Cleaning and preservation of a waterlogged object. Need some help.

[SoMdRelicHunter]

A friend of mine was recently on the water fishing and got his anchor snagged on the following object. Appears to be a window of some type or maybe some type of hatch from a vessel.

He contacted me when he pulled it up and I told him I'd take it and preserve it.

Well. It's much bigger than I anticipated to the tune of about 100 pounds lol. Got a kiddie pool after I went and picked it up and have been letting it soak in fresh water for a few weeks now.

As you can see, it's iron framed with wood. I know I can use muriatic acid to clean the iron but I worry e effect on the wood. I'd like to clean all the barnacles and muck off the wood and the rust off the iron and then preserve both.

However, I'm not sure exactly how to go about preserving the piece as a whole. I've read about propylene glycol but seems it's not great to subject the metal to it. I've also read about sugar but I'm not totally sure I have a great grasp on exactly what to do here.

If someone has some experience to share in layman's terms I would be much appreciated.

 

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[SoMdRelicHunter]

Not sure how the picture attached the way it did, but I'm posting from my phone so please excuse any errors.

Forgot to mention it came out of brackish waters

 

[ropesfish]

Here are some references:

Texas A & M: Conservation Research Laboratory - Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation - Texas A&M University

Dan Berg's short version: SHIPWRECK DIVING  Artifact Preservation

ICUA in Zadar, Croatia - well done and fairly straightforward : http://icua.hr/images/stories/publi...rchaeological_finds_manual_second_edition.pdf

Good luck and remember, the slower you go, the longer it will last. Applies in conservation too.

 

[xaos]

First, you must ask yourself if this is worth the time and money.

From brackish water, so it must be immersed in fresh water as soon as possible, which it seems you have done.

So, soak it in the fresh water until the pH comes out the same as the water, or near to it. Since there is the metal, you will then need to do some sort of electrolysis. Resist the urge to break off too much of the encrustation before you have run the electrolysis. The difficult part for this process, you will have to remove the wood for this process.

In the electrolysis progress, much will naturally fall off. You will have to decide at what point you want to stop, leaving the look as close to what you want. Depending on the age and degradation, you can take it down to virtually nothing.

You mention Muriatic acid, this will remove the calcium on the metal. However, the concentration required to do this will be too strong for the wood. They actually use muriatic acid to age wood for movie sets. Again, as with electrolysis, if you separate the wood from the metal, you can do this.

PEG will work great as a wood preservative, replacing the water in the wood over time, thus preventing the dry rot. Many metals will corrode with PEG, so unless you know the metal, you must be careful. PEG 300 for soaking is still expensive, but better than PEG 1000 or Pentacryl ($$$). The number relats to the molecular density of the PEG, and the lower the number the less $$, lower temps, and easier to work with for this application.

Soaking in PEG 300 is best at around 140 degrees F. (PEG is basically water soluble wax) At first you use a 50% solution of PEG and water, then go to pure PEG. You can work at lower temps, but time is radically extended, (like 10 days at 140 vs 10 weeks at 60 degrees)..Again, all of this is cost and time.

As I see it, there is really little that you can do to completely preserve the wood and metal without taking it apart. Depending on what you want this to look like in the end....you have to decide.

Boiled linseed oil works well for metal and wood as a final preservative, and leaves a nice looking finish.

This is pretty abbreviated, but gives you the basic idea of what will be involved.

http://owic.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/pubs/peg.pdf

 

[A2coins]

Should dive the site for a ship wreck or sell the location to a salvage company