Gluing wood to marble

[imrich]

I have a repair I need to do and I'm a little outside of my area of knowledge. A friend of mine has a marble object in the shape of home plate. It's roughly 8 inches long, 6 inches wide and 1/2 an inch thick. It's broken in 3 pieces. My idea was to epoxy the piece back together, but to add reinforcement I was going to band it in thin, hard wood strips, alternating walnut and maple. My question is what would be the best adhesive to use to bond the wood to the marble. I'm really only concerned with the first band as subsequent bands would be wood to wood. Thanks in advance. ( I can already imagine the comments being it's the NY Mets logo and it's broken)

[PaulMarcel]

My friends own a granite and marble company. The use epoxy on all the stones including marble. All epoxies turn a bit yellow (or a lot!) when they cure so that could show. West Systems has a 207 special clear hardener you can use with their 105 resin that cures as clear as possible. That would be the one you want, I'd think. Since this was done on a water jet, the color goes all the way through. You might consider where the gold and black are to scrape a little bit off in the middle of the thickness. Then when you epoxy the thing together and have it clamped up, you can rub the appropriate color over the glue line to fill and color any voids. Or not; dunno it might be a perfectly clean break and not need it.

[DannyBoy]

The way the Mets have been playing it's understandable why it's broken....Not sure I'd want to glue it back together.

[DaBear]

Just wondering if you should use something like birch ply or MDF (ugggg.) to avoid possible issues with wood movement?

Cheers..

David

[Guest Trace]

Marble can be repaired as follows. Lay a piece of waxed paper on a flat surface. After making certain that the edges to be glued are clean, mix the resin in a small cup with a drop of white liquid shoe polish, add a spec of black ink if you wish to tone the epoxy to a gray shade. Now you can add and mix thoroughly the hardner. Coat both faces to be joined with the mixture. Place the pieces FACE DOWN on the waxed paper making sure of the alignment, do not try to clamp the pieces together, but put pieces of scrap wood against the marble to hold it in place horizontally. Place another piece of waxed paper on top of the marble, and add some small weight. After an hour or so, remove the weight and waxed paper, then you can either epoxy an alumnium backing ( well roughened ) or small threaded rods to the marble, letting it dry thoroughly. (overnight) The marble can then be turned over. If there are small edges sticking up a brisk bit of polishing with 1200 grit Wet or Dry will restore the polish and remove the edges.