 Hi everyone. I want to welcome you to today's session. It's going to be really interesting. I just want to go over a few things. If you have questions, you can always post them in the C2C Care Online Forum. You need to register for that, but it doesn't cost you anything. There are people there that will answer questions almost immediately. You can see all the past webinars since 2010 in the archives. If you want to find out webinars that have tiny bits about a particular subject, you can use the Google search function. That will find them for you. You can always contact me. This is my email address. We also have the website. We have a Facebook page and we have Twitter. Coming up next month, we're going to do something on crowdsourcing, which should be really interesting. I don't know much about it myself, so I'm interested to learn. Then we're going to have something about collections care training for small museums, how you should set it up for yourself. I want to remind you if you have questions, put them in the questions comment box and I will catch them. We'll make sure that they get answered if they're not answered in today's session before we have to end. They can be answered in writing and I'll post them along with the recording. The recordings usually get posted about a couple of days afterwards. I post any handouts. I post the PowerPoint slides. All of that's available to you. We'll start. We have Tony Kaiser and Paul Storage. I'll let them introduce themselves. Here we go. Thank you everyone so much for coming today. I'm trying to... This is Tony Kaiser. We're going to let the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. We have probably in our collection over 500 firearms that we keep track of and display as well as used for different behind the scenes tours as well. I can't advance the slides yet. I'm going to start with my presentation with some common questions that are related to firearms collecting. I base this a lot off of the questions that I get from donors, but also from other museum professionals about how my institution goes about collecting firearms. One of the first questions you have to ask yourself is, is it legal? With that, I'd like to put up the first poll and get a little feedback on if any of you have any questions about whether or not you have firearms, whose legal status you're unsure of. So there's two competing laws that you often have to keep in mind with when it comes to whether or not firearms are legal. First is National Law, NSA, or the National Firearms Act, and this governs all of us here in the United States. But then depending on what state you are in, you may have further state laws that regulate or stipulate what you can and cannot collect. So I would always recommend if you do have questions about firearms in your collection that you're unsure of their status, that you do contact a local ATF agent. I find that when it comes to museums and other institutions, the ATF is very, very helpful and very friendly when it comes to helping resolve issues with firearms. They often are very historically minded as well in the sense that they often want to preserve firearms versus cut them up, which is one of the legal requirements for firearms that are illegal, and I'll talk about that in just a second. So I'm going to concentrate on talking about the National Firearms Act because that is something that for those of us in the United States, we all have to adhere to. So here are some sort of go-tos for what the National Firearms Act regulates. Machine guns, yes. Rifles and pistols and shotguns, no, unless they're short barrels, and that's a concealment issue. I think most of us are probably going to be dealing in sporting weapons, so for most part your shotguns are going to be not regulated by the Firearms Act. Mortars and other destructive devices, this is things like flamethrowers, grenades, or even large cannons. If you think about the FWs that often have artillery pieces out front, these are regulated, and then silencers are regulated as well. So one thing to keep in mind, I'm going to talk a little bit more about machine guns since those are often the firearms that people will have a question about since rifles and pistols and shotguns aren't regulated as much. I am going to talk a little bit more about machine guns because this is what sort of crops up for us often. And I will say that just because it is regulated, it doesn't mean that it's illegal. Machine guns are legal to possess in the United States. The law just requires that they be registered. There were embassy periods throughout the United States where firearms, machine guns could be registered, and as long as they have the proper forms, it is still legal to possess, to transfer, to buy, to sell machine guns. And by machine gun, the definition for that of the ATF is that you can fire bullets continuously with one trigger pull. You think about a lot of rifles, their bolt action or single shot revolvers. Again, each trigger pull represents one bullet fired, and the big thing that ATF regulates are those weapons, machine guns, and submachine guns, which can fire continuously. If however you encounter a machine gun that is not registered, they also can still be transferred legally to government entities. So if you are a museum that is part of a county, state, or federal entity, you can also acquire those unregistered machine guns. For registered machine guns, you'll want to fill out a form called Form 4. And then for those non-registered machine guns, if you are a government entity, you'll want to fill out something called a Form 10. This is again where knowing a local ATF agent can be very, very helpful. They will make sure that you have the proper forms and also help you decipher the kind of form that you need and make sure that you are adhering to all of the laws that you need to. Both for the federal firearms act and for any state regulations that you make. Luckily, for a lot of us, since we collect older things, there is a designation for antique firearms, and these are items or guns made before 1898, and they are not regulated at all. So this, for instance, would be musket, splint locks, those types of older rifles where you think about powder warms and all that kind of stuff to be able to even fire. So a lot of us collecting older materials will have a lot of things in this category. And a second category that's very helpful for a lot of museums is a category of weapons called curio and relics. And these are considered firearms that are more than 50 years old or have a special interest. And so the ATF defines this as items that are novel, rare, bizarre, or because of their association with some historical figure, period or event, they can be collected a little bit more loosely than those firearms that fall into modern handguns or outside the antique realm as well. And so my second question is if anyone, if you want to put up a second poll, is if anyone has a C and R license for a curio and relics license? Tony, while people are filling out this survey, I'd like to know if it would be possible for you, please, to increase your input volume on your microphone. If you look up at the microphone icon at the top of your screen, click the little down arrow. You can scroll to adjust microphone volume. And if you could move that over a little bit over towards the right about three quarters, maybe a little bit more over, that should help. Okay, is that better? Oh, much better. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. All right, well, interesting. My institution does have a C in our license, but we obviously, with the nature of the items that we collect, do collect a significant amount of firearms. And it, I would suggest for those of you who have collections with lots of firearms, especially if you end up with things past 1898 that you do think about receiving a curio and relics license. It is a form of the federal firearms license, which really just makes it easier to collect things for your institution. And I'm sorry, I was a slide off, but yes, it does allow for easier transfer and shipping. And this again will come into what I'm actually going to talk about next, which is how you take possession. Once you've decided that a firearm that you're being offered is legal to possess and that you are legal to possess it as someone who has a curio and relics license. Now, what this also will do is if you happen to live in a state that has very restrictive gun laws or firearm laws, the curio and relics opens up the ability to possess these things as an institution that as a private individual you would not necessarily be able to do. So physical acceptance. I'm going to talk about this in two ways. First is in person and the second is by mail. So one of the things that we always try to do is require an appointment. And I say try because I happen to work in an institution where people show up often with all manner of things including firearms just for random donation. So I do try very hard though to make sure that people who are interested in donating firearm stuff have gone through some paper workouts beforehand so that we've established that it's legal and all that kind of thing and require them to come by appointment. Also remind them of no live ammunition. My institution as both through our fire marshal and through our insurance company does not let us collect any live ammunition and this also includes flares that would be you think about safety flare guns, no flares either. In an instance where live ammunition does come into the collection, we utilize our local police department to dispose of it for us. Especially with older ammunition, it is not usually and would not recommend firing it for private use or anything like that. Also remind people to make sure that the weapons that they're bringing in are not loaded. This is a safety issue of course. And then also be aware of your surroundings, be conscientious of those around you. Some people especially in this day and age where active shooter is something that we talk about really regularly. You want to make sure that your other security, your security personnel, other staff in the institution or even visitors who may see a firearm coming in the door or at a desk are aware of what's happening and feel safe even in the presence of a firearm. And then for the other thing that I'll mention for physical acceptance is to ensure that you have the proper staff on hand to make sure that the weapon is cleared. So as a curator, if you're the person or collections person, if you're accepting it, hopefully you feel as though you have the skill set to ensure that the firearm is not loaded. But if not, that's the great thing about requiring an appointment is that you can make sure that the right security staff or curatorial staff is on hand to ensure that you're not bringing in a loaded weapon. So when you're thinking about accepting things by mail, there are four factors to consider. First is who is sending the gun. And there are lots of different scenarios of this and you can read some of this more of this online, but I'm going to concentrate on a couple of things that I think are going to be most particular to those of us in museum. So first, who is sending the gun? This is usually going to be a private individual to a licensed collector and this is where having a CNR is very helpful. And having that CNR means that you've already been sort of pre-approved to possess it. You don't have to go through extra steps with the ATF to have it in your collection or in your care. And then who is receiving the gun? If you are accepting a machine gun, depending on your local law, you may have to go through a licensed FFL dealer, a federal firearms licensed dealer. And this is just another insurance check through the ATF that the weapon is legal to possess and that the person it is going to or entity that it's going to is able to have it in its possession. So most often run into needing to work with an FFL dealer when you're dealing with guns that are being transferred across state lines. The second set of factors is what kind of gun is it. Antique gun, you're in the clear. You don't have to worry about firearms licenses, whether or not you have a CNR. Shipping of these is really quite easy since they're not regulated at all. If you have a handgun, this is going to usually fall on something that has your CNR license. In-state versus out-of-state will often make a difference. If a firearm is crossing state lines, you will likely need to ensure that the person has bringing it to you or mailing it to you as the proper paperwork. We often provide a copy of our CNR license to people who are mailing us weapons. But we do that for both in-state and out-of-state and, again, knowing state law is going to be really helpful as to whether or not they are able to mail it to you out of their state or into the state depending on where you're located. Modern guns, this is where it's a little bit harder to do and I would just, again, state law being important. And if you ever have a question, you should feel free to contact your ATF agent as well as the Federal Firearms Act itself and your state law. One thing is that the method of shipment is often quite easy in considering it. For antique guns, you can use a lot of common carriers like FedEx or UPS. The United States Postal Service will ship firearms. There are some hoops to jump through, though, to make sure that these things can happen safely. And my suggestion is if you are the person shipping, to make sure that you know the carrier's regulations better than the person at the counter that you're going to meet, because it's likely that they won't be doing this very often, and so you'll want to make sure that you go with a printout or with some information about what FedEx's regulations are or the Postal Service regulations are so that you can be informed and give them good information about what you're doing as well. I would also recommend that you do fully disclose. I have had instances where people have thought it too difficult and decided not to disclose what was in the package. And that is a bad path to go down, because if something were to happen, you certainly wouldn't be eligible for an insurance on the shipment, but then you've also created a bigger problem with now there is sort of a lost firearm out there circulating around as well. And like with a lot of other packages or a lot of artifacts that we're shipping, those of us in collections care will know that there are certain things that we know that we do. We want to make sure that our packages are insured to the full insurance value of the firearms. We want to make sure that you declare the contents. Requiring signatures is also very important, and then trying to ensure that they are packed like you would any other artifact. When this is incoming, this is a little bit harder to do, but you can always give suggestions for how a particular firearm could be packed so that people have an understanding of what some of the issues might be, especially if it's heavy bubble wrap and packing peanuts and all that kind of stuff that we're very familiar with. You want to give some guidance to those donors who are sending you items. Another precaution that some institutions take, including mine, is to ask people to actually separate parts of the gun and ship them in separate packages. So often for firearms, we talk about the receiver on modern guns and probably stuff made in the last, certainly machine guns and stuff made in the last hundred years or so, to separate the receiver from the rest of the firearm itself and to ship them in two separate packages with copies of the CNR in both boxes. And if something were to happen, this does give a little bit of insurance that if something were to get lost, no one is getting a whole or complete gun, there's also the risk that, again, you've lost part of the gun and not the other. But when it comes to firearms, our methodology is that we do like those to usually come to us in two packages, unless for some reason, based on the type of gun that it is, that it's not possible to take it apart in that way. I've included some links here that are helpful that you can send to donors or that you can use for yourself when you're thinking about shipping firearms to and from. They are also in the handout that's downloadable on that bottom left-hand side of your screen as well. Another thing that we often think quite a bit about is that once the firearm is in our possession, how do we take care of it from there? So storage being the first place that most of our firearms go, there are specialized storage cabinets out there for long arms, as well as for pistols and other heavier machine guns. Interestingly enough, a lot of firearms like agencies like the ATF or the police departments use similar type cabinets. They're often the same sort of powder coated steel cabinets that we use, that museums use in storage spaces as well. So you could, depending on the size of your collection, firearms have specialized storage cabinets installed. The other thing is if they are in a controlled space within your storage area, for those people who have lots and lots of firearms in their collection, you may very well end up with thousands of weapons. I've been to arsenals where they do have literally thousands of weapons and they have entire rooms that are controlled for access as far as firearm storage goes. And then finally, access. I'll talk a little bit more about this in a minute too, but you would do any to think about who has access to the space, who has access to the cabinet, and that kind of thing when you're thinking about where to store your weapon. When firearms are on display, I did include a large weapons case in our Road to Tokyo exhibition here on this slide, and you can see that we use some pretty standard mounting techniques. One of the things that we try to do is to ensure that these cabinets have an extra layer of security. We work with our mount makers and our case fabricators to make sure that these cases would be essentially much harder to break into in some instances so that you don't necessarily see where the seams or the way the locks are, and that kind of thing as well. We also try very hard to make any firearm that's on display inoperable in some way, and most commonly that means that we remove the firing pin. Some firearms, depending on how they're made, removing the firing pin makes it so that the assembly, the bolt assembly won't stay together, and so we will plug barrels or use other methodologies to ensure that no weapon on display is fireable. That is one of the things that we think of as a safety precaution since this is the stuff that people will see and will know that we have if somebody were interested in stealing a gun or doing something nefarious, they would not be able to get a functional weapon. Handling also is I think very much like any other artifact, but with firearms we recommend that you always treat them as loaded. We will be sure in most instances that they are not because we've checked them before they entered our collection, but I think as a general rule you should always treat firearms as if they are loaded, point them away from you, point them away from people, and when moving them be very conscientious and conscious of your surroundings so that you're not inadvertently pointing at someone as well. Certainly wear gloves. The finishes on many of the steel elements of firearms is just as sensitive as any fancy silver tray that we might have in our collections as well, and so we want to make sure that you're wearing gloves, especially with some of the heavier guns, the grippy gloves are great. A lot of us, I like to wear just the purple nitrile gloves for a lot of the firearms in our collections as well. The other part of that is that since a lot of firearms are going to be, especially when first received, oily or dirty, some of that kind of thing, they'll help protect you as well from those elements within the firearm itself. And then finally, when handling, be careful about working the actions. There's sort of some back and forth about wear and tear on the actions of firearms, and we try really hard not to work them unless absolutely necessary. There's a certain bit of keeping them loose and work and functional in that sense, so they don't lock up entirely, but we also want to create as little wear and tear on them as possible. And for security, this is something that each institution is going to have to sort of address in and of itself, because where you are located, the way your staffing is, how your firearms are stored are going to be some things that are unique to each institution. So some questions for your own security. Where are they stored? How are they stored? Who has access to them? And then finally, how are the movements monitored? Is it more secure or more heavily monitored than other items in your collection? Does it require two people if it's leaving exhibition or leaving your storage area itself or even within storage, say from one cabinet to another? Is this the kind of thing where you always want to make sure that you have two people? And depending on your staffing and on how your collection is accessed, overall you'll kind of have to sort of develop a policy to ensure that security is taken into account as well. So access, it's certainly important within your own staff, your collection staff, but then also if you have your own security team or contracted security team, who has access and who does not have access to firearms? And then you may also want to designate times that firearms are not to be accessed. For instance, if you are working on in your exhibition areas, you may decide that since that case has firearms in it, you're not going to do it until after hours or you may only want to do it when you have security personnel there, which might be during working hours and again different for each institution. And then very importantly, you should designate what happens in an emergency. I think that some of us forget, you know, we sort of lump firearms in with the rest of our collections, but they might be a part of our collection that needs a special call out to talk about what would happen in the case of an emergency if there's a fire, if there's a flood, if you're evacuating for a hurricane, where you might do differently with your firearms so that you feel as though they are safe and the safety and security of your staff is also taken into account. Then finally, inventory is also a key part of physical control for your firearms. You may be required by your state to establish a firearms register so that a deal of your local ATF agent could come at any important time and look at your register and make sure that your firearms are where they say they are. So a lot of databases, depending on the database that you use, I'm going to show you a screenshot in a minute from our database, allows us to run reports pretty any day, any time, really, about where firearms are, how many in our collection, and if any of them have been moved recently. The other thing that we do is we have a regular inventory of firearms, 100% serial number checked firearm inventory. I would suggest this if you have a lot of firearms in your collection or even just a few that you do conduct a regular annual or semi-annual inventory. I have also worked with institutions that do them quarterly, which is a lot. Depending on how many you have, this might be burdensome, but you should certainly try to do it annually as well. Do random spot checks. One of the things that I like to do is if I've placed a new weapon in the collection and I'm putting it in storage, I'll often spot check that shelf or that drawer to ensure that everything that's supposed to be in there is accounted for. And it's a good way for your regular inventory to make sure that when it comes up to that annual time, that semi-annual time, that you don't end up with a lot of issues that happened a long time ago and then nobody can remember who moved it or when or any of that kind of stuff. So I think random spot checks are excellent as well. And then I would always recommend for inventory that you have a witness, those of us who've done large inventory projects, having a second set of eyes is always very helpful, but it also means that there's some accountability along the way for those of us who did the inventory that everything was on the up and up as well. And then this last screen that I'm going to show you, it's a little bit hard to see, I'm sorry, but I just wanted to give you a sense of one of the ways that we use our database is to show both the current location and the storage location of a particular firearm. So for us, our current location is often if it's on exhibition. So for instance, you'll see a lot of M1 Garand rifles show up in the top part of that screen and you'll see that they have both current location and storage location or for some of them if they've been on display for a while, they'll just have that current location as on exhibit. So this is also a great tool to be able to help manage your inventory. This database is fairly new for my institution, so I was really excited to be able to use it to do my firearms inventory instead of fighting a Word document that someone had made a long time ago. And I will now turn it over to Paul, who's going to talk to you a little bit more about payer for firearms now that they are in your physical control. Here you go, Paul. Thanks, Tony. Is my level okay? All right. Okay, good. I'm currently the site's collections and exhibits liaison for the Minnesota Historical Society. And my current position, I deal with firearms on display at various sites. We have two-fourths in our 26 site network. And the bulk of our firearms collection are here in storage at the Minnesota History Center. Excuse me. I did get my majority of experience with firearms years ago when I was the associate conservator at Texas Memorial Museum. And that's really when I became familiar with it. I'll get into how that happened in a little bit. I want to give an overview of concepts that relate to firearms. And their overall care and management. Firearms are composite objects, so I'll be talking about that. So the definition of that is they're composed of both organic and inorganic materials, usually in pretty close proximity, either in the same object or actually touching. So that could create some condition problems that are unique to firearms and composite objects, in that you have wood and metal in close contact that have different kinds of materials, have different environmental requirements. Weather, for example, leather has oils which can turn acidic over time and corrode the metal. And once you get the metal corrosion that furthers deterioration of the weather, similar with wood. And then to further complicate that, you can have problems from what were put on the objects through well-meaning preservation, cleaning during use, using degreaser or proprietary materials to clean firearms and sometimes fairly acidic. Also oils, and I'll get to that later on as well, but the whole idea of oiling firearms for preservation can cause problems. Some other terminology, preventative conservation, that's really what I want to talk about. Today is the more modern museum standard of, it's a holistic approach to where we're controlling the environment, controlling temperature and humidity, light, pest management is also part of that. So it impacts all your collections, not just firearms but there are certain things specific to firearms as well. And I'll get into the specifics of that later on in the presentation. Restoration is what collectors, antique dealers, sometimes museums will follow. It's really returning objects to an original appearance and form. It doesn't always respect the integrity of the object or the historic integrity as well. Restores can replace broken or missing components, mending pieces to conceal the brakes completely. And a lot of times it may actually erase damage that is historic, that is documentation. In other words, of the use and history of the object, particularly with military weapons if it was damaged during use or in a historic battle, you definitely don't want to mend that type of break. A lot of times with historic pieces, the owner will have carved something into the stock. In other words, their initials or something else, you wouldn't want to see that as damage and fix that. Conservation, again, is a more modern, holistic approach of minimal intervention, minimal treatment. It's really the goal for stabilization to prevent any further damage. Within conservation approach, you can use restoration in a limited way of replacing or fixing some parts. Conservators always default to the curator. The curator or the person who has overall responsibility for the collection is the one who makes the final decision on how far to go with any type of treatment. So always defer to the curator before any kind of work is done. They look at a treatment proposal, you do an assessment. I'll talk about that. A written proposal, discussion, explain what the outcomes would be, and then the curator has the final say on that. Within the conservation approach, we try to adhere to principles of, well, it originally was formed as reversibility, but over the years through research and practice, a more practical application is retreatability. So within conservation, we try to do any type, any kind of intervention or material that's used in treatment that will not be completely untreatable. Now, again, it's somewhat complicated. There are some cases where you would use an epoxy, which are filler or adhesives that are fairly difficult to reverse, but it's how those are applied that would allow you to do some retreatability. So you wouldn't want to completely seal something, seal a firearm, a stock, for example, that would prevent you from doing anything further to it in the future. Again, with materials that you use for cleaning, for limited coating, you want to make sure that those materials are compatible with the object materials that aren't going to cause any further damage. So any kind of waxes or other types of coating, if you have to use a filler, and particularly mounting materials, mounting and storage materials as Tony touched on, those need to be chemically stable, physically stable, that cause any damage to the object by themselves breaking down. Now, a few other things, which she also touched on too, is working order in terms of managing and conserving firearms. Working order would be where all the mechanisms function properly. So as we'll see in the slides further on when I get into 18th and 19th century, which is particularly my area of experience and what I'm really relating all this to, it also is applicable to more modern ones, but I think the best examples, because they're fairly simple, is to look at percussion lock and flint lock mechanisms. So to get a piece into working order would be that all the screws are in place, the springs are there, and it functions. Firing order is something that in museums and conservation, you do not fire antique pieces. The danger with that is that the metal on the barrels could be stressed, and it would change the documentation of the information inherent in the object to do that. So it's not necessary to conserve or restore an object to the point where it's a firing order. If you need to do a demonstration or anything like that, there are replicas that are available, and that's what we use at our historic sites. We never allow interpreters to use any of the collections weapons for that purpose. A few more things we're moving on is patina versus corrosion. I always refer to patina or patination as a deliberate coloration of metal. You know that it goes against some territorial definitions where it's much broader, where people use it to refer to the surface appearance of even wood, ivory, other things that have aged over time and acquired a patina or patina of age. I use a much more focused specific definition of where it's a deliberate coloration as in sculpture on a bronze sculpture where you get either a single coloration after it comes out of the foundry or say on a human figure, the face could be one color, the body and hair another. In firearms generally there's bluing and browning and there are different, there's cold processes and hot processes to do that. Patination is a deliberate corrosion process that actually protects the metal from atmospheric corrosion usually caused by moisture or contact with acids, either inorganic acids or body from touching handling. Tarnish and corrosion would be the mineral formation that can actually break through a deliberate patina and is usually somewhat disfiguring. Tarnish usually refers to a more compact oxidation layer like you get on silver. It's generally from atmospheric sulfur, sulfide, it's forming a copper sulfide. Corrosion is definition usually more uneven and when metal corrodes, what you get is it builds up on the surface and actually you get a, I think the best way to express this, as a corrosion builds up on the surface you get less metal, the metal actually goes into the corrosion layer so when you clean the corrosion off you can get pitting. So you have to be very careful about that. And then I touched on the difference between organic and unorganic. Organic would be wood, leather, anything originally from a living source that contains primarily carbon and inorganic would be metals in this case. Handling and assessment, so the first level of preservation and I tend to use the Canadian Conservation Institute scheme of the agents of deterioration. So disassociation is really their first main agent of deterioration that can act on collections in general. So that would be preserving your object information, provenance, date, anything related to when it came into the collection and its history before that. So it's essential to have everything cataloged and accessioned in order to manage it properly and really before you do any kind of preservation on it. Make sure that that is up to date and clear. The objects themselves should be labeled on each object. Generally with firearms somewhere on the stock to have a label. And in the handouts of tech talks, the biggest issue in part one is as far as updating the information on that would be talk about using pen and ink to label. We no longer do that. We use laser printed paper labels that you can adjust the font size, print it out and then cut out the label and use. Generally we use a water based acrylic medium as the adhesive and put a small spot down where you want the label, place the label on it, let that set and then put a clear coating over the top. And then also put a Manila tag on the piece as well, which allows you to handle it less when it's in storage. You can just easily access the tag. You don't have to pick up the object itself each time you need to look at and figure out which one it is. And then the tag would stay with the object. Once it's on exhibit, you take the tags off, save those till it goes back. And the tag can have storage location information on it, classification, whatever. Information needs to be associated with the object whereas the actual object label just has the accession number. I should mention we also use the same large database that Tony mentioned. And recommendations for handling. Let's go over this again. And talking primarily about muzzle loaders here, it's relatively easy to check with breech loaders and cartridge type weapons. Muzzle loaders are a little more complicated. And the Tech Talk Part 2 has detailed figures and an explanation of that. So it's a little hard in a webinar to go through that in a lot of detail. So just touch on it, but use a dowel or a gun rod that you mark and then insert down carefully. And then check that to where it ends, to how far it is from the actual touch hole or the back of the barrel. And compare that. And if you have more than around an inch distance, it's most likely you have a load in there. In that case, you want to consult a gunsmith for help with that, an experienced gunsmith. And set that aside and clearly mark it and restrict access. You don't want to try to remove that yourself. Black powder can be active for quite a long time. I've heard of cases where Civil War artillery shells have been found underwater and it turned out that the black powder, there was an air pocket and the black powder was still fairly dry and could still be explosive. So you might have that taken care of and any, same with any antique artillery shells or ammunition, have those disposed of either through the police department or local military ordnance unit. Usually really helpful, that's what we did in Texas several times. The local army base would take care of those things. If they could do it without exploding the historic object, that's good. Sometimes they can't do that, can't disarm it, return the object to you. In that case, then you have to go through the accession process so it gets out of the catalog. Then a systematic survey before you're going to do any actual intervention of work. The goal of that is to assess the overall condition of each firearm, the types of information you want to record, catalog number, the correct name that might take some research. If you have an older collection that came in a while back, things might be mislabeled as to the type that they are. The dates can be off sometimes. So you might want to do a little research on that. There's some really good books out there. There's one called Weapon by D&H Publishers. It's an excellent resource. There's also a lot, quite a bit online. Basically what you have, Google that, there's tons of resources, collectors' websites on that that go into history and typology and all. I'll also record any serial numbers or any other markings, manufacturers. Usually those are stamped in. Then an exterior examination, you look at metal parts for corrosion, any kind of residues, powder residue, organic, anything like that. The wood parts, you look for cracks, overall surface condition. Older firearms like Kentucky, Kentucky and Maryland, long rifles were usually in oil varnish coating, so look at the condition of that. You look for any mold. Sometimes you can get that near the lock mortise, the cut out area where the lock plate is, and then any insect damage. In some cases you can have termites that will get in and eat out channels in the wood, leaving the varnish layer intact. You don't really know until you look at it. We'll talk about partial disassembly. Also look at the interior of the barrel for corrosion and any kind of residue. You can use a good flashlight for that. Boroscope would be helpful if you've got that. Also, I'll refer back to the Tech Talk to use a cleaning rod with a cotton patch on it with a patch attachment. You can carefully insert that in and then you pull it out, see how dirty it is. Those bright red corrosion products on it will usually indicate that the barrels really involve with corrosion that could be somewhat active if it's a brighter red-orange color. Then partial disassembly that I'll get into with some illustrations a little bit later that will help you further assess condition. Here's a recommended scheme for ranking. If you have a relatively large collection, I've always found it helpful to use numerical rankings. It helps you quantify your project for proposal, for resources, for further work to use for grant purposes. Basically just organize the project. With basic condition, stable, there's really little or no corrosion breakage and structural problems. That would translate as far as a priority treatment recommendation. A low priority probably just surface cleaning. Rating two, stable, some previous corrosion observed, possible active. Again, it's a fairly low priority. Then three, stable with active corrosion in several areas. Usually around the breach, where the firing area, you'll have corrosion if powder was left in, which could be acidic or used powder remover. That generally has acid in it and the wood is fair to good. That would be a medium priority surface cleaning and then spot treating. Then the worst condition, number four, would be unstable. We've got active corrosion. The firearm was involved in a disaster where it became wet or burned. There's unstable structures, broken or loose parts that are not due to historic occurrence, but neglect or a disaster of some sort. That would be the highest priority. Generally in the large collections, over several hundred objects that I've dealt with in doing these surveys, it's usually a bell curve. Where your majority fall into two and three categories. Ratings, two and three with relatively few on the ones and fours. Here's a sample condition survey worksheet and you can customize this to however you'd like. I usually find it best to do this by hand. You can certainly do it on a laptop or tablet when you're in the storeroom going through the collection. Tony mentioned it's good to do this with two people. One person could do the observation while the other one does recording. Then you've also done your witnessing and security as well and use this as an inventory as part of that process. This includes the basic information and at the top it's got the summary rankings. I also, as a conservator, throw in estimated hours but that could be an optional thing for collections managers that's more for conservators use. And then broken out the various general components for more particular condition notes. And then at the bottom a short narrative. So this can be adapted however you find it most useful. And then getting into some examples of conditions. Fairly typical. Am I pointer to work here? There we go. So this is a loading rod for a muzzle loader pistol. And it's got typical steel, iron, fairly active corrosion here where some moisture has gotten in. This goes into a channel underneath the barrel so it's fairly exposed. And it's a personal object that I own so sorry to say but it wasn't stored in the best condition so it does serve as a good example here for what that type of corrosion looks like. This is an object from one of our museum collections that this is the barrel that's been removed from the stock. So this is the tang area and the breech plug. And you can see where some moisture has gotten in between the barrel and the stock and caused some surface corrosion here on top of the bluing. And then you're showing the touch hole and fairly typical corrosion where this level is where it's been contact with the wood. So it's held some moisture. Again, that's a good example of what happens with a composite object with the interactions of the different materials. And this shows some barrel that's been cleaned in the past and the appearance when you've cleaned off corrosion may be a little too aggressively. And you've got some pitting into the surface. This is a powder flask that's got a fairly thin surface patination on it, multi-color, showing some scratches here. Just from surface abrasion on the back. We know where it's probably been contact with the rough surface or from use. And the obverse of the front is in fairly good condition. The brass parts have become tarnished. This is what I refer to as tarnish where you get a darkening and you can see it down here. On the trigger guard as well. And there's also some evidence of corrosion from handling with ungloved hands from hand oils and salts. They're fairly typical. And then again, it would be a curatorial decision in terms of treatment of how far you want it. You wanted to take this if you want to preserve the tarn overall coloration, the aged appearance of it. You wouldn't use chemical cleaners to remove that or brightly polish it. In some cases, that may be what's desired. But that would be up to the curator for preventative conservation, preservation level. It would just be surface, light surface cleaning and possibly waxing. Here, you could see a little bit of green, which is most likely from a contact with the stock that may have had some oil in it. That's fairly typical copper corrosion. In this, showing some partial disassembly, you see the interior of the stock. In this case, it's in really good condition. Sometimes you can get corrosion products deposited in here, particularly at the back of the tang, which could also make this assembly a little tricky. Whereas the corrosion products will stick the metal to the woods, you want to be careful when removing that. Handling. With long arms, you want to be aware of the length of them, particularly if you're moving them in an upright cart, going through doorways. I know it sounds like common sense, but sometimes you're in a hurry. Not always aware of that, so it's like with handling any collections. Know your pathway, have enough people to help and spot. Always handle particularly with long arms. Use both hands when picking them up and laying them down. With external lock weapons like flint locks and percussion, when you lay them down, the lock should be facing up. Or use blocks to hold them upright or pad advise. Upright is for storage, long-term storage. It's best for that to support them at several points. It also forwards the best view without having to handle them, the tags are accessible, and it's also efficient in terms of space. I mentioned labeling before. Handguns find that best to have in padded drawers. And also to store out of the holsters and belts and make sure the leather is out of direct contact. As I mentioned, you get the oils from the leather that react with the metal, particularly brass. And create more foster corrosion. Well, in our practice, we do keep the holsters with the handguns in storage. So they don't become disassociated. It's a little easier to manage them in terms of collections management. Storage conditions has been shown by research in the conservation field and conservation science over the last 20 years that we no longer adhere to the flat line rules of 70 degrees, temperature now 50 degrees, humidity that most museum objects, even firearms, will become accommodated to more seasonal fluctuations, annual changes. But you want to avoid extremes of temperature or extremes of least relative humidity on both the high and the low end. Metals do better in lower relative humidity, 30 percent or so. However, that's not good for wood. So with a composite object, you want to accommodate the most sensitive. So generally 30, 35 percent in the winter to 50, 55 percent in the summer. When you approach 63, 65 percent relative humidity, that's when mold can grow or start to germinate. You generally want to avoid collection storage in a basement if all possible. If not, then dehumidifiers can be installed. And I definitely recommend monitoring with electronic monitors. There are some very affordable ones now in the archival catalogs. So in the resources, I have information on the Image Permanence Institute for the preservation environment monitors, PEM2s, which is what we use. There's also some now in university products that actually it's a flash drive monitor, a USB that monitors and records temperature and humidity, and it's very affordable. So there's a lot of different options for monitoring, and that helps you communicate the needs of the collections to modify the conditions if needed with your plant manager if you have one in your institution. Also to tell you if you need a dehumidifier. With light, that's more of an issue for display, and generally it's 150 lux, and we also go with the total exposure, which is in lux hours. So that would be your total time for a year. And finally, again, it's calibrated for the wood, so you don't get fading. Try to eliminate UV, but the lux hours are for visible light exposure. And it's also a good thing if you can do it to rotate your collections. So nothing is on display longer than a few years. There's also now technology where you can have visitor activated lights, and of course, you know, eliminate direct sunlight if at all possible. Again, mounts. Let's see, there are some questions about that. I recommend not having any kind of display mounts that extend into the barrel or around trigger guards. I've had to deal with that when doing surveys to get access to objects. And even if you take out the screws of the mounts, you know, get it off the wall, sometimes it could be damaging to pull something that's extended into a barrel. Out of it you get scratches on both the interior and exterior of the barrels. And there are some commercial mounts that people have used. I won't mention the manufacturer, but I would definitely avoid those. If you can at all do it, go with custom made plexi or padded wire mounts, where you use brass or steel rod, that could be custom bent to form hooks or fingers. That support the firearm at several, or even edge weapon at several places. And then you could pad that with archival shrink tubing. And there are a few archival suppliers that have that, such as Benchmark. But ease security and ease of removable would be the main principles. I just wanted to go over some storage examples. And Tony mentioned the powder coated cabinets. And that's what we use here at MNHS. And these are Delta design cabinets that we have in our storage area. And this is customized, one that holds both long arms and pistols. They're held in hinged doors, so you can get several layers. So it's very space efficient. And they are held at several points and then padded here at the bottom. And here are the labels. So we don't have to pick them up to find out the accession numbers. And just some close-ups here. And here it shows the pistols stored with the holsters as well. And then we use ethyl foam padding in the drawers. And just a detail of the stocks held to the doors with cotton tape. And some of the larger weapon machine guns that we have in another storage area on open shelving, which is the only way to store this type of thing. We do have some machine guns in larger Delta cabinets that are modified to hold something of that size. This one is rather large and heavy. So we've got it on a bottom shelf in another storage area and then empty artillery shells. And see that somebody was interested in edge weapons, so luckily I put these in. This was after I did a major rehousing project with our main collections manager with our edge weapons collection. Here we modified our shelving or drawer units to accommodate both the swords and the scabbards. And it looks pretty complex, but it was a fairly easy project to do. And I had the help of an intern, and it also allowed us to do inventory at the same time and update the catalog descriptions for some of these pieces. And see some of the leather scabbards in fairly rough shape. So this type of storage allows much better support, much less handling, and they don't rattle around in the drawers. Now, I'll speed it up a little bit. You can refer to the tech talks in more detail, but just to hit some of the high points here. Cleaning without disassembly, just use wipe with a dry lint-free cloth. I don't recommend any metal polishes or cleaners or wood polishes. Wood doesn't need to be fed, as a lot of the manufacturers will convince people. Wood polishes are really just mineral oil with some scent in it. It's best modifying or moderating the temperature and humidity to keep the wood in good condition. Gun cleaners, proprietary gun cleaner should be avoided. Oils, and this is a big one because a lot of gun collectors and antique dealers and antique gunsmiths will recommend oiling, and usually the oil goes over both the wood and the metal as a preservative that can give you a false sense of stabilization that oils can break down. You could be trapping moisture. It also makes handling difficult, and it can get onto your storage, furniture, and also damage other objects. I don't think that's a good practice and should be discontinued. Also, varnishes, I've worked on a few conserved pieces that had been this fire pistol set, including the accessories, had been coated with a cellulose nitrate, which turned everything a dark yellow amber color, and it obscured very intricate metal designs, Damascus patterns and very delicate patinas. Once that coating was taken off, both the metal and the wood, the firearms looked completely different and they looked as they had been intended by the manufacturer as a presentation piece. So avoid either spraying or brushing. Varnish is a preservative. This assembly, I think the most valuable thing is to, it's also a good volunteer opportunity. If you go to watch the upcoming webinar on recruiting volunteers, I think if you have a firearms collection, it's really good to use avid firearms collectors. We'll make it very clear that it's a trade, that they'll learn the museum and the conservation mindset and teach you how to deal with and work with firearms. That's how I really got my experience with it. I work with a great volunteer in Texas, and he learned the museum end of it and really appreciated that. He taught me the kind of source ship and history of firearms and how to assemble and disassemble them. If you're going to do any cleaning using some solvents, you want to have proper ventilation. I also exploded gun diagrams and I give a resource for that. Online free download. And then having basic tools. And again, Tech Talk 2 really goes into that. So I don't want to spend too much time. Just gives you an example of the types of things you need and what you're getting into. As far as basic treatments, you want to think about spot corrosion reduction, any kind of degreasing, basic cleaning of metal and wood components, interior barrel stabilization, and then some coating and waxing. This assembly also helps you document the interior parts and conditions for their intervention. An example of a muzzle loader that's been taken apart. And you can see I just did the major pieces that are held with screws. It's a little more involved to take out a trigger assembly. You need some punches so that's probably left for full treatment. Same thing with the lock here. The mainspring is still left and all the sears and tumblers are left in place. This is to show an example of a little more involved tool. That's a mainspring vise for pulling this out. And just a close-up of lock mechanism to show you what's involved there. And here are some resources you can look at. This Canadian Conservation Institute bulletin is very helpful. It goes in a little more detail than the Tech Talks. Current catalog. It's a good resource for particularly black powder, supplies, parts, and books. And then the Image Permanence Institute website that I mentioned that goes into really good detail and also has videos talking about storage environments and monitoring. Now can you hear me? Susan, yes, I can hear you now. Okay. All right. So we only have a few minutes left. So I'm going to ask Tony and Paul if they will write out answers to your questions and we'll make sure they all get answered. But there are a few questions that I think came up quite a bit. Yeah. And Tony's been answering some of them. So Tony, did you see anything that you thought should be answered right away? All right. Can you hear me? Am I still on? Yes, you are. Okay. Good. I think some of the ones that I have seen are more about cleaning, which probably Paul is better able to answer. But I would just suggest that you do a little bit of research on finishes or proper finishes for a weapon before you dive in and use any kind of a solvent or cleaner just like you would really with any other artifact. And there are some courses out there for this also. Is there Paul? Paul, you probably have a better answer to that for the cleaning. Yeah. I agree with that. And again, I touched on everything and still went over time. So as you can tell, it's really involved subject. But in the publications, I give some examples of what to use and all. And feel free to contact me anytime by email and I'll certainly address individual situations. Okay. I think we're going to have to wrap it up. Please fill out the evaluation. And we'll see you next month for the crowdsourcing webinar. So thank you very much. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Tony. Yes, thank you. We will be here next month. So bye-bye.