Preservation of old corked bottle

[Aussie Diver]

I pulled an old bottle out of the ocean, and am interested in how I would go about preserving the cork, as well as the lead seal. It's currently soaking in fresh water until I find out a better way. The last thing I want is for the cork to be destroyed. Thanks for any help,

Ryan.

[1liquigirl]

Aussie, good idea to soak it until someone posts some info for you on this. The cork could definitely damage or crack during the drying. I couldn't give you ideas, but it would be nice to see some pictures of it, if you can post them. Thanks for the post

[Michigan Badger]

I pulled an old bottle out of the ocean, and am interested in how I would go about preserving the cork, as well as the lead seal. It's currently soaking in fresh water until I find out a better way. The last thing I want is for the cork to be destroyed. Thanks for any help,

Ryan.

Great post and I need to look into this also. I have lots of old bottles to clean and preserve.

I've never done cork before but shipwreck wood beams are sometimes preserved with antioxidants in combination with low and high grade polyethylene glycol (PEG). In fact, I own some actual wood from the HMS Colossus Shipwreck of 1798 and it needs to be preserved.

PEG is soluble in water, methanol, benzene, and dichloromethane.

I don't have room here to get into all the details but there is scholarly reading on this subject at the link below.

Read and if you decide to try PEG or some other process, let us know about it.

Preserving wood (or cork, etc.) is one of the hottest topics in the conservator field at this time.

Best to you.

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byauth/grattan/peg.html