Is E6000 Good For Porcelain Repair

Please NOTE: I practice not offering ceramic repair services. I hope this post gives you information for doing your own repairs. Also, you lot can search for someone who offers ceramic repair services in your area.

Me, circa 2002

And then i of the hundreds of interesting jobs I've washed is ceramic repair for a restoration visitor. Information technology was difficult, painstaking work but somewhat satisfying to put cleaved things back together again and so hide the bear witness of the breakage with paint as best as nosotros could.

When work got slow, I would get to the front office and talk to walk-in customers near what we could do to repair their broken treasures and what that would cost (a LOT). A few weeks after, I would nowadays them with repaired pieces when they came to choice them up.

As optimistic as I had felt in the work room, mending objects and setting things to rights, I became disillusioned in the front office when I came to empathise that no thing how brilliant the repair, we couldn't un-interruption the item. We couldn't have away the anger toward a impuissant family member, or dog, or friend, the sadness of a treasure shattered. It turned out we weren't actually setting things to rights at all. One time I learned this, I couldn't un-learn it and repair lost its appeal. I moved on to some other chore, managing a pottery and dishware shop.

But I learned repair skills that stay with me fifty-fifty today. And once in a while I say yes to a project for a friend as a favor. A few summers agone I repaired a yard auction find for a friend and documented it a bit. It was in many pieces and had intact one-time repairs that needed to be taken apart, cleaned and re-repaired.

It'south of import to accept autonomously an old repair earlier trying to put new broken pieces back in because as each piece is fit a little wrong into the puzzle, that bad fit is compounded every bit more than and more pieces go put in a little incorrect until you can't even fit the last slice in because everything is so off.

Hither is what my friend gave me to repair:

Here I have started taking apart the old repair, which fortunately had been done with something similar super glue. With a glue similar that, or epoxy, you can apply a heat gun to warm the joins and make the mucilage soft, and then you can gently separate the pieces.

Notation: Silicone glue (like E6000) has no solvent, does not react to heat, therefore cannot exist taken apart easily. And if you do manage to get it autonomously, you tin never fully remove the silicone residue from the surface of the break, and therefore can never get a perfect fit once again. I don't recommend it for repairs.

One time I got all the pieces apart, I carefully cleaned all the old glue off. I used a lot of X-acto blades and acetone with Q-tips, trying to become every tiny nibble.

When I felt I'd gotten the pieces as clean every bit possible, I did a dry run, fitting the pieces back together and holding them in place with masking tape. This does ii things for me; it lets me see if I have all the pieces, and information technology helps me effigy out the lodge in which I should glue the pieces. Zippo would be worse than getting to the last piece only to find I've done it out of club and I am "locked out" from inserting information technology!

I used a two role, 5-minute epoxy. Hither are some close ups of the finished repair. I didn't fill and paint the cracks on this piece, it would take taken too long, likewise, I retrieve the visible repair adds to its character.