I did end-up trying this on a few crusty clad coins. I just laid them on the wax paper & gave them a generous coating of white glue. I let them set a couple days, didn't put them in the freezer during any portion of the process.
After a couple days, I was able to peel the dried glue right off, no residue or "sticking" where the glus was concerned. I did peel-off alot of visible crud, which was imbedded in the glue. It almost looked as though the coin was still in the glus, because of the dirt removed.
I think this would be a good thing for anyone to try if they were interested, white glue is pretty cheap. According to the article I had read, this will in no way damage a coin, which I'd be inclined to believe.
Smitty
I had read a number of fine articles on cleaning the old Roman coins that I bought, and find that there is no substitute for infinite patience. (That's OK, I'm really good at nit-picky stuff.) First I want to say that I will never, ever again use Olive Oil! The batch that I started is going to take years to clean, and once it soaks in, you can never again use distilled water soaks. I'm having terrific luck due to a posting by a gentleman who steered me to a site that recommends repeated soaking and brushing with distilled water. Here's the relevant part to this post: between soakings I use Elmer's glue on first one side and then the other. Head and shoulders better than the hot glue gun that I purchased for the purpose!! Rather than pick off remnants of the glue, which could damage the coin, I take off anything that comes off fairly easily and then dump them into a fresh soak, which removes the rest of the glue too. Hope this helps, since I relied heavily on others to get started myself.
