Happiness is. . .being done with installing the new anode rig!
Well folks, we have come to the end of our turret season! Two and a half months of hot, humid, intense, occasionally slightly dangerous work culminated in the final tank filling on July 14th。
Throughout the eleven weeks of turret work the whole crew of the USSMonitorCenter pulled together to accomplish something great. We removed all 21 of the remaining nutguards and nutguard fragments from the interior of the turret,a feat in and of itself。几个小工件在骗局中被发现cretion behind the nutguards. All together, including the nutguard pieces we accessioned 110 new artifacts. We also installed a brand new anode rig that will make the electrolytic reduction of the turret more efficient and should speed up salt extraction.Read more
Mike, Lesley, and Kate hard at work in the turret.
Last week I was fortunate to attend and present at the ICOM-CC WOAM 2016 Triennial Conference. ICOM-CC is the International Council of Museums Committee for Conservation, and WOAM is a working group which specializes in Wet Organic Archaeological Materials. Yes, this exists! This week long conference is only held once every three years and attracts conservators, conservation scientists, and chemists from all over the globe. I presented on research being undertaken here at The Mariners’ Museum into the use of sodium nitrite as a corrosion inhibitor in treatment solutions for waterlogged wooden artifacts that also have iron components. Part of this research will be included in the October Civil War Lecture on treating composite artifacts and why they are tricky to conserve. The presentations given at the conference ranged in topic from the in-situ preservation of shipwrecks, to improved freeze-drying techniques, to the preservation of 7thcentury apples. It was a fascinating week and I returned to The Mariners’ Museum enlightened and inspired! This was a great opportunity to talk about the USSMonitorconservation project on an international stage.
This week we have been working away in the turret, deconcreting nutguards. More on that next week. Stay tuned!Read more
We’ve had an exciting week here at the lab. The moment we’ve all been waiting for all year has finally arrived; it’s turret season. From now until the middle of July the turret tank will be drained on a weekly basis. We will be draining it on Monday and refilling it each Friday.
This week after draining the turret tank, we completely removed the old electrolysis system. At the end of the season we will be installing a new system that will provide more coverage of the object and therefore be more efficient. This week we did a condition assessment of the turret and took photos for documentation. We’re planning on doing a lot of cleaning of both the inside and the outside of the turret this season. Cleaning will be done mechanically, using dental tools and air scribes, which are tiny pencil-sized jackhammers that run off compressed air. On the inside, we will focus our efforts around the nutguards in an attempt to remove as many of them as possible. The nutguards are metal shields that prevented the nuts attached to the bolts, holding the turret together, from ricocheting inside the turret in the event of it being struck by cannon fire. Removing them will reveal more of the turret walls and allow more salts to be extracted from the turret in the future.Read more
If you are looking for something awesome to do this weekend, we have just the thing for you! This weekend at The Mariners’ Museum we are commemorating the 154thanniversary of the Battle of Hampton Roads. Now, I know the idea of going to a Civil War battle commemoration does not necessarily sound all that exciting, but that just means that you have never been to our museum on this particular weekend. This is one of the most exciting weekends of our year! We’re going to have lectures by Civil War experts, which are going to make you realize how fascinating history can be. There’s going to be Living History demonstrations and encampments, which of course involves setting off the occasional cannon. Perhaps the best part, but I will admit to being a bit biased, is that we will be having behind the scenes tours of the USSMonitorconservation laboratory. If you come on a tour you’ll get to see up close and personal exactly what we’re doing to save theMonitor.Saturday we’ll be having our 2ndAnnual Civil War Beard competition that you need to participate in or watch, either way you’ll have fun. We’re also having an iron pour outside on Saturday. You will get to see how parts of theMonitorwould have been made, with fire and sand and molten metal. Sunday we’re going to unveil a full scale working replica of a USSMonitorWorthington pump. The Worthington pump replication project has been a long and winding road, and we are so excited that we get to share the final result this weekend!
Why, you may ask do we care so much about this particular battle, that there is an entire weekend of activities devoted to remembering it? Glad you asked. The Battle of Hampton Roads was the one major battle involving the USSMonitor.On March 8, 1862 the CSSVirginia, a Confederate ironclad steamed into Hampton Roads and laid waste to the Union ships, wooden ships, stationed there. This was the worst disaster endured by the US Navy until the attack on Pearl Harbor. On March 9, 1862 when the CSSVirginiacame back to finish the job, it encountered the USSMonitor。For four and a half hours these two iron ships dueled in the waters of Hampton Roads. Although the battle was fought to a draw, it changed naval warfare forever, bringing an end of the age of sail and wooden ships.Read more
所以我们有a rather long period of radio silence here on the blog. We’re going to try to prevent that in the future! There have been some changes in the lab. Dave, after over a decade with theMonitor, has gone off to chase a new dream with the Naval History and Heritage Command. We wish him all the best, but he is greatly missed here. We’ve added some new faces, too. Lesley joined us a new assistant conservator in December; she’s a recent graduate out of the University of Cardiff conservation program. Some of our long-time readers will remember Elsa. I am happy to say that she rejoined the team at the beginning of January. We’re thrilled to have her back.
Elsa and I have been getting to spend some time with an old friend of hers. Yes, we are once again working away at the wooden gun carriage sides. We’ve talked about thesebefore– acoupleoftimes。We’ve been doing mechanical cleaning of the sides and edges in preparation for chemical cleaning, which will remove most of the iron staining.Read more
