Tear Mender- thoughts and questions.

first of all, pardon the mostly non-caps. arthritis makes it easier to go light on those.

well, after years of using "best test," today i tried tear mender as my first foray in to WBG's. (and much thanks to various posts here on the subject!)

now i'm not sure if i got an old bottle or a typical bottle, but i immediately found that a lot of the latex had congealed in the bottle. i did try mixing with a chopstick and vigorously shaking the bottle repeatedly, but it seems this only produced a modest level of re-mixage.

so a question- has anybody here had success re-mixing curdled TM? say, with the bottle immersed in a pot of hot water? perhaps with a little water added as a thinner?

this brings me to another detail- the glue smelled a lot like ammonia. particularly not what i'd expected from a non-toxic WBG, you know? so my second question- is this just a characteristic of fresh latex, or is the solvent actually more than just water?

since a big part of my switching from rubber cement is to get away from harsh solvents, this is something that would be good to know. particularly if there's going to be potential heating involved.

last thing- with TM's tendency to dry so quickly, it occurred to me that one might save the dried spillages and wasted coats from the application sponge and remix them in the bottle. that is, as long as it's the pure latex, relatively uncontaminated with dust, particles, etc. and particularly if the heating / re-mixing thing works...

thoughts?

Edited by gigantes - 01/07/2012 at 1:43am

There should be no lumps in the Tear Mender. Like any other finish or glue, do not put any back in the bottle. It can only cause trouble. I like Tear Mender and put a layer on the sponge and blade, then put them togather as quick as possible while it is still wet. I use a scraper like a credit card to get thin, smooth layers. Putting the rubber on while wet allows a little time to adjust position of the rubber. Then in the Clicky press.  After 30 minutes, I have never had a rubber come loose. My blades are sealed with Poly-U and the glue always stays on the sponge when I pull a rubber off.