Glued Linen Armour- a simple test

[rocktupac]

That's surprising considering what happened in my test with real rain. As the very first post states, I got delamination pretty quickly. And my trial with linseed oil provided nearly no protection- not enough to save the sample and only a bit more with beeswax. But then I did leave my test pieces in the rain for I think it was 15 or 20 minutes (I have to re-read that first post), so it was continually exposed to water and humidity the whole time. My patches weren't large- only about 50 cm2, so I now wonder if there's reason to expect water entering the edges would penetrate more- I hadn't considered controlling for that. Still, having worked a good deal with hide glue now, and of course understanding its molecular nature, I certainly know it absorbs water quite quickly, so I'm still surprised that your protein glues didn't. Rabbit glue I thought was actually a somewhat weaker than good bovine, which is what I have, but it's still largely the same collagen-type proteinaceous fiber adhesive so shouldn't behave much differently with respect to solubility- admittedly I've never heard of flax seed glue before, so have no idea about its behavior.

Not to belabor the issue, but since it's central to what I thought was a fatal flaw, just what do you mean by 'thoroughly soaked and allowed to dry'? How long was your sample exposed to the 'rain'? I would expect you checked it before it dried to see if it had absorbed any water since certainly if the glue dries again, it'll be rigid once more- right?

Our test patches were 8" x 8" and left for a total of 10 hours in the 'rain' (which was a sprinkler head left on a medium drizzle). The patches were checked at 10 minute intervals for the first hour, then rechecked every hour for the remaining nine hours. The patches were completely soaked through by the rain (i.e. sopping wet to the core), and allowed to dry for an entire day out in the sun. The olive oil covered patch held up very well after a single application of oil. I even held the patch under a faucet of running water turned on high and very little penetrated, but this was a more unscientific test and the results were not documented thoroughly.