Unfortunately, I cannot find the detailed 'recipe' at the moment, but once I followed a procedure of soaking a flaking sword in alkalinized (using sodium hydroxide) distilled water (refreshed every couple of days when pH dropped below, if I remember correctly, 11) for several weeks (until the pH stabilized,) followed by three day long soaks in anhydrous isopropyl alcohol followed by a couple of soaks in acetone and then a coating with paraloid B-72 as a sealer. Several years later, this still appears to have stabilized the sword.
|