Egg shells.

[pramsay13]

I've been asked to frame some egg shells.
Any bright ideas how to fix them to the backing board?

[Jamesnkr]

What sort of egg shells?

A bunch of broken Tesco's eggs, or one of the last remaining Dodo eggs? The former, silicone; the latter wants a case rather than a frame.

[IFGL]

Egg cup, put a tea spoon in for effect.

[pramsay13]

There's quite a range of them, all different sizes, and varying degrees of rarity, although customer is happy for me to glue them, pierce them, whatever it takes.

[Roboframer]

If the customer is happy for you to glue or pierce them, what are you looking for, a reversible method?

[pramsay13]

Just some ideas.
If I glue them will the glue eat into the shell?
If I make a hole is there a chance the whole thing will crumble?
Is there a reversible method that is simple?

[IFGL]

There is some very fine mesh fabric that is see through, you could make a box / cove, put something soft and spongy in it, and overlay the fabric, you will still be able to see the fabric but would be reversible and is simple is to do. I haven't tried this method and it might look rubbish, but it popped into my head, conservation can mean a compromise in visuals,

What I would probably do, You could make a grid type shelf system and use a slip over frame, the customer would have to put the eggs in place once the box is fitted to the wall, again I would look for something soft to nestle the eggs in,

Mylar straps might work, but again a compromise on the look, again I would be looking to nestle them in something

I think an egg just floating on a piece of mount board would look very odd,

[caro]

How about a double sided frame, cut out egg profiles in one thick sheet of foam core board, so that they are lightly gripped around their vertical circumference alternatively grip eggs between two sheets of mountboard which have the egg profiles cut out, hope this makessense - would be a lot of egg measuring

[IFGL]

you could put them in a very clear thin latex sheath, that would be almost invisible, now where to get something like that?

[Roboframer]

Here's an idea ...

Each egg has its own lined aperture, a load of little boxes about 50mm larger than the egg.

Fix a clear golf tee (you can buy clear golf tees) in the bottom 'shelf' for the egg to sit on and push another through the 'roof' to hold the top of the egg.

If that's too finicky then leave out the top tee and apply a tiny dab of adhesive such as acrylic gel medium to the bottom one.

Hope you have an eggcellent result anyway and hope the customer is happy to shell out

.

[IFGL]

eggceptional idea John, I had thought of golf Ts but not one top and bottom, putting that in my stolen idea box.

[prospero]

A note of caution for the customer....

It is illegal to own wild bird's eggs that were taken after 1954.

The fines are very stiff. Up to £5000 per egg.

If they are decorated chicken eggs then no probs, but wild birds, very dodgy.

If you have an illegal collection in your custody then you could be implicated.

Older collections are OK, but the owner would have to have proof of this.

Just saying.....

[Not your average framer]

You cannot glue eggshell with the normal "bog standard" Silicone as it releases acetic acid during curing and will damage the eggshell which is made of calcium. Personally, I would not use any kind of adhesive whatsoever, eggshell are fragile items and if you used an adhesive, removing the adhesive at a later date might be a bit scary.

I think that Roboframer's idea looks like the best one so far!

[David McCormack]

conservation can mean a compromise in visuals,

I like that

[Roboframer]

You cannot glue eggshell with the normal "bog standard" Silicone as it releases acetic acid during curing and will damage the eggshell which is made of calcium. Personally, I would not use any kind of adhesive whatsoever, eggshell are fragile items and if you used an adhesive, removing the adhesive at a later date might be a bit scary.

Only one type of adhesive has been mentioned and that was by me, acrylic gel medium, which would be fine as would many other adhesives - as long as the customer is aware that reversibility is pretty much a non-issue.

My idea of lots of little boxes, each with a golf tee top and bottom (and I have a couple of other ideas along the same lines) might be fine for one or two but the cost for many more would put most off and so would the cost of just one golf tee per box with adhesive ... and so would the cost of just making all those lined boxes before putting anything in them at all!

I'd probably, after explaining the pros and cons, end up sticking the lot to mount board, possibly with small oval apertures, or something, to make a larger contact area and even though that is simple, especially with a CMC, the time would be charged for - it's all factored in to my pricing software - and even that would put many off.

If the customer doesn't care what you do the chances are the customer does not want to pay for you to care about his/her stuff more than she/he does.


.

[Not your average framer]

I've not done this, but I suspect that the gummed fabric plate hangers which stick really well to be reverse side of plate, would also stick quite well to eggshells. The idea would be to cut out some appropriately sized oval cut outs to a piece of mountboard and cut one, (or more) gummed plate hangers into strips and stick them to the eggshells from behind the oval cut outs in the mountboard. An empty eggshell weighs very little and only requires adequate support for this very small amount of weight.

The method would of course be fully reversable, without resorting to any prohibitive cost, but I still like the idea of displaying the eggshells within a matrix of rectangular, or square compartments, if an appropriate way of doing this can be found.

BTW, I did realise that no one had mentioned silicone in during the discussion, but was responding to the concerns mentioned about glue eating into the eggshell. My appologises for mentioning silicone, which I already realised is regarded by some as something to be avoided at all costs, or even an unmentionable word, possibly as bad (or worse) than MDF. I hope that I can be forgiven for this!

[Roboframer]

In one breath you say you would not use any type of adhesive whatsoever and in the next, describe an adhesive method!

These plate hangers are not recommended by collectors and antique experts FOR PLATES!

Trust nothing with the adhesive already applied for you to activate, whether with moisture or with pressure, there are plenty of adhesives you can apply or mix and apply yourself and you can dilute/concentrate/mix them to achieve different levels of aggression and drying time

Whatever the adhesive on these plate hangers (which we sell in many sizes) is, I'm sure I could find a "jar" of it and already know I have several options of far better stuff for this task (and similar comments apply to MDF versus more modern backing options, it has not passed muster here since 97 ... ish).

There are also a few types of silicone adhesive, they don't all cure by releasing acid (we also sell the one that does) but they cost, don't store well and are just not necessary.

[Not your average framer]

All true, but it is a waterbased adhesive, which washes off with water. I don't know what the pH of this particular adhesive is and it may well be mildly acidic, but once the adhesive has dried out the effect will be a lot less, probably nothing.

The primary content of the adhesive will be gelatine and the PH of most gelatine based adhesives in of the order of about 5. I know because of my industrial engineering background that you can not measure the pH of anything in it's dry form as there has to be a chemical process occuring to measure the pH value.

The pH value of acrylic acid is 3.68 to put that into perspecitive that is more acidic than acetic acid which is the acidic component in vinegar at 3.91. When you realise that the pH scale is not a linear scale, but something like logarithmic, acrylic acid is quite a bit more acidic than than vigegar which is quite an active acid.

The time for both acylic medium and a gelatine based adhesive to set is a silmilar order of time, during which the acid remains active in both cases. When it comes to removing the acrylic resin from the eggshell at a later date which is not a 5 minute job, you either need to use some sort of alchohol, or even worse some sort of paint stripper. During removal with alchohol the oxygen molecule in the acrylic acid will combine with the alchohol, and as all good chemistary student will know adding oxygen to an alchohol turns the alchohol into an acid.

I'm not going to speculate as to which adhesive is going to be better, or worse, but I'm not sure that either method is not going to be much different, from a conservation point of view, except the adhesive on the strip of plate hanger is water reversible and contains a less active level of acidity during the setting phase of the adhesive.

Considering the fact that you have already said that reversibility is an issue with you method (which in my opinion, your suggestion is still an excellent suggestion), I have just thrown in a more easily reversible option as an alternative. I come from a family where my father, a brother and my sister were a chemists and I was very good at chemistry while at school, because I grew up in a chemistry oriented family and if I had not become an engineer, I would have strongly considered becoming a chemist. As you can probably guess, I do consider such issues when neccessary.

Moving on from this. I have had another thought and that is to seal the eggshell with a solution of sodium silicate to provent any adhesive medium from penetrating into the structure on the shell and then sticky to the eggshell using something suitable. This again from a purists point of view is not ideal because there is no easy way of removing the sodium silicate from the eggshell.

A brief explaination follows: Sodium silicate is one of a group of chemical compounds known as a "waterglass", because when you disolve it in water and allow the water to evapourate, it dries to a clear glass like substance which is optically clear and fully non-gas permiable. in solution it will naturally bond to anything which is a metal. Fortunately eggshells are made of calcium and although it is not particularly obvious to most people, calcium as an atomic element is clasified as a metal.

Newly laid eggs used to be preserved in edible condition at room temperature by dipping them into a water glass solution and leaving them to dry. this seals the eggshell preventing oxygen penetrating the eggshell and causing the egg to go rotten. Crews on neuclear submarine store their eggs for long periods (about 9 months) by doing much the same thing, but by dipping the eggs into molten paraffin wax, which does the same thing.

Silicon silicate is also added to concrete to make super high strength concrete, which also withstands very high temperatures. If you ever see a war time pill box at the side of the road and can stop to take a closer look, you will often be amazed at the near perfect condition of the concrete. Concrete normally breaks down and deteriorates over time when exposed to the elements, but pill boxes, military bunkers and the like, were often built using sodium silicate concrete, which is a really tough material.

I don't know how long this thread will run for, but I supect that there are even better solutions to this issue still to come, as I don't think that we have yet come up with the ultimate solution.

[IFGL]

After reading all that,b it reminds me of something that happened when I was sober, some time ago, a fella came into my shop in his 80's, he had been in a few time and it really bugged me that I knew him from somewhere, long story short and all that, chemistry teacher, open university, he presented the programme on Saturday morning when I was a lad, don't think he framed any eggs but he did desolve a shed load of stuff.

[Roboframer]

All true.

I know, but thank you anyway!

I would have two hopes of ever becoming an engineer or a chemist, Bob Hope and no hope. I do however have a shedload of practical experience of mounting strange things and dealing with their owners and if these things came in to me I would very very quickly arrive at one of two mounting methods, reversible or non-reversible.

Reversible would use no adhesive (but you'd see how it was done, even if you had to look really hard) simple as that.

I'd get that boring stuff out of the way (as I have done here really) and get on with the good bit, design ... and cost.