latter.
> (In addition to safety issues, the latter would presumably involve a
> certain amount of trial and error, and possibly ruining specimens.)  How
> important is this?
>
> What do museums do to preserve their amber?  Do they all more or less
> follow the same procedure?
>
> Under normal circumstances, what is a reasonable expectation for the
> lifetime of amber, once it has been excavated?
>
>
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