Hello,
please, help.
I bought amber powder to make solvent free varnish (amber & walnut oil). I am an artist and wanted to try varnish as a medium.
Anyway, I cooked amber in walnut oil, and nothing happened. As I discovered after amber has a high melting point. I also found here some instructions how to do it right way - first amber is melted, then after some cooling oil is added.
Question about melting - what heat did you use? gas or electric stove? And about cooling - wouldn't amber crystallize when it's off the heat? e.g. damar resin crystallized immediately when off the heat
I would also like to ask you about copal resin.
I bought copal resin after my failure with amber. I cooked it with walnut oil in a deep frier and copal dissolved within 4 min. And because I have damar resin at home, I found that copal looks very much like damar. Copal I bought and damar have the same melting point ( tried to melt them together) both crystallize after and both crystalls dissolve in turpentine immediately. I thought that copal varnish is hard to dissolve in turpentine and , although, I didn't try to dissolve my copal varnish ( the sample of it is not dry yet) I thought crystallized copal should behave as dried varnish.
Any thoughts, please?
very informative forum.
thank you so much,
Elena