Sword conservation

Martin Lubojacky · 6th December 2016, 08:54 AM

Hi Ariel,

I would suggest, in the case of such old (archeological/field) find, to cooperate with proffesional (museum) conversator. I am of the opinion, that in this (field) case we cannot speak about cleaning, but only about conservation.

If it is my sword, I would slightly mechanically clean the surface to make it smoother. Than, as you wrote, it may be (aspecially in this old case) important to dissolve the ferrous chlorides in destilled water (i have never done it, but I saw conservators - they did it routinely. Re. tannin - I like to use it, because you can like unify various spots to one colour, if you do not clean it after (not only black - but in this case it would be black). Nevertheless I am afraid, that tannin would go only to certain deep, not to the healthy iron kernel in this concrete case - and I do not know how it can influence overal conservation result from long time period point of view(till know I only treated objects with thin layer of rust, with tanin - with good results.) After then it would be important to allow the tanin layer to "season" in colder and wet atmosphere for a few days ..., to become hard, compact.

But I think there are more sofisticated chemical methods, which I don´t know- for treatment of field finds

6th December 2016, 08:54 AM	#5
Martin Lubojacky Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: Czech Republic Posts: 845	Hi Ariel, I would suggest, in the case of such old (archeological/field) find, to cooperate with proffesional (museum) conversator. I am of the opinion, that in this (field) case we cannot speak about cleaning, but only about conservation. If it is my sword, I would slightly mechanically clean the surface to make it smoother. Than, as you wrote, it may be (aspecially in this old case) important to dissolve the ferrous chlorides in destilled water (i have never done it, but I saw conservators - they did it routinely. Re. tannin - I like to use it, because you can like unify various spots to one colour, if you do not clean it after (not only black - but in this case it would be black). Nevertheless I am afraid, that tannin would go only to certain deep, not to the healthy iron kernel in this concrete case - and I do not know how it can influence overal conservation result from long time period point of view(till know I only treated objects with thin layer of rust, with tanin - with good results.) After then it would be important to allow the tanin layer to "season" in colder and wet atmosphere for a few days ..., to become hard, compact. But I think there are more sofisticated chemical methods, which I don´t know- for treatment of field finds