Over the years a have been lucky to find a few stones here and there. Most of them, if in a box, usually pop right out. Occasionally, if a significant stone is glued in a box, I will destroy the box to recover the stone. Very rarely a important stone is glued into an important box, now that’s where things get tricky and it just happened again. A late 1800’s Pike Washita was badly glued in the bottom case with the lid having a near perfect “use sperm oil” stamp inside. The seller, a little old lady at the market sold it to me. She tried to give it to her grandson who did not want it. She told me “he’s to darn busy playing with that darn gameboy” GAMEBOY!! HAHAHA!! I tried all my non invasive methods to remove, a few tap-tap-taps with a mallet, inertia, in the hot Florida sun for the day, and in a 200 degree oven (when SWMBO is gone) for a few hours, but no luck. This stone was glued into the bottom, by a rocket surgeon, with what looks like spray foam and it was not a good job, the foam was everywhere. Time to preform surgery to remove the stone. I do this by separating the sides from the bottom. I find the glue joint, looking for the weakest spot to exploit. I use SE and utility razor blades and work them into the joint around the circumference. The SE are thinner and the utility blades are stronger. As the joint opens, add another razor. Slow and easy, tap tap tap with a peening hammer. Eventually the four sides separate. To separate the wooden bottom from the stone, I use a long, thin-kerf knife to drive between the two. Once again, slow and easy., tap tap tap. Do not want to put undo stress on the stone. Keep the pressure on the wood so it gives to the will of the blade. Now that they are separated, time to take a deep breath, the hard part is done. While reverse engineering the wood, the stone goes into the cleaning dip to see what is under the funk. I only clean up the bottom tray, all inside plains, and glue joints on the sides. The rotten foam is everywhere. I do minimal work on the outside of the box so as not to harm the century old patina of the wood. Only gently scraping away what does not belong and gently cleaning. Simply glued all pieces back together doing my best to hide any evidence of being disassemble. I noticed that I left a DNA sample in the tray for future historians. One thinned coat of finish in the bottom to seal only the inside. All ready for the next hundred years
