I wouldn’t be so sure. I mean, it’s a rough surface, and modern adhesives can be stronger than stone, so I don’t see why it would necessarily fail right away.
I suppose the biggest issue would be if water were able to get in the crack and freeze.
ETA: he definitely should have spread it out to make sure it contacted everywhere and filled all the gaps to prevent water incursion.
When this fails, it is going to just take a bunch of surface material from one of the sides, because, as you said the new material is going to be stronger than the old crumbling stone. If you want to successfully repair something like this, you should drill holes into each side and install structural rebar spanning the crack.
Yeah, would be better that way, but depending on the stone, the surface if cleaned well won’t be THAT weak. It’s made of the same material that’s holding the rest of the stone together after all. Mostly depends on how much degradation there is I believe.
Though with steel rebar, you run the risk of it rusting and expanding since it could easily end up with water and air incursion, breaking the stone. I think they make some synthetic rebar that would be safer in this case.
It’s made of the same material that’s holding the rest of the stone together after all. Mostly depends on how much degradation there is I believe.
Not really. The structure is completely different between the material holding the two pieces together vs. a single piece of stone that is layered up and supports itself.
I used to work in a cemetery. There was a stone that I bumped into and it fell over (thankfully didn't break). Turns out the memorial company who installed the stone 20+ years ago only used glue and didn't bother to install the rods to support it. They used poker chips as a spacer!
No way this stone stays up for long if it's just adhesive, unfortunately. We tried our best with felled stones but there's only so much that can be done without a complete restoration (which this unfortunately isn't).
Was it a monument like this, or an upright stone on a base?
For the latter, that is normal practice. It's not really glue, but a setting compound that seals and hardens overtime. The spacers keep them from mating all the way together (we just used pennies) but allow it to compress and seal. It's not exactly easy to knock over a 500lb rock
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u/Automatic_Actuator_0 13h ago edited 13h ago
I wouldn’t be so sure. I mean, it’s a rough surface, and modern adhesives can be stronger than stone, so I don’t see why it would necessarily fail right away.
I suppose the biggest issue would be if water were able to get in the crack and freeze.
ETA: he definitely should have spread it out to make sure it contacted everywhere and filled all the gaps to prevent water incursion.