[Woodcarver] Need advice carving repair (Joe D. and Ivan W. please respond if possible)

[Alex Bisso]

I have been asked to repair a very nice carved wooden Quan Yin statue and would like to get some advice from someone who has made similar repairs.  The statue has developed some very serious cracks with the starting at the base and opened up around ¾".   I am confident that I can fill the cracks and reshape and refinish the carving to look good but I would like to do it in a manner that will prevent future cracking and I am not sure the best way to do this.

Some thoughts I have are:

  1.. Put some pentacryl (? - the stuff that prevents green wood from checking as it dries) in the cracks before filling them.  My concern here is that the pentacryl? might prevent the fill material from bonding to the wood.  Is this a bad idea?
  2.. Put some of the thin surper glue in the cracks before filling them.  Would this work.
  3.. Use a filler that is a strong bonding agent as well.  I am not sure just what might be good for this, especially for the wider cracks.  I am considering autobody bondo, possibly mixed with a little bit of fiberglass resin.  What other options are recommended?
  4.. Insert some wooden wedges in the cracks and secure them with carpenters glue.  However, I am concerned that I could crack the statue right in half trying to insert the wedges.  The main crack probably goes at least on halfway thru the wood and there are other cracks on the back side.  Any thoughts about this?
  5.. It would be nice if there was a way to get the cracks to close up some before doing the filling.  I think the cracks are due from the piece being made in a  humid, tropical climate while here in MT it is very dry.  It does seem like the dryer it is, the worse the cracks are - and it has been very dry here.  I am also concerned that if I got them to close up some and then did the repair, they might open up again later.
  6.. Drill some holes right through the statue and glue in dowel pieces through the cracks.  My concern here is that while this might stabilize the cracks, there are enough cracks that this might require a lot of holes and surface damage.  While I am sure I could reshape the surfaces where the holes are, there is an intricate patterns in the robe/gown and it might be impossible to match that.  Any thoughts about this ?
 

I put a few photos of the cracked statue in an album at my picturetrail site.  The link to get the them is:

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?username=abisso&x=19&y=15

 

The statue is about 3' tall.  I am not sure what kind of wood was used in it - I think maybe some kind of tropical mahogany.  It is not a dense, heavy wood.

 

Any guidance that you can give me on this that is based on your first hand experience with similar repairs would be appreciated.  Please feel free to respond off-list to albisso at bresnan.net if desired.

 

Thanks.

ALEX

 

 

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/woodcarver/attachments/20060216/f9c0a3d3/attachment.html