 Our host, Susan Barger, go ahead Susan. Hi everyone. I want to welcome you back to the second session. I have a few things to go over just to remind you about the different components on the education interface. I want to particularly show you that this is where the assignments are. But you can find the live webinars, which you already have. If you want to listen to the recording, you can find it down here. The handouts are here. And if you have any questions, you can post them there. And when you submit your assignment, when you click on that assignment thing, you can upload a file. How come I can't get it all to this? You can upload a file at one. You can click on this section where it says two, and then that will allow you to upload. And you should make sure that if you are submitting an assignment for week one, two, three, or four, that you submit it in the correct week. Last time somebody submitted something in week two. And I'll have to do some changing around when they try to submit in week two again. But that's what you should do. And also please put your name on your homework. That helps us. If you need to reset your course password, you should contact info at culturalheritage.org. If you have questions for me, this is my email address, b2ccatculturalheritage.org. If you have questions about the course content, you should put them in the discussion. And remember to receive the Credly badge for this course. You need to listen to all the webinars. You can listen to them live or the recording. You have to listen to them in order. So you can't skip around. You'll be blocked if you don't listen to them in order. And you need to do the assignments. And the recordings usually are posted within a day of the live webinar. If you have questions about concerning the care of your collections, you can join the Connecting to Collections Care Community. And you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook. These are the two webinars that are coming up at the end of October and in November. You can go to the Connecting to Collections Care Web site and sign up for them if you wish. Those are free. And I'm going to now turn this over to Gretchen. Remember if you have questions, I'll be watching for them to make sure they get answered. Gretchen, take it away. Okay. Hi, everyone. I hope you all had a good week. First, let me say that there were some technical difficulties. So for the people who have put assignments in, you had to do a workaround. But that's been fixed. So I will catch up on grading assignments over the next couple of days. Please get your assignments in. So today we're going to be talking about how to clean. Last week we were looking more at some overall strategies for preventive conservation. But so now we're going to move into really the meat of the course. And I'm having a... Oh, there we go. Okay. I also have a brand new keyboard and a brand new mouse. So I wasn't sure how I was going to do things. So as, first of all, a very brief reminder, we're talking about any number of agents of deterioration. Now, I've grayed out the ones that, yes, they're associated with housekeeping and cleaning, but they're less vital in the discussion for today. So mainly a lot we're going to talk about the direct physical forces and contaminants. Water will be a discussion point. A number of you who have already submitted assignments have talked about pest issues. And in my responses to your assignment, I will provide some recommendation for you to take a look at websites or other sources. And again, a little bit of review. We have three different levels at which we look at collections issues. And today we'll focus mostly on local and definitely on procedures. Your housekeeping methods are actually all falling to that procedures end. And of the five areas of the five actions, we're mostly going to be talking about response today. So first of all, I would like to move through this fairly quickly. I want to give you an idea of some of the supplies and equipment that would come in handy for what you're using and for your housekeeping. Soft claws are good, cotton claws. We used to always say cloth diapers, but as I was reviewing these slides, I realized they are not as readily available as they used to be. But soft cotton claws, preferably the ones that are less rinty are very good. Microfiber quads, which come in a whole variety of different textures. I have a whole set of microfiber quads with different surface textures. Some are smooth, some kind of look like terry claw. The whole range, they're great. Also terry claw is good. Again, it's a very absorbent cotton claw and paper towels as well. For dusters, do not use feather dusters. Feather dusters are actually very abrasive, so you don't want to use those. We have such a nice range of materials to choose from now and very easy and inexpensive to get. The microfiber ones are wonderful. Microfiber actually is designed to absorb dust, and it can be washed. That's one of the nice things about it. Your synthetic dusters are excellent. They're a little abrasive for something, but they're quite good. Again, they can be easily washed. Lamb's wool is very good. They have to be vacuumed. Do not wash them. You can get disposable flea that go over the microfiber or the synthetic or the lamb's wool. That will prevent the fibers on the dusters from catching in objects. Again, you don't want to use feather dusters, but all these others are quite good. It's very nice because you can get them with different lengths or expandable handles. You can actually get one that goes up 10 feet. Those get a little heavy and awkward, but if you have high ceilings, that comes in handy. Other supplies and equipment. This is very important. HEPA vacuum cleaners mean high efficiency particulate air filtration. A normal vacuum cleaner actually spews out almost 50% of the fine particles that it takes in. If you've ever noticed that after you vacuumed, you've got a lot of dust left behind you, that's why. A HEPA vacuum cleaner is an extremely important material. It's good both for health and safety and for control of dust. The one that I'm showing, this one's actually a fairly old one, is the Milfisk. Milfisk is one of the best. They're also quite expensive. There are others that come in a lot less expensive. You can also now buy HEPA filtration for many of your regular vacuum cleaners. You can get one with a rheostat. There's a little knob at the top that controls the amount of suction. So that it's safer for your objects. It's advisable. It isn't absolutely mandatory. You can get a floor model like this one or a backpack or one that you wear on your hip. So there's a whole lot of interesting and it's a very flexible system. There's a lot of vacuum tools ranging from the normal brushes that you get to very small micro tools. If possible, use softer rubber or plastic tools rather than the metal. You don't want to scratch anything. Also, buy and have one that works for the floors and one for objects. Separate those two. Microfiber dust mops are excellent. Again, you can wash the head. They're easy to come by and not very expensive. With dance mop, I prefer either the microfiber or the PDOH head, both of which you can get fairly easily. The PDOH, definitely you can get those from a cleaning supply company. Avoid string mops and sponge mops. They leave too much water behind and it's harder to control where the strings are. Also, avoid brooms. Brooms pick up more dust than they collect. Brushes and sponges. One of the best brushes to use are natural soft natural fiber. There are some paint brushes that are synthetic fiber but quite soft. That's okay. The other thing to do is collect a high variety of faces and sizes. You can use, you see the fan brushes in the photograph. Those you can get at a paint store or rather an art store or a craft store. They're very nice because they're small and easy to use and they get into little crevices. With sponges, there are a couple that are quite interesting. What's pictured are the foot sponges which are specially designed to absorb foot and grease and grime. They were designed originally for people who were cleaning up after fires. So they're right up our line. You can buy them in large tubes or you can do like I do and go the cheaper out. I looked online. I found places that sold ends. When they make the sponge, they have to cut it into the standard sponge size that's rectangular and cubic. I buy them the ends because I cut them up to use in small areas. Another thing you can get are called latex-free hydrophilic sponge. Those are very similar to the makeup sponges you can get at a drugstore or wherever you get that kind of stuff. The nice thing about those, if you can use them either wet or dry, if you use them wet, you can squeeze them out so they're just barely damp. The same can be said of a Mr. Queen eraser. Again, I tend to cut mine up so that they're very small and they are more abrasive than the latex-free hydrophilic. Sorry, I keep forgetting to advance it here. So there's a lot more tools. Cameras, now the nice thing is we all carry cameras with us on our cell phones so you can get photographs of damage. You want to document as much as possible. Preasers, bamboo skewers, cotton swab, and cotton. I like alpha knives because they're more flexible. A scissors is a good thing to have. Flashlight and or a headlamp. Rulers, that kind of thing. They're all very helpful to have in your kit. So here's some miscellaneous tools, other miscellaneous tools. The assignment is going to have you take a look at some erasers. The white vinyl erasers are ones we like to use. They have a little bit of solvent in them. It's a dry cleaning tool, but there's a little bit of solvent action. And you can sometimes get up some stubborn stains or dirt with a white eraser. The photovolves on the right, those are wonderful. You can push them and it gets dust out of little crevices. Dangerous tape, vacuum screens. Now you can make your own. You can also purchase them online through conservation stores. It's easy to make. You get a window screen and you cut the screens to the size you want and then stitch fabric around the edges so that the edges don't scratch anything. Now you will use these to vacuum through to help protect the objects that you're vacuuming. You can also see an array of brushes, the micro vacuuming tools, and there are the makeup sponges. And more supplies. Plexi cleaner. Glass or plexi cleaner. You can use a 50% solution half and half of water and alcohol to clean your plexi glass. Distilled water. Always use distilled water if you're going to use water at all. White vinegar is good. A bucket, water paper, or something to absorb stills with is always good to have on hand. Now your personal protective equipment. I recommend using nitro gloves or finger cots. The finger cots are kind of cool because they just slip on the tips of your fingers and you don't get quite so sweaty. That will protect both you and the object. A dust mask, if things are really dusty, you probably want to wear a paper dust mask, at the very least. And the lab coat or apron, if you're really concerned about getting your clothes dirty. Now it's nice to have a tool kit that you can just keep in place ready to grab and go. So in my institutions, I tend to do it on a cart because I can get to the majority of the places I need to go by elevators. You might want to use buckets or a box or a tool kit of some kind to keep your core tools clean. Now one thing I want to mention is that we always want to clean our tool after use. Don't let it go for a day or two. You clean your tools because you don't want to be spreading the dirt from one object to another and it will make your job easier. So now let's move into some techniques. But to begin with, it's good to know what dust is and where it's coming from. The large photograph is a microscopic view of dust. And in there, I've got granular pieces of sand and dirt, but look at all that fiber. The fibers are oftentimes, there's a lot of cotton in there and it's blue and I'm going to guess that it's probably blue G. The majority of our dust actually comes from our clothing. It's not just the dirt and the sand and the dust coming in from outside, but the more people we have coming through our museum, more people, yay, the more dust you're going to accumulate. I've actually been able to track the way people move through the museum by seeing where the accumulations of dust happen and how fast it happens. Now my colleague up on the upper right, we went to an off-site storage unit that we had and she started handling, she's from the mammals department. She started handling the specimens that were covered, thankfully covered, in foam and that's how much dirt came off of those objects. I'm in a huge, very, very dirty city that has been an industrial center for the last 200 years. There's a lot of soot and it rubs off and it rubs into your collection. It's extremely fine. Now in the bottom right, you're looking at actual grime. This is grime that has worked its way in through the fibers of this basket. That's harder to get out. So okay, here we're going to dust with a cloth. Now any one of those cloths that I mentioned will work. Both of these alt-tree here are microfiber and just by wiping, wiping down and up, you can remove a lot of the dust. When it starts getting really dirty, you want to change over, either use a different side or get a fresh cloth because after seeing that picture of dirt and dust in the previous slide, you see how much is abrasive in dust. Here's dusting with a duster and here we are using a number of mostly wool dusters. The smaller dusters you can get on the inside. Now yes, we're dusting fossil. For those of you who aren't used to working with natural history collections, you might be surprised at how fragile these bones are. They're very, very fragile. What I would do is use the duster and sort of go in a circle so that it comes up and picks up the dust that's inside or on top of the bones. You see that on the left. On the right, my assistant is using a swiffer. Oftentimes we will remove the white fibers or the white pieces of fabric off of this swiffer and just use the softest, the yellow. Swifters are great. Unfortunately, they are disposable, so you'd have to balance that. I really like swifters for cleaning around objects because they're so light. Now, on the bottom right, my assistant has wrapped a microfiber cloth around the tip of her duster. This is a really nice trick and what she's done is she's used cotton twill tape to tie it on so it won't fall off. It's a handy little way to do it. So be creative as you move forward. Now dusting with a brush, I joke about it because I say it's all in the flick of your wrist. What you want to do is lift the dust off of whatever you are dusting and kind of flick it up so that it gets away from the specimen. And as I warned you, most of my examples are going to be of natural history items. But the same works on, well, it works on fabrics whether they're attached to a bird or a handdress. It works on fibers, on textile. It's a very handy way to do it. Always brush within the direction of the grain. If it's on a feather, you dust along the direction of the feather veins. Now, there's a couple more techniques getting into very, very, either very tight areas or in this case, I'm using an extended handle to get my duster up on the full of that triceratops. That way I didn't have to carry in a ladder. All right, now oftentimes you'll want to brush the combination of the vacuum. You brush to lift the dust up and the vacuum sucks it in. There are two ways of using a screen. One way is the way it is shown here where I've actually wrapped the end of the vacuum cleaner, the end of the hose with the screen. Or you can use painter's tape. Very handy device. The other way is how my volunteer on the left side is vacuuming through a screen. You see she's taped the edge of the screen with blue painter's tape so it doesn't catch on the fibers. What she's doing is vacuuming a 150-year-old wool cape. And she's all decked out in her personal protective equipment because we tested this. This had a ton of arsenic on it so she doesn't want to kick that up into her face. So she's wearing her nitrile gloves and her dust mask. She's also wrapped the tip of the crevice tool so that it reduces even further any abrasion that might happen on the textile. And on the right, I've used some soft Velix fabric to wrap around my hose, my crevice tool, so that I could vacuum along the lines, or along the grain of the very fragile fur that's on this specimen. Now there's two areas that you don't want to forget about. You don't want to forget about your floor and you don't want to forget about your ceiling. On the left, all that dust has come through the environmental system and the positive actually stuck to the top of the air vent. My assistant on the right, I get a lot of assistance because most of them are volunteers and they only stay with me for a year. She is carefully vacuuming around the specimens. That tip probably weighs about 110 pounds, so we were not about to pick it up. With a soap sponge, these are really cool, especially if you have very dirty environments. They pick up, as I said before, they're designed to absorb really fine particles. They're great at home because you can use them to clean off the foot in the kitchen or oily, greasy dirt. In this situation, both of these situations, we have cut them up in very small pieces. We're removing foot that was deposited by air pollution for over hundreds of years or over 150 years here. It starts out white, like on the left, and the more soot that you remove, it just absorbs that soot. We also tweeze. This is a good way to get mint off of something or if you have insect infestation, you can literally go through and pick the debris or the dead insects out of the cloth. Here's a photovol being used. There are times when having just a little bit of air poofed on something works really, really well. The gem that the very large geodes that's up on the left tends to get a lot of dust caught inside the crevices. I use the photovol directly at the piece to poof to dislodge the dust. On the right, my assistant is using it to get the dust that has really settled into the crevices of this landscape. Alright, we've been talking about dry cleaning methods. How about water? I would recommend that you use water as little as possible. It can cause serious damage to your object, and I will be talking about cleaning silver in a moment. First of all, water is a solvent. It's one of the most universal solvents. The way a washing machine works, or hand washing, is you combine the water with mechanical action. The mechanical action dislodges the dirt that's in the fabric, and the water lifts it up. Now we add soaps and detergents because they defend the soil and help prevent it from re-depositing. The soap or the surfactant also breaks the surface tension of the water, so whatever you are cleaning will get wet faster. So here's a recommendation, and this has to do with cleaning your dust cloth or anything you might put in a wash-up. Use about a quarter. Use about a quarter of what they recommend you use. So when they say you use a cup of soap or laundry detergent, technically that's what that is, you want to use about a quarter cup. That will actually be enough to clean the fabric you're putting in there. So I'm throwing around a couple of terms, and I want to define those. Soap is made from fatty acid and an alkali. It actually kills bacteria, but all soaps are fatty acids. A detergent is completely synthetic. So what we call laundry soap generally isn't laundry soap. It's actually a detergent. And a surfactant, that is just the saying that that's the physics and chemical action that reduces the surface tension of whatever liquid it's dissolved in. And you want that when you want your water to be working as efficiently as possible. So here are some of the dangers of water. First of all, we know it's not compatible with all materials. You don't want to use water on metals unless you get them really dry, really fast, otherwise they will corrode. For organic materials, things like wood and fabric, it can swell and shrink the material. Also we know that dyes run. So there's a lot of actions here that where you want to be very, very careful. In some cases, it will actually dissolve your material. Now, as you know, I work at a Natural History Museum. A lot of minerals are put through a washing solution. However, if you have salt, if you have mineral salt, it is going to go into solution very quickly. Adhesives also often either soften or are dissolved by water. So if something that you're cleaning has an adhesive on it or a coating on it like a varnish, the water can actually change the physical makeup of that material. So if you've ever noticed a ring left by a cup that was wet, a cup or a glass, then that ring is a reaction of either the wood surface or the coating on the surface with the water. I see Sharon mentioned she wants to know if you rub or pat with a sponge. You can do either. I usually use very small rubbing actions, but if the surface of your object is, you think it might be fragile, just pat. I actually saw that. I'm not paying much attention to the... See, I'm not paying attention. Go forward. So you want to use your water sparingly. Always use distilled water. Distilled or deionized water has all of the mineral aspects of the water pulled out. You can use it with the cotton sponge, with cotton swab, makeup sponges, a Mr. Clean sponge or a cloth. And here I am cleaning, doing some intense cleaning on an ivory sculpture, just removing using a damp cotton swab and rolling that swab over the surface of the object, not scrubbing. You generally don't want to scrub. So when you're doing it, you're dancing the swab with distilled water, and then you squeeze it or blot it to remove all your excess moisture, and you want to always use a light touch. If you're patting, don't push very hard. Just pat the surface. You do not want to leave water on that surface. With swabs, roll it, and never, ever rub, rub or push hard. That is a sure situation for developing more damp. Now, with water or any other solvent that you might be using, in some situations you might be using alcohol, you want to always test it. In an unobtrusive spot, you want to consistently watch, constantly watch for color being removed. If any color or something you think that should not be coming off is, then stop immediately. For surface damage, watch for softening, spend time looking for cracks or any movement in the object. Again, always test. This slide is mainly for emphasis. Now, we oftentimes have to clean plexiglass or glass, depending on what your cases are made out of if you have cases. You always want to dust first to remove the majority of the loose dust. You don't want to be scratching that dust along the surface of your glass or you plexiglass. Always, always spray the cloth, not the glass. If you spray the glass, the solution can dribble down and get into and underneath the edge of the glass. It could affect your objects that are inside the case. Always spray your cloth and have dry cloths that you can use to dry and buff the surface. Also, stick to one cleaner. Turns out that all the plexiglass cleaners, they all have slightly different compositions. They all work, but they have different compositions. Sometimes, because there's always a little bit left on the surface, if you use one plexiglass cleaner one week and another is on sale the next week, so you pick that up, you're going to end up getting a gooey mess. The chemicals will start interacting and it will cloud, literally cloud your plexiglass. The other thing is, do not ever, ever, ever use ammonia on plexi. Ammonia helps clean glass, but it chemically interacts with the plexiglass, totally different material, and will cause the plex to crave. After a while, you will begin to see these little spider-line webs of cracks in the surface of the plexiglass. You don't want to do that. If you are using an ammonia-based glass cleaner, make sure you're using it only on glass, not on plexiglass. One thing that works well on both glass and plexi is the 50% water, 50% alcohol. When you're inside of the case, if at all possible, you want to remove all the objects. It isn't always possible, but if you can do it. Then you dust, then you spray your cloth and clean the interiors. If you're not removing your objects, very carefully either dust or vacuum around them. Now, one nice little trick is to use painter's tape. If you've got like a fabric surface and there's lint on it, you can use a painter's tape to pull up the lint or the dust. I know you've all been waiting for this. Metals are very, very problematic. First of all, when you are cleaning metals, you are actually removing the top layer of the metal. If you're dealing with silver and you want to get rid of the tarnish, the tarnish is actually the outer layer of the metal that has oxidized and interacted with oxygen or other pollutants, and that is what causes the dark tarnish. As you are cleaning that, you are actually removing silver and you're opening the silver up to a fresh layer or a fresh option of oxidizing. So, polishing silver can be very damaging. And in particular, if you have silver plate, and I know someone mentioned in their collection, they're dealing with, I'm not sure if it was normally, but it was gilt material. Oftentimes, what silver plate or gilt does is they have the object underneath the outer coating of silver or gold or whatever is a base metal. It might be copper or brass. It could be lead. It could be any number of things that are cheaper metal, and they put the silver or the gold on top of it. Well, when you are polishing, you have a good chance of removing the gilt or the silver surface. Promise not to get too much into the chemistry of all this, but on the last, you see corrosion. There are, this is various kinds of pollutants that have interacted with metal coin. And I can tell you that there's copper in this because that's why that is green. The copper has interacted with oxygen, moisture, and probably other pollutants to cause that color green, and it actually can obscure the piece. It's literally, the chemicals are interacting with the metal and eating into it, destroying it. That piece also looks like it has a material called bronze disease, which is salt borides combined with the copper, and it's totally destructive. It's like rust. Once it gets going, you're going to have a hard time stopping it. Petina, on the other hand, is the surface coating that actually protects the object from other kinds of damage. And notice there are a number of you that are from art museums. You will experience this, especially when you're using bronze objects or other kinds of sculptures. But Petina can be natural or can be intentionally added with a lot of modern bronzes. They've done a patination, and that patination actually protects the metal that's underneath. You can look at tarnish as sort of a natural patina. Tarnish basically provides a coating on that silver and prevents some of the worst chemicals that are going to really corrode the silver. You attack it. So you need to be very careful. You want, when it comes to this level, you want to talk to a conservator. You do not want to take off anything that's going to cause that object to further deteriorate. I once worked with a bronze bowl that the only thing left, there was no pure copper left in that bowl. There's no metal. It was all the carbonate corrosion byproduct. The only reason we could see some of the design on it was because it was actually captured in the carbonate corrosion. There wasn't a whole lot we could do with that, but at least we still had it. So you have to be very careful. Now most coating products for silver or for most metals are either abrasives or a combination of liquid and abrasion. So here I ran some tests on some metals, just running, using whatever metal cleaning chemicals I could find on the off the shelf, off the grocery store shelf. So the metal, you can see those scratches on that metal. That was done, I bought some silverware and silver plates from an antique store, a junk store, and just ran tests on them. That scratching is from using a metal polish that contains both abrasives that contain the abrasives suspended in a paste. Like I said, this came right off the grocery store shelf. It removed both the corrosion and the patina and it left scratches on the surface. Probably could have done it without making the surface scratch, but like I said, I was running a test to see what would happen. On these, I used, these are identical spoons. And we used, I used a silver dip, again, tarnix or something along that line. And just to see what would happen, I didn't follow the instructions on the dip for most of them. And so the one on the top I left in for 48 hours, ooh, sorry, there's a typo there. The other one I left in for 12 hours. And the last one I dipped it and wiped it down and rinsed it off according to the direction. The silver actually got eaten up by the solution, the tarnix. It can literally weaken the structure and did all sorts of things chemically, really bad things through the piece. The top one, I bent it after I actually just took it in my hands and bent it, which is fairly hard to do with silver like this. You may have run into white crusty stuff in the crevices of your silver. This, basically that's polished residue. And if you leave it there, it can actually continue to eat in and abrade in through the silver. Now, it's still useful. If you took alcohol to clean it off and with a Q-tip sort of brush, sort of polish it off, you could remove most of that as well as polish your silver. Always test whatever you do to see how much it might work or how much damage it'll cause. Now, this silver spoon, again, I bought in my run to the antique junk store. So it's been treated badly for many, many years. So I didn't cause the scratches on that one. But what I did was I took a little bit of alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, rubbing alcohol, and just did a little bit of a spot to see how much I could clean off. And it worked. And so then I cleaned the whole thing. We want to avoid silver dips if possible. There are times when silver dips or metal dips are appropriate, but I advise you check with a conservator before you ever do that. Remember that abrasives scratch, and most of the paste or abrasives that you purchase are just that. They scratch the surface. So you want to test your methods to find out which is the least reactive. In cleaning silver, I think that's the last silver. Yeah, no, here. In cleaning silver, please research before you do anything. There is a Connecting to Collections Care webinar that's free that talks about cleaning silver. Go check that out. Also check out conservograms and some of the other resources that I've listed in your resources that will provide you with some direction. If you must clean, use alcohol, isopropyl alcohol. The stuff you commonly get is 70% on a cotton swab. That is probably the mildest thing you can do. You've got a little bit of the abrasive action with the cotton swab and the solvent action with the alcohol. You can also improve the look of your silver, especially once it's been cleaned once, by storing it in corrosion intercept, which is a coppery-looking plastic that you can get at conservation storehouses like university products, or silver cloth. Both of those products do is absorb the contaminants that are getting at your silver and making a tarnish. If you've ever seen a silver chest that has this dark cloth lining the silver chest, that is silver cloth. It will protect your silver from getting damaged. Before you go into cleaning anything, please remember to examine your object first. Look for frailties. If it's a wooden chest, look for slivers coming up or cracks. Look for paint or coatings that are cracked or lifted. You don't want to catch those and increase the damage. You want to be aware of your space. If you're using a vacuum cleaner, you're going to have a cord that comes along with it. You want to make sure that the cord doesn't get entangled in anything. Pest your cleaning method. Use a gentle touch. Keep the equipment clean, the equipment and the tools. And always, always call a conservator if in doubt. I haven't talked much about painting or frames. You can use a soft brush or a soft duster, going very lightly over the surface of the painting, as long as there aren't any paint chips coming up, as long as there's no lifting paint. You can do the same with even very ornate frames. But with the most ornate frames, or if it's painted or gilt, be very aware that your plombs or your brushes can catch on fragile parts. That's why you have to look very carefully before you start cleaning. Cleaning is actually a treatment. You're removing something that you don't want on the object from the object. There's no way that every museum can have a conservator do their cleaning. But if you can get practice at getting more aware of your objects and of what you are doing with them, you can clean safely and carefully. So, now what? Gather your tools. Put together a tool kit that makes sense for your institution. Be gentle. Manage your space. Work carefully. Observe what you're doing. And clean all of your tools that are done. Don't forget, you've got three levels at which you can reduce the amount of dust and dirt coming into your building. You can do it at the building level. You can do it at the local level. And you can use your procedures. They all affect the object. Your building, your procedures is the larger bit, but your building is the first line of defense. The feature building in good shape. Some of you have historic houses or historic structures. That is actually your largest object. Not just the furniture, the historic furniture that's inside. Remember your 10 agents and the actions that you can take. And I want to thank a whole bunch of people again. I use a lot of photographs and a lot of people who are my interns or assistants that end up being photographed. And all of... Oh, my. I don't know why that went strange, but it did. So... Did you put your... Yeah, they'll come up next. But do you want to answer questions before you talk about these? Sure. Sure. So the first question is from me. And what methods do you recommend for cleaning microfiber dusters? The microfiber dusters? Oh, my. We're getting echoed. Yeah, that's because of me. Oh, that's okay. I can accept that. Okay. Most microfiber dusters have removable heads. If they can be removed, wash them in the washing machine. Now, you're not going to use distilled water. That's impractical. But wash them along with the microfiber or cotton cloth. Like I said, use less soap than you would normally use because you want to make sure that all the soap is washed out of the fabric. Also run it through an extra rinse. If the microfiber cloth... Or the microfiber duster does not have a removable head, then vacuum it very, very well. Same as you would do with a wool duster. The synthetic dusters can be washed. Just wash them in the sink and clean them out, get rid of the majority of the dirt or dust. Does that answer? So Sharon Corey says, should you use only wool picks? No, thank you for mentioning that. My recommendation is Orvis. Wool picks is pretty aggressive. So I would use Orvis, which you can get in bulk. This will sound very funny, but I try and buy mine at a savagery shop that looks to get self-material to people who are into horses. Orvis is basic detergent that is used in most shampoos, and it's very mild. I also buy it through conservation warehouses, like University Products or Gaylord. It's more expensive that way, but you can check with your local salary and see if they carry it. They use it to wash horses. It's concentrated. You only need a little bit. A little bit goes a long, long way. When I'm wasting dust claws and things like that, I will use a commercial detergent that doesn't have any dye in it or scent, something like Armand Hammer that has no scent or is hypoallergetic, because that's actually what will react if anybody like me has skin issues with soaps. In fabrics, sometimes the soap does not get washed out. Nothing does not get rinsed out or the detergent doesn't get rinsed out, and it can cause rashes. Not fun. So always use stuff that's happy. Are we ready for the next question? Yes. Okay. The next question from Lexi Echelman is, what type of alcohol solution can you use to clean plexiglass? Either ethanol or isopropyl, both of which can be got at a hardware store. It's not the purest, but it's affordable, and it's better than some of the pre-made cleaners. So along the same lines, Michael Hoskins says, what percentage of alcohol do you purchase? I've seen it for sale from 70 to 90% in the bottle. Does it matter? Yeah. Good question. I've used either. If you're using 70%, you might want to put a little more of the alcohol in the water. It doesn't have to be exactly 50%. I prefer 90% because then it is closer to a 50-50. You know more what you have. But yeah, either way. There are things that I'm very particular about and some things less so, okay? Katie Montgomery says, should water be used to clean marble? Yeah, we almost have to. Again, I would use as minimal amount of water as possible, and think in terms of using, if you want to add a surfactant, a detergent to it, you can add a little bit of soap or detergent to help break down the bond between the dirt and the marble. But always start with dusting. See, if dusting doesn't, if dusting doesn't, then you can use a little bit of water on a microfiber cloth. You can use, this is where the Mr. Clean Eraser comes in. Mr. Clean Eraser is somewhat abrasive, but sometimes you need a little bit of abrasion. And use it just with water to see if that takes it up. You start with the most gentle method, the least invasive method for, see if that works, if it doesn't work, or if it only works halfway, you go to the next step. So just be reasonable and rational and never leave any water behind. So you want to mop up, you want to dry up everything. Okay, Rita B. Terry says, do you add soap to distilled water to break the tension as well? No, I would not at first. When you're cleaning with, say, distilled water and a cloth or a makeup sponge, again, you're working with a combination of water and abrasion. So you've got a mild solvent and a little bit of rubbing. Start with that. Don't add soap unless you absolutely have to. So soap and detergents will leave a residue and that will actually attract more dirt. Does that answer it? The last, Alexi Echelman said, is Orvis soap for historic slash collections cleaning or custodial use? I didn't understand. Oh, yeah. That would be for historical. I recommend you go as, for your custodial, you go as green as possible. Be careful of the chemicals that have an orange or citrus smell. Those are actually carcinogenic. They're not as benign as industry would like us to believe. They may be less rough than some of the more intense chemicals that might be used in restrooms or kitchens. It's a hard balance to reach. But yeah, I would say Orvis, you want to use for your historic collections. If you're using any soap at all. Before we go off to the assignment number two, I would like you to say something about Dawn dishwashing detergent because I see it coming up in a lot of recommendations for general cleaning but also for in the discussions on the small museum, the listserv. And so I'd love to have your comment about that. And then when you finish that, just start with the assignment. I'm going to mute myself again. Okay. Dawn is pre-mild. I would not use any that is colored. I know you can get it colorless. I prefer Orvis because then you have control over how much actual soap there is. Yeah, in general, when you're talking about detergent in relationship to collections, I would avoid anything that has dyes in it or has scents because then you know for sure they're additive. Also, if you're using commercial, like a commercial Dawn, you can minimize your use. So if you've got a gallon of water, put one drop of Dawn in it and that might do the trick. One of the things you could do is experiment with it yourself and see how it disperses. And actually, that leads us into the assignment because my assignment this time is experimenting with some materials. I prefer people not to use Dawn, but if you follow what I'm saying and don't use the blue or the green, I think it comes in green, use the clear and the unscented. You can do it, but don't use a lot. You're better off with Orvis. Okay, so the assignment. So we're going to do some material testing assignments. Now, I can't emphasize this enough. You do not want to use a museum object. Use only sample materials. So in the first experiment, I want you to experience what abrasion does to different types of materials. And I have suggested that you use a series of... The samples include a blank piece of paper, a coated piece of paper, which is like out of a magazine. It's the shiny stuff. Wood, it can be either finished or not finished. And a piece of metal. This is old silverware, old tinfoil, a piece of iron. It doesn't matter. And the tools are different kinds of erasers, a cotton swab, a synthetic scrubber, you know, those green things, and a fine piece of sandpaper or steel wool. Now, what I want you to do is see what it takes to damage the material that you gathered. How much pressure does it take? Observe the different ways... the different... what the different tools that you're going to use do. So the... I don't want to give it away, but there are differences in the different materials. Obviously an eraser is going to be different than a piece of sandpaper. But I want you to see what causes damage and how it is caused. And I guess I have a question for you, Susan. I've sent some exercise templates. Yeah, the handy-dandy templates are in the handouts. And a very long discussion of what Gretchen wants you to do is in the assignment. Okay. And there's a chart there and all that, but the form that you can use to fill in your results, those are in the handouts. And then just upload them to the assignment by square... you upload your assignment. Okay, I'm going to mute myself again. Okay, thank you. So I just... what I want you to do is get a feeling for, first of all, what causes damage. And secondly, to get used to doing some testing before you actually go ahead and do your cleaning. So you can get a better feel for this. I mean, it takes longer the first time because you've never done it. But when you go into a room, you're cleaning, you need to clean the historic furniture that's out there. What can you do? What can you... what do you need to look for before you start cleaning? So the next one is solubility. So what happens to things when they get wet? The image is actually of an experiment that I will do in the public view. I take one of those French sponges, you know, those little tiny flat sponges, and I put it in 10 milliliters of dyed water and we watch it grow. And within a couple of minutes it expands and then I have another piece that I have squeezed out and let dry to show that once something absorbs a lot of water, it is never going to go back to the same spot it was before. I like people to think about this when they are cleaning because if you are using water, particularly if it's a porous material, you want to be careful because you can cause that piece of wood to swell or that paper or fabric. A totally interesting little conservation aside, if you have a textile like a rug that has a cotton work, so the threads along one side, the yarns along one side are cotton, and the wet, which is the part that weaves in and out, is wool. Every time you wash that, you are damaging the wool because cotton gets stronger when it is wet and wool gets weaker. And so it ends up, the cotton works, end up acting like a saw right through the wool yarn. So you have to be very, very careful with water or any liquid. So here the goal is to, again, identify the potential hazards. You want to test efficacy and safety and you want to learn how to document the damage. The more you go through your museum and make sure you have a note pad with you or an iPad or something, then make a note as to where you are seeing the dust accumulate. You will learn a lot about where the dust is moving. Okay. And again, there is also a chart, a form that you can fill it out. And I want you to do it with both water and alcohol. Okay. So I think we are done for today, right? Yeah. Okay. And just remember, please put your names on your assignments and you can just attach them. And if you have trouble doing that, let me know and I will figure out what I can do to take care of it. And next week we are going to have Tara Kennedy. She is going to talk about mold and housekeeping when you have mold and how to avoid it. And Gretchen will be here too.