Gel Medium - pros and cons?

Framar

WOW Framer
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Buffalo, New York, USA/Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
We have been discussing adhesives lately, especially in the recent threads about arrowheads. In one of these threads I mentioned my new favorite adhesive which is gel medium.

It was pointed out to me that I was confusing the terms water-proof and water-soluable in my description of gel medium as water-proof. I have come to the conclusion that gel medium is BOTH! Or perhaps there is another term for its unique properties.

Well, I just did a little experiment. I used gel medium to glue a rock to a piece of matboard. The rock was polished agate (very high up on the hardness scale) and the matboard was Crescent ragboad.

I let this dry until the gel medium had turned clear. Then I plunked it into a jar of water for a couple of hours. (notice how scientific I am!)

When I reached in to fish it out, the matboard came out by itself; now that is is dry it is amazingly unscathed. The glob of gel medium was attached to the rock but it had turned from clear back to milky.

This milky glob peeled right off the rock, leaving no trace. Now I must point out that this milky glob is in no way "adhesive" any more - those properties have been lost in the drying (curing?) process. But it did soften enough to be peelable.

So - here is my question. Wouldn't gel medium be an appropriate substitute for the dreaded silicone in those increasingly rare instances when sewing, lacing, mylar or other C/P techniques are not suitable?

Would gel medium cause harm to items like medals, coins, and yes, arrowheads?

As has been pointed out here ad naseum - not every customer wants to pay the higher price for a complete C/P work-up. Wouldn't gel medium be a safe compromise???
 
Well, I use a lot of gel medium for painting. Don't know much about it for framing... Actually, my question is---what is so bad about silicone, I've never used so I was just wondering...
 
Well, schnoubi - just type "silicone" into the Grumble's search engine and you'll find a hair-raising evening's reading!

Welcome to the Grumble, BTW! What kind of painting do you do?
 
Mar, I have recently been using gel medium in art projects. I went to a discussion on collage art in particular and the speaker highly recommended gel/acrylic medium for gluing. As I was told it dries flexible and is non yellowing. It is the binder(glue) in acrylic paint that holds the pigment. For my purposes it had several uses from sealing a canvas to gluing ephemera, including small embellishments like charms and also as a coating to seal your work. The speaker did mention that it was good to use with paper and other porous surfaces just as you would use white glue. It also comes in different viscosities. I have no idea how heavy of an object it would hold though.

My experience has been when you glue something down in a frame project it will sometimes peel away from the mounting board or from the object being glued, so, it doesn't matter how strong the glue is. Jim Miller spoke of that likelihood in his recent lecture........

I'm not saying I've never glued things down, because I have but I always try to reinforce it with something else in the inevitability that the glue doesn't hold.

So there you go, just what everybody wanted, me harping on glue again......glad to do it!
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Acrylic media are designed to function as artists'
materials and are expected to last for quite a long time, without affecting things around them.
They can be used for heat mounting fabrics to windows, seal surfaces, and now, as Framar has
outlined as adhesives. Since his strategy required
soaking (which swells the acrylic) for removal, it
should not be used with anything that couldn't be
immersed in water, for some time, without harm.
It lacks the acetic acid of ordinary silicone and
has a much longer life than alcohol curing silicone and it will release with soaking, all of
which make it safer than silicone.

Hugh
 
The only problem I have ever had with using gel medium to glue things is that heavy items will pull a layer off the backing. That isn't really a problem with the gel, but with the backing. I solved this by poking holes in the mat board behind the object with an awl. I make sure the gel medium (or other adhesive) goes down into the holes, and spreads some on the back. This gives the dried lump sort of anchor bolts.
 
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