Help! I Broke The Head Off A Statue! How To Repair?
Concrete Statue Repair
How To Reattach A Broken Concrete Statue Head
I received an email asking for help:
I accidentely knocked the head off of a statue.
Is there anything I can use to reattach it? It was my late Mother’s and I really need to fix it. Thank you for your answer. Irene
My reply:
Hi Irene:
Thank you for contacting me and I hope I can be of help. But first, you didn’t tell me what material the statue is made from. Because you found my web site and I deal with garden art, I will assume you are referring to a concrete statue.
Yes … you can fix it with an epoxy glue that is meant for concrete. There should be a brand available at (hopefully) Lowe’s or Home Depot, as examples. Go to the paint department area and that’s where all the epoxy glues can be found. (Important for you to know, is that there really is no way to use a concrete mix to stick the head back on. Don’t even try it.)
Epoxy glue comes in 2 tubes that you mix together before you apply it to the concrete. Not a big deal to do, just a bit messy. Just FOLLOW the instructions –read them over first before you even open up one of the tubes. 
Make SURE the concrete statue is bone dry!! Even a little bit of dampness in the concrete will very likely cause failure to your repair attempts.
The epoxy might be slightly visible when dry, but how “invisible” the repair will be is of course also dependent upon how neatly and carefully you can apply the glue.
I wish you the best of luck with this concrete statue repair.
August 8th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
I’ve used a cement epoxy glue to try to repair the face of a concrete statue which had been broken off. I cannot get it to stick even having followed the instructions on the packet. Am I doing something wrong? I cleaned both pieces before using the glue and makes the glue on the concrete with my fingers.
I would appreciate your advice
August 25th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Hi Derek:
Unfortunately I’ve no clue what else you can do, if the proper type of epoxy was used with no success. I normally receive emails telling me “thanks for the epoxy repair tip”. It sounds like you did everything right. My only question has to be: are you SURE the epoxy was the correct type; are you SURE there was no moisture left within the concrete before you applied the epoxy; did you mix it correctly; and did you tape or secure the pieces together and let the epoxy harden for the required amount of time?
Wish I could be more help. Perhaps a concrete patch could be used as a “glue” – but I’m not 100% sure if this will work. You’ll have to wet and paint a bonding agent onto both pieces before you apply the concrete “glue”. I’d encourage you to research this further, however I do have some information on bonding agents and such on this webpage on my site: http://www.the-artistic-garden.com/hypertufa-bonding-agents.html Even though this page is about hypertufa, it contains Portland cement, thus the information is basically the same process for a pure concrete recipe.
Good luck and keep me posted.