 You can go. Me? Hello, this is Kristen Lays from Heritage Preservation. And we're just going to wait a few minutes for a few more people to join us. I hope everyone can hear us well. I think just because we're into summer now, we'll just put up a little poll. We can get to know each other by talking about our summer plans. Wondering if you've headed out on vacation yet or not. Got one coming up. I know I'm counting the days. And I think everyone has found the chat box that's to the left of the screen. And you can type in your questions while we are in the middle of our presentation. And we'll be having this live Q&A time today. And feel free to just put in any comments or questions you have in that chat box. Well, I'm glad to see no one needs another vacation after the vacation. Sometimes that does happen. But hopefully those who question, even if they're going to get one this year, something will come through. So thanks. I'm going to go ahead and close this poll. But let's go ahead and see where everyone's coming in from today. It's just kind of nice to get. We see we are cities and towns, but sometimes it's just nice to see a regional overview of where everyone's coming in from today. The southeast and midwest. Thanks for getting up early in the West Coast. Joining us at the beginning of your day. But it looks like we have about 20 people logged in at this point. Pretty good mix of folks. We can get some mountain plains people in here maybe coming in a little later. Great. Well, thank you. I'm going to go ahead and officially start then. And again, I'm Kristen Lays from Heritage Preservation. And I'd like to welcome you to the Connecting to Collections online community. If you hadn't joined us for our first webinar two weeks ago, then welcome to our meeting room and our ability to interact with you in a pretty, hopefully, technically seamless way. The Heritage Preservation is moderating the Connecting to Collections online community in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History, and was funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And the site is designed and produced by Learning Times, which is making this technology possible for us. The goal of the online community is just to help smaller museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies quickly locate reliable preservation resources and network with their colleagues. We know everyone is very busy. You probably wear a lot of hats at your institution. Collections care is only one of those daily activities that you have to address. And we're hoping that this online community will make it a little bit easier when you do have a question or a concern and you need to get to reliable information quickly. About twice a month, we will be having a featured resource on the site. And we hope that this will be a particularly interesting or useful resource. You might want a bookmark in your browser for a quick reference later, or it might give you an opportunity to do a little bit more reading on something you've been meaning to get to for your collection. And then, of course, we're going to try to have some type of this live question answer or some type of webinar interaction with an expert on the topic that we've featured. So today, we are welcoming Deborah Long. She is the head of Objects Conservation Laboratory at the Gerald R. Ford Conservation Center, which is based at the Nebraska State Historical Society in Omaha. She was one of the conservators featured in the Nebraska Educational Telecommunications Program Saving Your Treasures. The videos from this program, as well as video segments from four major distance learning workshops, have been posted on the website, along with links to other preservation resources. The funding for this program was provided, in part, from a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And the site's been up for a little while, but we wanted to feature it again because we just think it's so useful. The video components, here are some examples of just the ones that are just up on the homepage of the site on things like how to roll and fold textiles for storage, how to polish and wax silver objects, how to care for your photos, are really useful short videos that it would be great for your staff and volunteers, but also really good to refer any kind of questions that you might get from patrons or visitors about how to care for their family heirlooms. So they've organized a site with types of materials and types of objects and frequent issues that these objects face and the kind of deterioration that comes about just because of their properties. And so it's just a very useful overall picture of some of the conservation issues that they face. So thank you so much to Deborah for joining us today. And she has a specialty in all kinds of objects, but in particular she thought she could be helpful today with talking about metal objects. And perhaps you had a chance to see two of the videos that she was featured in, which is the care of silver objects, including the cleaning and polishing of silver objects and then waxing them so they can maintain good condition while on display or in storage. So again, you'll see the chat box to the left of the screen, and you're welcome to send us any comments or questions as we get going. But I'll start off with a few of my own. And hello, Deborah. Thanks for joining us. Hi there, Kristen. And I just wanted to just go over one of the main points I've always seemed to hear about silver, which is that you should be careful how often you polish them, that if you polish them too often you can lose some of the detail in them. So in light of that and these videos, could you give a little more background on that? Sure. It really is true that you should limit how often you polish silver, partly because it's such a soft metal. You really can take the surface right off. I mean, one of the things to remember about polishing is that even when you're using a very fine polish, it's still an abrasive, and it's still at the microstructure level what you're really doing is grinding the surface away. So you absolutely don't want to do it too often. And if you look at very old silver objects that have been polished repeatedly, what you'll see is they have a very soft, almost melted appearance in some cases. If they have a lot of raised decoration on them, what you will sometimes find is that the high points have hulled polish right through them. So it is something to keep in mind as you're working. Though it seems like when you're doing it, you don't get the feeling you're taking very much away. But when you repeat that process time and time again, it begins to have an effect. So then the waxing step is important because that's going to help maintain the polished surface for, I think you said in the video, about a year before you did depending on the circumstances. But before you would see an appearance of tarnish again. That's right. In addition to polishing, causing loss of silver, just the fact that an object is sitting in a normal atmosphere over time because almost every normal atmosphere that your object is going to sit in is going to contain at least oxygen. It's also going to contain varying levels of pollutants that will interact with the surface of the silver. And that interaction causes the corrosion. And for corrosion to form, silver is actually used up. And so when the silver is used up and converted from metallic silver to a silver corrosion product and then you polish it away, you're then exposing another fresh surface that, again, will be used up, which you will polish away. And it's this repeated process that causes the loss of your surface. Oh, that helps. So waxing the surface of the silver or putting any kind of protective coating on the surface helps to slow down that interaction with the environment and pollutants in the environment. And so that just reduces the number of times you have to repeat this process. So even if an object is in storage in silver clots, it's still worse going through this process. I would say so. There are lots of different ways to protect your silver. And being a conservator, I think I'm interested in using as many of them as I can that are reasonable to use. And so often I will apply that protective coating and then, as you say, put it inside silver cloth that's in storage. I'll also even, I usually even recommend that you take the silver cloth and put that silver cloth container inside of the top bag so that you, again, slow down the interaction of oxygen with the surface of your object as much as you can. Right. Great. I see that they were getting a couple of different questions about supplies and tools for doing this process. And I know you mentioned some of that in the videos, but do you mind just reviewing again what kind of products you use when you do cleaning and polishing and waxing? Sure. A lot of these materials are fairly straightforward to get. You can get distilled or deionized water, as I mentioned, in the grocery store or in a pharmacy or a hardware store detergent. Again, the grocery store, I usually just look for something that's clear and doesn't have fragrances. You need very, very little of it, only about a few drops. And then the polish itself, I use precipitated calcium carbonate. And that's a little bit more difficult to get. I usually order that from a conservation supplier. There are the big chemical houses you can buy it from, but usually those quantities are pretty large. And if you're in a small institution, it's about a 200-year supply. So you probably want to get it from a supplier like Calis or something like that, where you can buy a smaller quantity. And then the cotton pads, I think I mentioned in the video that the cotton pads I use are from the cubby machine industry. Any kind of soft cotton will do. White cotton flannel is another option. I tend to like plain cotton to the extent that I can get away with it, just because it's very usable. It's very inexpensive. And it's available, pretty widely available. But this isn't just like the cotton ball you'd get at the pharmacy, which is usually a synthetic material, right? Would all of this basically be available through Gaylord or Light Impressions or any of the conservation supply catalog? I haven't checked for it through those suppliers, but you could actually use a cotton ball or loose cotton. OK. If you wanted to do that, you just have to make sure it is plain, clean cotton. OK. And as you say, sometimes they have synthetic materials in them, so you do just have to watch for that. It's the same if you needed to use cotton swabs. You just need to make sure it's actually cotton. OK. And then the precipitated calcium carbonate used up is a powder that you have like with you. Right. Yeah, the bigger chemical houses like Fisher Scientific sell it in, I think their smallest quantity is about three kilos. Yeah, that's a lot. You really don't need that much. Yeah. I haven't seen it in Gaylord, but Talis does carry it in. And how do you spell that one? It's T-A-L-A-S. OK. I can put a link up to that on the discussion page of the website so people can follow up on that. So essentially, it sounds like anything you would buy to maybe polish your household silver is not appropriate. Any kind of the commercial polishes or gloss or anything like that or dips, someone asked about silver dips? Well, let's take the polishes first. OK. Silver polishes that are commercial aren't normally contained lots of materials like perfumes and dyes because some of the materials they add to their polishes don't smell very good. And I just really like to avoid all of those materials. Things that are used in a home environment that might be fine in a home environment may not be suitable for a museum environment. And I think when you're in a smaller institution, there is a very strong urge to just get something easily and quickly at the local hardware store. But some of these things that are work fine in a home environment like corrosion inhibitors that are fine, like I said, for silver in youth can cause some secondary problems over time on silver that's in a museum setting. So I really like to avoid all of those things. OK. And what about the dips? The dips? Well, some people love them. The big problem with them is really silver was never intended for its entire surface to be stripped off. And this is the problem with a dip. It will take off all of the surface, all of the discoloration, whether it was intended to be there or not. And often, if you look at silver, what you'll see is this difference in surface conformation, decorative elements, engraving, things like that, they're meant to be dark in the depression. And when you use a dip solution, it's indiscriminate. It will remove everything from the surface. And so you end up with an object that looks odd. It also is quite an aggressive material. And so I like to use the gentlest thing I can. Certainly fast to use a dip solution. It's just you end up with an appearance that's not accurate. When you're in a historic setting, accuracy is what you're trying to maintain. I think that's one of the nice things about the video, is not only do you see how you handle the object, but you can also see when it's completed its appearance and that right, it's not. There are some darker areas in the detail. And I believe that the image that we have up on our home page right now also is a pretty good example of that. It is a perfect example of that. And you can just imagine how that would look if there were no dark surfaces at all. You start to lose the detail. Yeah, that makes me also feel better. You are now muted. Home. Less is better. Yeah. So someone asked about haggardy as a polish. Is that name familiar to you? Yes, it is. It is. I see they mentioned that it looks like mud. The reason it looks like that is it has iron oxide in it. And so a lot of the commercial polishes, you'll see they look pink or brownish. And this is why, because they have iron oxide in them. And the iron oxide is a very traditional polishing agent for silver. It's sometimes called rouge or other things like that. And this is perfectly fine as a polishing material. It is harder than the silver itself, though. So it will take more material away. This is another reason I like the calcium carbonate. It's quite a bit softer than the iron oxide. Calcium carbonate's about the hardness of your fingernail. It's hard enough to remove the tarnish, but it's not hard enough to really aggressively scratch away a lot of the silver surface. Or the iron oxide is harder, and it is more aggressive. It removes more material. And a lot of times with a commercial polish, they'll put that material in there because it makes your polishing go faster. So it makes their products more popular. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Great. Well, someone asked also what about the bags? So I guess that the silver cloth is something you can purchase, I think, pretty readily through the conservation suppliers. Right, or you can make your own, or just use it to wrap. If you have an odd-shaped object, you can just get a length of it to wrap it. You can buy it on the web, too, just in bolts or by the square yard or something like that. It's quite easy to sew. It's basically a soft cotton flannel that's been treated with actually finely divided metal particles that are entrained in the fibers. And what happens with these silver cloth bags over time, your object is on the inside. The pollutants are outside in the air. And as the air filters through that cotton flannel cloth, it interacts with those finely divided particles. And so the pollutants are kind of used up by the time they get inside the bag where your object is. And that's the way it works. So it has a finite lifespan. And once those particles are all used up, then the bag doesn't work anymore as a protective environment for your object. And so for that reason, you never want to wash silver cloth. Oh, OK. That's good to know. Yeah, those little particles will be washed out. Right. And do you have any kind of range of time on how long a silver cloth container might last? It's a pretty long time. I think the average time is about 15 to 20 years. Oh, OK. That's great. Yeah. So people often ask, is it worth it? Because it's kind of expensive, but I would say yes. Yeah. Well, and then so you said, wrapping the object in the silver cloth, but then also putting it into a zip bag, plastic bag of some kind. Will that also extend the life of the silver cloth? Yes, it will, because what's happening when you're putting it inside a zip top bag and you do want to stick with the food grade polyethylene bags or something like that. For the same reason, you don't want to introduce another pollutant or possible pollutant. So if you put your silver cloth and your object inside the zip top bag, it just slows down the transmission rate of oxygen from the air and the pollutants that are in the air. And everything is just slowed down. And so there's a slower rate of interaction with the silver cloth and the slower rate of interaction with your artifact. And therefore, everything lasts a little bit longer. Right. So food grades, that's a good point. And then I've also understood that if it smells like plastic, strongly of plastic, then it's not safe for a museum object. Well, we do really try to avoid things like polyvinyl chloride. And you might remember this from when you were a kid, that sort of new baby doll smell. Right. That kind of vinyl smell. You definitely want to avoid that, anything polyvinyl chloride. And you want to stick with clean food grade polyethylene or clean polypropylene. Those are two plastics that you can use safely. Great. And then mylar, which is essentially a polyester. Great. One more question on the polishing. What about the silver polishing cloth? Someone mentioned a brand called Burke. A lot of the polishing cloth is essentially a cotton flannel that, just like the silver cloth, it has metal particles entrained in it. Sometimes you'll look at these polishing cloths. They'll be brown or something like that. That may be because they also may have iron oxide particles actually entrained in the fibers. And so just the fact that there's an abrasive mixed with the fibers in the cloth means that when you rub it over the surface of your silver, since the iron oxide is harder than the silver, it will essentially rub some of the silver away. When they're not orange or brown or something like that, it may be that there's another abrasive in there, like aluminum oxide, curium oxide. There are different abrasives on the market. But a lot of those polishing cloths contain this kind of finely divided abrasive. And so just the rubbing action of rubbing that abrasive surface across your silver will rub some of the surface off of it, which is how they work. So again, a little more aggressive than you should probably be for a museum object. They can be. They can be. One of the ways I sometimes suggest that people have something they're not really sure of and they don't know if they can use it, especially for a home environment, if they're talking with their patrons, you can say, if they rub it across a little piece of plexiglass, if it scratches the plexiglass, it's possible that it might scratch your object. OK, that's a good test. I think that's a really good test. Well, what I'll do is see if we can do a little more research on sourcing some of these materials and see if we can put that out on the discussion page so that people can have that handy. I just wanted to couple, it looks like we had a couple questions of storage for silver. And this segues into a question I also had. Sometimes, and especially in a historic site or house environment, you really want to display the silver. And it's possible that there could be silver in cabinets or furniture that are in a house or even out as a place setting. So I guess that's two questions. One, so obviously if it's on display in a storage cabinet, you wouldn't want it wrapped in silver cloth. Right, so do you have any tips about that? And then secondly, what if you wanted to display a silver candle fixed with candles in it or a fruit bowl with something in it? Do you have any tips for how to protect the silver in those cases? I do. Depending on what the cabinetry is like, there are several things you can do for objects displayed behind glass. And of course, this depends on the historic furniture they're using. Sometimes you can put down on the shelf itself that the silver is sitting on. You could put a piece of microchamber four ply or something like that. And that will adsorb pollutants from inside of the cabinet. 3M makes some activated carbon strips that help, again, adsorb pollutants inside the cabinet. When I have anything in a historic house setting, I tend to recommend to people that they have a conservator actually professionally apply a clear lacquer coating to those artifacts because they are so exposed, whether they're in a cabinet or whether they're out on a dining table or something like a sideboard setting, I really do recommend that they have a conservator do this kind of coating. Because otherwise, what happens is as long as it's on view, people are breathing, cars are driving, pollutants are there in the environment. And so the objects are exposed to these pollutants because they need to keep them looking nice. They polish them a lot. And so having a professional protective coating applied in this kind of circumstance really helps maintain your objects for a lot longer period of time. So that's my normal recommendation for museum settings. When you have objects that are out in that room setting, you can also apply little strips of barriers. Like you could cut a tiny little strip of mylar and put it around the candle so that it's not in direct contact with the inside of the candle cup. If you have candles in a candlestick. If you have a room setting where you want to put some flower arrangement of silk flowers or something like that, you can again put some kind of mylar barrier in there. You could also use the clean polyethylene sheeting. It's a little softer. And it goes in the rounder surface areas a little bit more easily. So that's something you can do in a historic house setting too. And I would still recommend that even if the object has a protective coating on it. Because you certainly don't want to spend the time and effort and money to have that protective coating applied and then accidentally scratch it off. True. That's a good point. OK, just two more questions on silver and then we'll move on to other metals. But I guess one question came from Susan in Tampa about a plastic silver bag that she got from university products. She said it's gold colored. Are you familiar with those? I'm guessing it's something called corrosion intercept. That is actually polyethylene sheeting that works in the same way that the silver cloth works. Basically, it has finely divided copper actually mixed with the polyethylene. And so it works in the same way as the silver cloth. As oxygen diffuses through the bag and the pollutants diffuse through the bag, the copper that finely divided copper actually chemically interacts with the pollutants. And they get used up instead of having it attack the object inside the bag. So this is what just eliminate maybe buying two things. The silver cloth and then a plastic bag if you just purchased this one. Yes, I would say if you do something like that, you probably, well, I might be more paranoid than that. Yeah, so maybe just put a little bit more. Oh, I see. OK. Well, yeah, it's better to be on the safe side. That's my nature. Yeah, I understand. And then just another quick question. The Claire in St. John was saying that they seem to like the polishing cloth because it would avoid an issue where there was residue polish left in the neck and cranny. But as you said, if you could test the silver polish cloth on a piece of plexiglass and see if it scratches, that's a good test. But what do you think of the President Kahn? Well, I would say, firstly, if you're leaving some polish residues, you haven't finished the job. Right. So you really do, if you're going to polish silver, you need to spend enough time to actually get it on effectively and get all of it off. One of the things that makes metal objects something of a challenge to deal with is the fact that they will interact in ways you don't even think about with the environment. And one of the ways they will interact is through these tiny particles that are left behind. So if you leave polish of any kind behind, any kind of abrasive particles or even dust that's sitting on the surface will have a large surface area. And that large surface area actually attracts moisture to it. And that causes a localized, elevated relative humidity. And that water is available to help further the process of corrosion. So it's really important when you polish that you actually clean off all of that polish residue. And so this might involve using some cotton swabs and a little bit of distilled or deionized water to get everything out of those little milks and crannies that you might need some soft, stable paint brushes or things like that to help dust that residue out of there. But it is important to get as much out as possible. Right. Of course, that means more time and more effort, which is one of the reasons I tend to recommend that they have conservators take care of this for them because it gives them about 15 or 20 years of not having to deal with this stuff. Right. So that would be giving it to a conservator to be polished and then to be coated in something stronger than wax. Yes. Yeah. And I'll just put up right now that the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works is a place where you can find a conservator and search by type of material and search by geography. Anybody on the call hasn't used that resource. It's a very handy way to find a conservator and talk to a conservator. Just to move on to some other types of metal. I mean, we've talked about polishing and cleaning silver. I mean, are these the same basic principles for other types of metal, like copper, or brass, bronze, or pewter? Are there specific things to those types of metals that you need to be really aware of? I think so. If you're in a historic house setting and you have copper, brass, or bronze, or any of those copper alloys, what you have to be sure of when you're working with them is what was their original intended surface? A lot of these copper alloys are meant to have a slightly patinated surface. And patina can be a natural darkening of the surface over time. Or it could be an intentionally applied patina that actually is meant to make the surface look a little bit darker. So understanding what it is that you're looking at and what it was supposed to look like is really important before you just decide you're going to polish it and make it look all shiny and new. Because it may not ever have been intended to look that way. So a lot of times, a more straightforward recommendation might be to simply clean the surface carefully and apply a wax coating just to protect it so that it can kind of maintain its existing appearance. Right, right. And someone mentioned too, what if you have composite objects? So we have some type of metal in the same object as wood or stone or minerals. Well, that's a common issue. And at that place, you're starting to look at the interaction of multiple types of materials. And sometimes you have a situation called inherent vice where the needs of one part of your artifact actually conflict with the needs of another part of your object. So for example, if you have, I don't know, a steel knife that might have an ivory handle, for example, the ivory likes a little bit higher relative humidity environment. But the higher relative humidity will actually start to cause corrosion for the iron component. In that case, you're a little bit limited. And a lot of composite artifacts have this problem, which is why conservators have such a strong tendency to ask museums to try to be careful with their environment. It helps protect all the artifacts. And if you can stabilize your relative humidity, at least any of this competition that's going on will be at the minimum rate of speed. And then I've also heard, especially in smaller institutions or institutions, such as archives and libraries that have human comfort to think about people coming in the door. But they also might have a handful of museum-type objects that you can get a lot of benefit from doing micro environment. So even making sure that that object is housed properly in a box. Right, right. Even if you're working hard to stabilize your relative humidity, but it's not ideal yet, you can do any other tips on. I mean, we talked about silver cloth for silver items, you know, in the case of your ivory and steel knife. How would you house that? Well, that's a place, again, where you want to make sure the object is very clean, as I mentioned before, because you don't want to have interaction from dust or the pollutants that are in dust. But if you can kind of keep your relative humidity in the about 40% to 45% range, really kind of trying to keep it in that middle range is really the best thing you can do. And trying to keep it stable so that it's not kind of flexing from high to low relative humidity is just about as important as keeping it at a good relative humidity. For storage, keeping things in storage boxes or protected in my really like storage boxes, actually, because they really kind of do provide a little microclimate. And the box itself provides a certain amount of buffering from changes in the relative humidity. And a lot of small institutions have more trouble trying to maintain a stable relative humidity. So things in storage that are in acid-free, lignin-free boxes will have a little bit of buffer from the speed of these changes. Right. So we talked about using calcium carbonate for cleaning of silver tarnish. I mean, could you use that for other metals, too? Bev had asked about a copper, an object with copper alloy on it. Polish's copper is a little bit harder than silver. And so calcium carbonate may not be hard enough polish to remove very much. Of course, depending on the appearance, you may not want to remove very much. If all you want to do is clean it, you could clean it in the same sort of way with a little bit of distilled or deionized water and some very weak detergent solution, followed by more rinsing and distill their deionized water and drying carefully. Sometimes that's all you need. What you'll find sometimes, particularly with candlesticks or things like that, is they'll have wax residues in the bottom of them. Often when you look into those candle cups, it always looks like they used green candles in there. They really didn't use green candles. Often what you're seeing is a particular type of copper corrosion product called stirrate corrosion. And usually it's from an interaction with the candle itself and the wax type in the candle. So that can be cleaned off with a little bit of mineral spirits. And again, then I would, again, go back and wash it a little bit, rinse it, dry it thoroughly. Yeah. Stefana said she had had some trouble with eliminating old polish residue from brass. And it can be very hard. And the orvis and distilled water and ethanol weren't quite doing the trick. But maybe mineral spirits could be something she could dry. It might be. A lot of commercial polishes, a lot of times, have waxes in them or mixed with them to kind of, again, make things go faster. And so if you leave that in the depressions over a long period of time, you end up with this polish residue that's mixed with wax. And the mineral spirits should help dislodge that a little bit. Of course, wax isn't water soluble. And it's not very easily disturbed with ethanol either. But the mineral spirits, she might have a little bit better luck with that. And again, the mineral spirits you would maybe buy at the hardware store. You need to just make sure that they don't have additional additives. You want it to be plain mineral spirits. And if you're using any solvents, mineral spirits or ethanol, you do want to be very careful about where you're working. Those are both flammable solvents. So you don't want to have any problems like that. They also can be harmful to your health, of course, if you're breathing them in a closed environment. So when you're doing things like that, do please take as many precautions as you can to protect your health and to protect your institution from a fire. OK, great. So environment in keeping the air clean and the relative humidity stable is very important in terms of avoiding corrosion on metal. So Janine has taught us that an interesting question. She is saying that they are considering a request to do a fog machine with dry ice for a Halloween event. And maybe Janine can tell us a little bit more about how exposed her objects are at the place where this fog machine or dry ice might be used. Does that sound like a really bad idea? Well, it depends on what the fog machine is emitting. Dry ice is carbon dioxide, is frozen carbon dioxide. But some of the fog machines don't work with dry ice. Some of them work with other chemicals that create the fog. So I would definitely want to know exactly what was going out there from the fog machine. It doesn't seem like something you would necessarily want to do in the museum. Carbon dioxide shouldn't hurt anything. It is extremely cold, though, so it could be a handling problem. It's kind of dangerous to handle. You have to have pretty sturdy gloves to handle it. Yeah, you need a professional. Yeah, it's a good idea. Yeah, so I guess it just depends too on how exposed the artifacts are in a particular space where this might be used and if it could be used in the lobby or someplace where the harmful objects are. Exactly, exactly. That would be the safer. Outside the front door as people are entering. Right, give the effect, but not any harm. Yes, exactly. So that's a great question. I was just wondering too, thinking about metal objects, and maybe this is really obvious, and I should know the answer. But I noticed in the video you were wearing a type of a latex glove or a plastic glove, as opposed to a white cotton glove. And I know in handling metals, one of the big hazards is any kind of oils or any dirt or anything that would come from human handling. So I just was curious. I've always heard in the museum work use white cotton gloves. But I noticed you were wearing a plastic glove. Do you want to explain what you prefer and what the advantages are of different things? Absolutely. You do have a lot of choices when you're handling artifacts in a museum setting. But it is true, you generally don't want to handle metal objects with your bare hands. Your skin does even very clean skin, has oils and salts on it to keep your skin safe. But those things interact very poorly with metals. And so that's why people do say wear white cotton gloves. When I'm doing work like this with an artifact, you probably noticed in that video everything gets kind of black and gross after a while. Certainly that would suck into the cotton of a cotton glove and it would be useless in very short order. I tend to use latex gloves when I'm working. Powder free latex. They have a very close fit. And they will protect you from the abrasives and the dirty water and the soap. And if you use any other solvents, it will help protect you from those as well. The thing you have to watch out with the latex gloves is some people do have latex allergies. So that's something you want to be sure about before you bring latex into your organization. And then your other option would be a nitrile glove. Nitrile gloves can be very useful. The only problem with them is once in a while they can be processed with chlorine rinse. And chlorine is something you don't want against your silver or copper alloys because it will cause another type of corrosion. So I tend to stick with the latex gloves. They're inexpensive. They're very easy to get. And they're clean. You get actually quite a bit safer handling, I feel, when you use clean latex gloves because they're not knitted or woven. There's no possibility of them snagging on some kind of sharp corner or edge or something like that. And I feel much safer when I handle things with them. The cotton gloves, unfortunately, people always have the best of intentions. They're going to keep them nice and clean. But I'm sure everybody in the museum world has seen the kind of cotton gloves that nobody actually wants to put their hands in. Right, right. Such a nondrag west. Right, and you do have to, when you do wash them, you need to sort of follow certain protocols, too, to make sure you're not washing them with a detergent that would leave a road to do. And it seems to me that, from what I've been hearing, that the move to powder-free latex gloves is useful for a lot of different types of objects. It is. And then there's not. The nitrile is also very popular. Yeah, and those are the blue. They tend to be blue in color, right? Yeah, blue, purple, green. Coming all colors. Right, so again, it's just, again, watching those labels and getting information on. Yeah, I'm sure that it hasn't been treated. Yeah, yeah. And if you're not sure, one of the things you could do, it's not a really official test. But if you have a little piece of silver or copper, you could simply wrap that little piece of, like if you have any little test coupons or anything like that, you could wrap a little glove around one of those little coupons and stick it in a clean jar and just come back in a week and see what it looks like. Just to try to see what you can find out on your own if you're not sure or the seller of your nitrile gloves isn't sure. Right, so we heard back from Janina Naltuna and her Halloween fog machine, dry ice question. She explains that they're large objects. So metal plaster would, so may not be able to be moved out of the space. Well, if that's the case, then she probably wants to be more, I would hesitate to say, use carbon dioxide in a basement, because you just don't want. It doesn't seem like it would have a good escape route. I wouldn't want to use anything that created any kind of smoke. Usually, those smoke things are proprietary and they often won't tell you what's in them because they're proprietary materials. And I know they always seem to have an odor whenever I've seen them use. So they've held you already that it's got something bad that's coming. Yeah. Sorry Janina, it's not looking good. Maybe some effect with lighting, if you can. There you go. Or an event space. Right, or an event space. Stefana has asked us the question about corrosion and corrosion inhibitors. I guess maybe it's a very broad question on how do you recognize corrosion? And then say you see it, and then now what do you do? And is it too late to use a corrosion inhibitor? Is a corrosion inhibitor something that just museum staff are able to use, or is that something that you might need to consult with a conservator on? Well, corrosion inhibitors come in a variety of forms. I mean, some of this preservation we've been talking about already is a form of inhibiting corrosion using the silvercloth. Is corrosion inhibiting just by exclusion, essentially? Some other corrosion inhibitors come in a vapor phase. And there are products on the market that are actually called vapor phase corrosion inhibitors. Usually, they're papers that evolve gases that help inhibit corrosion. Those are fairly specialized applications. I wouldn't think that would be something you would normally find in a museum storage area. If you have too much of that corrosion inhibitor, it can kind of attach to the surface and discolor the surface of metal objects. In some cases, it kind of depends on volume. But if you're trying to figure out if you're having corrosion, unfortunately, corrosion is always happening whether you can see it or not, unless you have an environment that has no oxygen and no relative humidity. OK, that's right. Corrosion just happens. The way you can kind of see it, any tarnish is a type of corrosion. It's oxidation, simple oxidation. What people often will worry about is kind of more of the sort of rapidly developing corrosion, like you see sometimes on archaeological objects. And that will sometimes look powdery or it will actually form in a sort of fluffy mass and fall off of your object. If you see something like that on a metal object, you probably want to get in touch with a conservator because something is probably going on with your artifact. And rather than just guess or try to do something yourself, you may be better off just having a conservator have a look at it and try to figure out what's going on with it. Because it could be any number of different causes. So it's hard to say in a blanket case what you should do. There are so many possibilities, it's kind of difficult to answer that question. And so what about this, as you mentioned, archaeological artifacts? Or what about pieces that come into the collection where it's got visible, active corrosion? That's some place where you're going to want a conservator to interact with your artifact because there are some particular types of corrosion on copper alloys. In particular, there's a very destructive corrosion product that is called bronze disease that is basically multiple unstable forms of corrosion. And in order to stop that, you have to have a conservator carry out conservation treatment. Again, like I said, unless you can provide less than 10% relative humidity environment or zero virgin environment. And that's bronze disease is a corrosion product that because both phases are unstable, it doesn't stop until the bronze is all gone. So you definitely want to have the conservator looking at that. There are also salt-based corrosion problems that will sometimes happen with iron collections from burial environments that have soluble salts. They can cause these corrosion problems that are very disfiguring on iron-based materials, archaeological materials. And what you'll see in those cases is again a voluminous corrosion product that will sometimes, if your object is sitting on a shelf on a white background, for example, you'll see iron oxide powder around the object. Again, that's a place where you want to have a conservator look at that and see what they can do to stabilize that. OK, great. And then I guess metals that are located outdoors, Stefana has brought up a gate, which I'm going to guess is either outdoors or outside of a building. And that's just going to be very challenging. She's in Miami. So she's got plenty of humidity, I'm sure. And salt. And salt, right. So in that case, she could consult with a conservator, but also probably some historic preservation could give advice on how they need to treat that gate too. Yes, because probably what they want to do is not just look at the gate, they're probably going to want to look at all the exterior metal. They'll probably also want to look at the interior metal, particularly depending on what kind of environment there is. And in a case like that where you're in an aggressive environment like Miami, you're going to want to try to work, rather than looking at a single artifact, you're going to want to try to develop a long-range preservation plan for the whole institution. It's going to be a lot more cost effective to do that than it is to try to piecemeal, treat one object after another. You really need to look at that from a holistic perspective. So again, that's where I would suggest they have a conservator come and consult with them, or as you say, a historic preservation specialist. That's probably the best way to address that problem, because it's going to be a long-term project. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, good. We're just about at time, so if anyone has a last question they want to put in the chat box, please do it now. We've recorded this webinar, and we will be posting it on the web. You are no longer muted. We'll file it under Care of Metals in the Topics menu. And I will also be doing a little more research on some of the materials we talked about, the calcium resource for calcium carbonate that Miami could buy in a smaller quantity, and some of the other materials. And I will put that up in the discussion area. It looks like Janine's asked us one more question on swords. And I guess that could be of different types of metals, and then as we mentioned, maybe even different types of metals within the same object, or different material. Yeah, yeah, it could be all of those things. Those are things where often swords will have leather scabbards, or things like that that will inhibit your ability to use a really low relative humidity environment. So that's a place where you want to, again, try to work with somebody who can give you a larger overview of your whole group. Usually, people don't have one sword in their collection. Often, they'll have multiple. And so it might be a place where you might want to look at it as a part of a larger whole. That's a good suggestion. Especially then, you could maybe develop housing for the sword that they're not on display, or better to display options to minimize the impact of the environment. And keeping things clean, protected. Right, right. OK, one last question from Lincoln. They're wondering, is there anything they can do for deteriorating ferrous metal without sending them to a conservator? I mean, beyond temperature and humidity control? Yeah. Keeping them as clean as possible, but relative humidity and temperature control are really major components of long-term care of ferrous metal. So when you say clean as possible, I mean, out of any kind of keeping them in a dust-free environment? Yes, away from any sources of pollutants to the extent possible. And keeping the surfaces clean, so keeping them protected in housings, boxes, or keeping them covered so that dust doesn't settle on them and things like that. But it's true, it is a difficult problem to have to take care of all these things when you can see them deteriorating in front of you. But doing those holistic things, keeping the environment clean, keeping the relative humidity low to the extent possible. And with the ferrous metal collection, they may have a little bit more latitude to keep the relative humidity lower than you might normally keep it. If you had a more mixed group of artifacts, so right. And if you do need to dust it, what do you use some type of? Usually, when you dust metals, you want to stay away from dust cloths. You want to use soft, clean, natural bristle brushes, like paint brushes, things like that with soft bristles. And make sure you wash those bristles periodically so that as they collect dust, you can wash it away. And then I like to dust regularly if you have the staff and you can accomplish it on a monthly or quarterly basis. Again, this is a place where having filters in your HVAC system can help you because they can collect that dust that would otherwise fall on your artifacts. So trying to get holistic systems to help you do your job is always an efficient way to work. Right. And I'll just say, in terms of it can be daunting to think that you do need a conservator to help you with so many different objects in your collection. And so if anyone hasn't participated in just the general assessment of their entire collection and their environment, that is a really good way to prioritize your resources. So if you have several thousand dollars to spend with a conservator starting with one of those assessments to just get a general idea of what your priorities should be and what some holistic changes you can make, what kind of impact that would have on all of your collections, whether it's in storage or on display. And I know that's something, Debbie, that you offer at the Gerald Ford Center. We do. One of your services and other regional conservation centers across the country. You can also, when you look at the AIC website, the one I have, the slide I have up right now, that is an option to look for when you go into there, find a conservator, search tool. A general assessment is something that you can select to look for someone in your area who does those types of things. And then Heritage Preservation actually has a program that's funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services called the Conservation Assessment Program. Now it is limited to museums and historical societies. Libraries and archives are not eligible for our program. But Conservation Assessment Program, you can find it on our website, is one way to have that substantially funded. Some of the other regional conservation centers have some funding to support or help students subsidize the cost of an assessment. And then through the National Endowment for the Humanities, they have preservation assistance grants. And that library and archives can apply to and again for a general assessment. So it's a good way to just get an overview of what you might need a conservator for in the future and what sort of things you can handle, begin to handle on your own. Yeah, those can really be helpful for not only for helping the collection staff to figure out what they can do and what needs to be done by someone else. But it can also help with your long term fundraising for the preservation aspects of your museum. Great. Well, thanks again, Debbie, really appreciate your time today and your expertise. And just to tell everybody, when you go to the Saving Your Treasures site, these are just some of the examples of links under their Care of Metal section. So this would get to a lot of the topics we talked to today if you're looking for some more information. And again, you are welcome to participate in our discussion if there are questions you think of later and you want to toss it out to the group. And I can follow up to get answers for you as well. So thanks again for joining us. We are going to have another webinar on cold storage for photographs in a couple of weeks on July 7. So check the website for the time for that. And thanks so much for joining us today. And we hope to talk to you soon on the online discussions. Thank you very much. Take care. Thanks so much.