Was: Speed Brite ionic cleaner
Amber is not technically a stone...and technically is a soluble material (i.e. it disagrees with acetone & alcohol)...
A test to separate fossil amber from copal, which is not fossilized, is to use acetone. Fossil amber does not react to acetone, and copal gets sticky.
I’ve used denatured alcohol as a test for copal; it also gets sticky
when rubbed with alcohol. In fact I’ve made a shellac-like varnish
by dissolving copal in alcohol. So I got all excited when I read that
amber was soluble in acetone, thinking I could make a similar
amber-based varnish. I tried an experiment, putting some amber
shavings in a glass jar with some acetone overnight. Alas, my results
confirmed Richard’s opinion above - there was no significant
dissolution of the amber shavings that I could observe. As far as I
know, the only solvent for amber is ether, which I don’t want to mess
around with…
Andrew Werby