PVA for gum printing

I've got a physical chemist interested in working out the chemistry of
dichromated gum, but because gum is so complicated and variable and the
structure isn't completely worked out, and the structure of PVA is
simple, he wants to start with PVA and see if he can understand what
happens there first, before considering gum.

I told him that I had printed with gloy, which I believe to be mostly
PVA, and it seemed to work very similarly to gum. But we need to use a
pure PVA of course for these experiments, so I need to find a grade and
molecular weight of PVA that would be similar to that used in gloy. I
don't know where one would find that out about the PVA in gloy, can
anyone give me a clue? Or suggest a grade and molecular weight that
might be close?

I googled "gloy" and found some places to buy gloy in UK, but not a
manufacturer. But (gloy printers should appreciate this) I did find a
composer who composed "Ode to Gloy" a parody of Beethoven's 9th, "in
honor of the glue."
Katharine
Received on Thu Jun 17 11:40:43 2004