>The process for preservation of most of the items recovers by divers
>- Brass, glass, some iron - are easy to lean and do with a little
>knowledge and about $100 in equipment and chemicals...Some may even
>want to learn about wood, paper, and leather also.
Thanks for the comic relief. It reminds me of the guy who said he
wanted to do his own conservation and asked a conservator what he'd
need. The conservator said, "First you'll want a good microscope."
The guy said, "Hum, what if I only find big stuff?"
I think the main problem with the '$100 in equipment and chemicals'
approach is that, unlike cooking, conservation doesn't work well from
recipes. Treatments that work on one object will fail on an
apparently similar one. It's been my experience that the 'adventurer
in conservation' then often loses his patience and turns to the
faster, heavy handed methods that 'never fail' - like stripping
metals down to their shrivelled cores and coating them in hobby store
epoxies. In the end he may 'blame the victim' (the artifact) when his
trusty method doesn't work and so he doesn't even count those
artifacts as his failures.
I'd like to be optimistic and say you can do it guys but in my
experience the 'a little knowledge and about $100 in equipment and
chemicals' approach does as much damage as good.
Dennis Piechota
Conservator
Fiske Center for Archaeological Research
University of Massachusetts at Boston
617-287-6829
|