Royal Collection Trust: Restoring Porcelain, Part 3

I'm going to start with these two large pieces that comprise the base of the vase. That fits very nicely and snugly and I'm now going to tape it. As I put the tape on I'm going to stick one side and pull it really firmly to try and close up the joints as closely as possible. The bottom again really pulling tightly that tape and we can now put this upright and I'm going to put in this next small piece which has got the stag's head on it and just fit that carefully into there and that sits very nicely and I'm just going to put a little bit of tape I'm now going to put this big piece into position and this will take it right up to shoulder level then and I'm just going to carefully place this avoiding grinding the edges together as much as possible and that's sat in very nicely and now I'll just tape it. You can see these radial cracks and these small pieces emanating from this central point here which is probably where the impact of the accident actually happened. Now the last big piece this is quite an awkward shape I think should just slot in nicely and just the last little bit you've got to go in the neck here. It's good to see that all these cracks which before were filthy dirty full of old glue are now lovely and clean. Many of them down here have all closed up beautifully and we're ready now to apply the glue. I'm now going to mix up the glue and we use here a very specialist two-part epoxy glue which doesn't discolour and I'm going to mix it in the ratio of three to one and three drops here six now I'm going to put the hardener in three drops of that and I've just mixed a bit here just to start off and I'll mix several quantities as I progress throughout the vase. I'm going to put putting the glue into the cracks and really working it in this brush and the glue is very thin it's also slightly viscous and it's because it takes such a long time to set it's a good week for this to harden off over the rest of the day it'll be slowly working its way into the cracks and making a really nice tight bond. Once I've glued up the whole vase I will leave it a week for the adhesive to harden it will then be ready to fill the cracks chips and missing areas followed by the final retouching.