LINK TO:
The Red Stains on the Lier and Other Shroud Copies By Remi Van Haelst, Belgium
Remi Van Haelst, Chemist.
My personal correspondence with the late Dr. Walter McCrone.
Remi Van Haelst.
Recently, I was informed about the death of Dr. Walter McCrone.
Years ago, when I was gathering documentation for my book “The face of Christ. The Shroud of Turin”, I made contact with Dr. Apers (14C Laboratory of the University of Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Through him I learned, that Dr. McCrone, some time earlier, tried to obtain Shroud samples, used by Prof. Gilbert Raes (University of Gent. Belgium), a textile-expert who exanimate in 1978, the Shroud samples.
Dr. McCrone’s goal was a “secret” experimental 14C dating.
Prof. Raes asked the advice of Dr. Apers, who rejected the McCrone’s proposals, because
of the to large errors and uncertainty.
Dr. McCrone was fair enough, to recognize, that Dr. Apers was correct.
I made contact with Dr. McCrone, who sent me some very valuable documentation about his work on the Shroud.
He told me, that he was prepared to answer all of my questions.
Finally, after consulting neutral experts, I raised the following eight questions.
The answer of Dr. McCrone started with the following strange sentence: “Let my start by telling you, that during my research, I did determinate some facts, which make it in a certain way, needless to answer some of your questions.”
Question 1:
How do you explain the differences with the results of other researchers, in particular with Sam Pellicori?
Answer:
This is due to the use of different methods. Pellicori worked with samples of 1 cm². I used samples of 1 mm². Samples 10.000 times smaller, improve the accuracy.
Note:
Dr. McCrone wrote in his “Microscopical Study of the Turin Shroud III” that he studied the 32 tapes “micrometer by micrometer”.
Question 2:
How do you explain the very fine distribution of iron oxide?
Answer 2:
Iron oxide is very fine distributed in nature.
Question 3:
How do you explain the absence of arsenic in all of the 11 EDXRA analyses shown?
Note:
Arsenic is normally present in opperment (Kings-Yellow)
Answer 3:
I only found one or two parts of opperment.
Question 4:
How do you explain the presence of “rubia tentorum” (madder-root) used only by Dutch painters?
Answer 4:
This is not true; this pigment was used all over Western Europe.
Question 5:
How do you explain the negativity of the image?
Answer 5:
This one of the questions, I do not like to answer.
Question 6:
Why only the amido-black test gave a positive result?
Answer 6:
Because this test is a very sensitive one. All other tests did fail, because of the insufficient presence of drying oils and binders.
Question 7:
How do you explain the anatomical details, unknown in the Middle Ages?
Answer 7:
I prefer not to answer this question, because I have shown that the Shroud is a painting.
Note: At a press conference in London 1980, Dr. McCrone gave the same answer.
Question 8:
Do you sincerely believe that the Shroud is a painting?
Answer 8:
Yes, modern science did show that the Shroud is a fraud.
I myself, showed experimentally how the painter did paint the Shroud. Following me, the artist used a much-diluted paint.
I made myself the following watercolour paint: 1-ppm iron oxide, 10-gram gelatine in 1 litre of water. With this paint and a fine watercolour pencil, I painted a Shroud like image.
Indeed, at the request of Dr. McCrone, the painter Sandford copied the face of Christ, as seen on the Shroud of Turin. Dr. McCrone gave me a photo of the painting, made by Sandford
The conclusion of Dr. McCrone is worth reading:
“The presence of pigments indicates that the Shroud has been touched up by artists, but I do not believe that this was only done to make the image better visible for the faithful. The only colouring parts I found are iron oxide and vermilion (cinnabar). If one removes these parts, there is no an image”.
°°°°°
In vain, I made some experiments with the dilute paint.
Finally, I asked Prof. Eyskens of the Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp for advice.
Only when much more pigment was added Prof. Eyskens, he himself a good painter, obtained a visible colouration. Of course, such an amount of pigment would be certainly detected by any professional researching team like for example STURP.
Prof. Eyskens obtained a better result when using a combination of milk and citric acid, better known as an “invisible paint”. After heating the painted surface, with a warm iron, the colour turned to grey, in function of the numbers of layers painted.
To paint the Shroud with invisible paint and to obtain the image one sees today would be more than a masterpiece.
After several tests Prof. Eyskens concluded: “Dr. McCrone surely never used a pencil.”
STURP reports tell us indeed, that the colour intensity of the image is function, of the number of fibres, which are coloured only at the top, but not in the mass.
It is clear; that paint will not stay on the top of the fibrils, by will be absorbed in the fibres.
Dr. McCrone stopped our correspondence, because it would become an “exercise in futilities.”
I leave the ordeal to the readers of this paper.
Remi Van Haelst.
Recently, I was informed about the death of Dr. Walter McCrone.
Years ago, when I was gathering documentation for my book “The face of Christ. The Shroud of Turin”, I made contact with Dr. Apers (14C Laboratory of the University of Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Through him I learned, that Dr. McCrone, some time earlier, tried to obtain Shroud samples, used by Prof. Gilbert Raes (University of Gent. Belgium), a textile-expert who exanimate in 1978, the Shroud samples.
Dr. McCrone’s goal was a “secret” experimental 14C dating.
Prof. Raes asked the advice of Dr. Apers, who rejected the McCrone’s proposals, because
of the to large errors and uncertainty.
Dr. McCrone was fair enough, to recognize, that Dr. Apers was correct.
I made contact with Dr. McCrone, who sent me some very valuable documentation about his work on the Shroud.
He told me, that he was prepared to answer all of my questions.
Finally, after consulting neutral experts, I raised the following eight questions.
The answer of Dr. McCrone started with the following strange sentence: “Let my start by telling you, that during my research, I did determinate some facts, which make it in a certain way, needless to answer some of your questions.”
Question 1:
How do you explain the differences with the results of other researchers, in particular with Sam Pellicori?
Answer:
This is due to the use of different methods. Pellicori worked with samples of 1 cm². I used samples of 1 mm². Samples 10.000 times smaller, improve the accuracy.
Note:
Dr. McCrone wrote in his “Microscopical Study of the Turin Shroud III” that he studied the 32 tapes “micrometer by micrometer”.
Question 2:
How do you explain the very fine distribution of iron oxide?
Answer 2:
Iron oxide is very fine distributed in nature.
Question 3:
How do you explain the absence of arsenic in all of the 11 EDXRA analyses shown?
Note:
Arsenic is normally present in opperment (Kings-Yellow)
Answer 3:
I only found one or two parts of opperment.
Question 4:
How do you explain the presence of “rubia tentorum” (madder-root) used only by Dutch painters?
Answer 4:
This is not true; this pigment was used all over Western Europe.
Question 5:
How do you explain the negativity of the image?
Answer 5:
This one of the questions, I do not like to answer.
Question 6:
Why only the amido-black test gave a positive result?
Answer 6:
Because this test is a very sensitive one. All other tests did fail, because of the insufficient presence of drying oils and binders.
Question 7:
How do you explain the anatomical details, unknown in the Middle Ages?
Answer 7:
I prefer not to answer this question, because I have shown that the Shroud is a painting.
Note: At a press conference in London 1980, Dr. McCrone gave the same answer.
Question 8:
Do you sincerely believe that the Shroud is a painting?
Answer 8:
Yes, modern science did show that the Shroud is a fraud.
I myself, showed experimentally how the painter did paint the Shroud. Following me, the artist used a much-diluted paint.
I made myself the following watercolour paint: 1-ppm iron oxide, 10-gram gelatine in 1 litre of water. With this paint and a fine watercolour pencil, I painted a Shroud like image.
Indeed, at the request of Dr. McCrone, the painter Sandford copied the face of Christ, as seen on the Shroud of Turin. Dr. McCrone gave me a photo of the painting, made by Sandford
The conclusion of Dr. McCrone is worth reading:
“The presence of pigments indicates that the Shroud has been touched up by artists, but I do not believe that this was only done to make the image better visible for the faithful. The only colouring parts I found are iron oxide and vermilion (cinnabar). If one removes these parts, there is no an image”.
°°°°°
In vain, I made some experiments with the dilute paint.
Finally, I asked Prof. Eyskens of the Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp for advice.
Only when much more pigment was added Prof. Eyskens, he himself a good painter, obtained a visible colouration. Of course, such an amount of pigment would be certainly detected by any professional researching team like for example STURP.
Prof. Eyskens obtained a better result when using a combination of milk and citric acid, better known as an “invisible paint”. After heating the painted surface, with a warm iron, the colour turned to grey, in function of the numbers of layers painted.
To paint the Shroud with invisible paint and to obtain the image one sees today would be more than a masterpiece.
After several tests Prof. Eyskens concluded: “Dr. McCrone surely never used a pencil.”
STURP reports tell us indeed, that the colour intensity of the image is function, of the number of fibres, which are coloured only at the top, but not in the mass.
It is clear; that paint will not stay on the top of the fibrils, by will be absorbed in the fibres.
Dr. McCrone stopped our correspondence, because it would become an “exercise in futilities.”
I leave the ordeal to the readers of this paper.