Repairing Jade

Hi, I have a customer that has brought in a jade statue that a
piece was broken off in a move. Can anyone tell me if jade can be
glued or cemented? And even if it can be glued together there still
is the matter of repairing the crack line. Any ideas or references??

Thanks in advance,
Sue Kapoor
Kapoor Jewelers

I’ve repaired a jade carving using a good 2 part epoxy and a green
felt-tip pen to disguise the join.

Tony Konrath

     Hi,  I have a customer that has brought in a jade statue that
a piece was broken off in a move. Can anyone tell me if jade can be
glued or cemented? And even if it can be glued together there
still is the matter of repairing the crack line. Any ideas or
references?? 

Hi Sue, I’ve got some good news… and a question… First of all,
yes, you (and/or your client) can certainly glue the separated piece
back on, using any one of a number of adhesives, assuming that
neither side of the break has since been polluted by oils or
greases. By far the easiest and most straightforward repair would be
a few pea-sized blobs of a cyanoacrylate gel, such as Hot Stuff, or
Crazy Glue. A decent two-part epoxy would be even better; my
preference would be Ciba’s “Araldite”, but any clear-drying epoxy
should do just fine.

As for the hiding of that line, my recommendation would be that,
first, you make certain that the glue does not completely fill the
break – that a narrow open space remains, between the adhesive and
the outer skin of the piece. Next, I’d bring the entire piece up to
just past room temperature with a blow dryer or low-temperature
oven. Finally, I’d melt some plain, colorless, paraffin wax on the
stove --(place chunks of the wax in a dished-out sheet of aluminum
foil which, in turn, sits in/on a pan filled with boiling water)–
and alternately ladle and burnish the wax into the crack. Since the
wax and Jadeite share similar refractive indices, the crack’s
appearance will be greatly diminished and, assuming it’s no more
than a millimeter wide, may completely disappear from view. When the
wax has dried and the statue returned to room temperature, buff with
a soft cloth (an old white T-shirt is ideal), and VOILA!

Glad to help out {:o), Doug Douglas Turet, GJ Lapidary Artist,
Designer
& Goldsmith Turet Design P.O. Box 162 Arlington, MA 02476 Tel. (617)
325-5328 eFax (928) 222-0815 anotherbrightidea@hotmail.com

use superglue will glue back but cannot join back like a natural
one.

Tay

Hmm, jade is supposed to be a very tough stone. It is composed of
interlocking fibers. That is why it was first used for hammer
heads. It is also why it will lend itself to exquisite thin dishes
and such. Are you sure it is jade? Although it is not impossible to
break, I might make the stone identification my first priority. That
said, I had a friend who had a jade vase shatter when it fell during
the Loma Prieta earthquake. Since it was a seventeenth century vase
and insured, he put in a claim with his insurance company. They sent
the pieces to a laboratory and they ascertained that it surely was
jade…itty bitty pieces that had been glued together and then
carved. So he contributed it to a museum as an early forgery! You
surely can glue jade, and the hackly surface will probably make for a
good bond. However, making the crack invisible would be a challenge.
Rose Alene McArthur

There are two stones commonly called “jade”; one is jadite and the
other is nephrite. The qualities that you mention in your response
are those of nephrite. K. Kelly