Apologize followers; we have not been really present on the blog lately.

We have been really busy though, and not only because of the Holidays!

Eric is now spending half of each year in Cardiff where he is bravely starting a PhD (about… chlorides in iron!). As a result, he is only part time with us now, which… renders the lab a little emptier and the load of work higher here… but he’ll be back before we know it!

Since December, we have been juggling several activities, all related to tidying things up for the famous, the fabulous, sesquicentennial of the Battle of Hampton Roads. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the Museum’s program yet, check it out there (and save the date!!):

 http://marinersmuseum.org/calendar/special-event/150th-anniversary-battle-hampton-roads-weekend

We started the New Year by draining the starboard XI-inch Dahlgren gun tank to perform general cleaning of the cast iron beauty and maintenance of its anodes and electrodes. We also explored the bore with a fiberoptic SeeSnake donated by RIDGID Tools to assess the inside condition and discuss and test possible cleaning techniques. There is still about 2 inches of concretion inside the gun refraining chlorides from being released.   

The engraving made in the Washington Navy Yard during the fall of 1862 during Monitor’s overhaul is looking really good now:

And here is an overall picture of the gun: 

This maintenance session also allowed the removal of more copper alloy elements of the gun. The sight bar and its support as well as the starboard trunnion cap were safely taken apart. Below the trunnion cap, the engraving “1859”, date of the gun manufacture, was intact. No pictures were taken because there is not enough room between the tank and the trunnion to take photos.

Before working on the port Dahlgren we have been finishing the cleaning and coating of a 10-foot section of Monitor’s propeller shaft. This tree-looking piece of wrought iron will be a new introduction in the galleries for the weekend of the Battle of Hampton Roads!  The shaft weights 1,900 pounds and is approximately 9” in diameter. The first picture is the propeller shaft after cleaning and the second shot is Will applying a protection layer while defying gravity.

At last, other smaller objects are also seeing the light at the end of the conservation tunnel. The wooden rammer is in the freeze-dryer, the PEG solution of the sponge is increasing in concentration, and an apothecary glass jar (with unidentified white content) will eventually be displayed at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, NC.

Stay tuned, we should be working on the port Dahlgren gun in a couple weeks (check out our live cameras).

This past week the 30,000 gallon tank containing Monitor’s steam engine was drained for a key milestone in the conservation of this unique artifact. The purpose for the tank drain was the installation of a new support system under the engine that will enable the eventual disassembly of  the object.  Up to this week, the engine which weighs approximately 25 tons, had been suspended off the ground from a massive I-bean supported on large steel posts. In the images below, you can see the engine before and after recent deconcretion efforts suspended from the I-beam.  

To connect the engine to the beam, steel frames with shackles passed though the engine bed up to the beam. In the images below, you can see one shackle and corresponding support frame as well as the hole cut through the engine bed to enable the mounting system to function. The hole was cut into the engine bed by Navy divers 230 feet underwater at the wreck site, which at that time was the best method for removal from the seafloor.

As treatment on the engine progressed over the last year, it became clear that before any large-scale disassembly of the object could commence, a more structurally-sound support had to be installed. The reasons for this were safety concerns for both staff and object, and to create a strong level mount from which components could more easily be removed from the engine.  So, over the past several months Gary designed and fabricated new support posts to be placed under the propeller shaft, four corners of the engine bed, steam cylinder, and valve chests.  In the following pictures you can see the cylinder/valve chest) support frame being put into place. (Dave in first, Will and Dave in second)

 Support being jacked into place under the engine

Once the cylinder/valve chest frame was installed, we placed two supports beneath the back of the engine bed. To do this, we had to pick up the propeller shaft with the crane, slide the new posts into place, and then lower the engine down onto the posts. In the photo below you can see the white support posts under the engine bed with the crane hoist lowering the back of the engine onto posts.  

With the rear of the engine on its mounts, now it came time to place the new supports at the front of the artifact. To do this, each end of the massive I-beam was carefully lifted (one side at a time) slightly elevating one of the front corners of the engine to allow the new mounting posts to be placed. In the pictures below you can see Will, Dave, and Gary placing the new front post on the port side of the engine.  The red arrow in  the picture points to the distance the beam was lifted, while the green arrow points the new support post.     

Now that the support system for the entire weight of the engine had been shifted from above to below the engine bed, it came time to remove the I-beam. To do this, the beam was connected to one of the 20 ton crane hoists and the shackles were undone and the corresponding original support frames were carefully removed from under the engine bed. With the beam disconnected from the engine, it was lifted up and out of the tank. In the pictures below, the red arrow points to one of the removed support frames while the green arrow points to one  of the tow lines which helped to keep the massive beam from swinging while we moved it across the lab.  

Once the beam was away from the engine tank, we moved  it across the lab and Gary used the heavy duty forklift to carry it out of the building.  

After the I-beam was removed from the tank and lab, we then removed the original beam support posts. You can see one of the posts being taken out of the tank below as well as a fantastic photo of Gary, Will, and Dave.

The last step in the process was to place a new support under the propeller shaft, and after that, the engine was fully re-supported !!!!!!! The next couple of pictures show views of the starboard, port, aft, and bottom sides of the engine before deconcretion and after the beam’s removal. 

    Starboard side

Aft

Port side

Bottom

Now that the engine is on its new supports, its looks more like it did deep inside the hull of the Monitor. So, I thought it would be neat to throw up a  drawing of Monitor’s engine next to an inverted photo of the actual engine for comparison!!! Enjoy!

Keep coming back to our blog for more Monitor conservation updates!!!!!!!!

Yes, we do have a farm here at the Batten Conservation Laboratory!

Not a conventional farm, even though I believe most of us would not mind having a couple bovines, hens, rabbits, and canned vegetables on hand in preparation for a harsh Virginian winter… No, our farm is a “Tank Farm”, yes Ma’am.

This farm contains 6 steel tanks in which many bits and pieces of the USS Monitor are being treated with electrolytic reduction: copper alloy pipes, railings from the engine room, more pipes, stanchions, engine throttle elements, plates and other unidentified metallic parts of the vessel.

This past week and through the end of October (or later), the conservation (dream) team is working on maintenance of these tanks. We are cleaning them and assessing the objects’ conditions. We are deconcreting the pieces that really need it, as always, to allow the salts to be released more readily into solution. We are also cleaning the anodes, making sure the electrical connections are good, changing solutions and taking samples for chloride analysis.

We will continue to monitor the salt concentrations of the tanks over the coming year and the solutions will be changed when necessary… until we can isolate each piece for final treatment.

So, that’s our farm… we don’t raise chickens, goats, or vegetables, we raise… artifacts… and sometimes algae on them for authenticity… 

Here are a couple action shots:

Will cleaning pipes removed from treatment tanks in the Tank Farm

Mike and Eric securing and cleaning objects’ connections

The picture below shows an inscription found on a copper alloy valve during deconcretion:

                         “James Gregory

                                Cannon”

The valve manufacturer, James Gregory, was located on Cannon Street in New York City.

Always neat to find such inscriptions on a fragile original surface, 150 years after being buried underwater.

Hope everyone has a great week!

After a successful season of hands on work removing concretion from the Monitor’s Turret, conservators have cleaned the tank fitted anodes for electrolytic reduction, and added 90,000 gallons of water purified by reverse osmosis.   When the electrolyte had been added, everything was ready to begin active desalination and start the process of removing the chloride salts which had accumulated in the turret over 140 years on the sea floor.  Power was switched on to the electrolytic reduction system and on September 23^rd the level of chlorides was measured after 1 week at  4.5 parts per million (ppm).   This doesn’t sound like a lot at first, but this concentration of chloride in 90,000 gallons of water is equivalent to 1.5kg, or 3.3 pounds of chloride removed!  After the second week of desalination, the turret treatment solution was tested again on September 30th and had increased to 7.9 ppm, equivalent to 2.7kg or almost 6 pounds of chloride.  These first few weeks of Turret desalination are graphed below:

So far the trend is in the right direction- an increasing concentration of chlorides in the treatment solution as they are removed from the turret.  The more chlorides we can remove, the better the turret can be preserved for the future.  Stay tuned for future updates on the progress of desalinating the turret!

If you haven’t heard some of the acronym buzzwords used in education these days, you should become familiar with STEM-Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Did you know that STEM principles are part of the everyday activities here in the lab and are applicable to the conservation of USS Monitor artifacts? Well now you do! Students from Virginia Beach learned last week how it all works.

On September 23, I participated in a really great program at Capitol Landing Middle School in Virginia Beach that was organized to be a kick-off event for the development of a pilot STEM-based curriculum. The student-focused STEM Career Conference was organized by Virginia Beach City Schools, the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, our partners!), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 

Over 500 middle school students signed up for a series of presentations given by STEM professionals from our community. The idea was to give the students an opportunity to learn about STEM-based careers, and interact with those of us in the related fields. Two keynote speakers and twenty-two presenters (including myself) gave half hour talks with time for questions and answers.

So what did I talk about? The Monitor, of course! There were four sessions over the course of the day, with about 20 kids in each group. We talked about the subjects you need to learn in order to be able to conserve the artifacts, and some interesting things about the ship and its life. I had really thoughtful questions from the kids, and their enthusiasm for the subject really made every session a lot of fun.

So thanks to Corporate Landing Middle School, all the great students, and the conference partners for having me!

Special Thanks to Ms. Garvey for sharing her classroom on Friday!

This past week, the Monitor conservation staff began screening concretion and corrosion products removed from the interior of the turret over the last 10 weeks (see previous posts and video links on the main page). As with any archaeological excavation, we want to make sure that even small objects and fragments are recovered for future study and interpretation. This being said, we have opted to use a process called wet screening. Under this technique, material types of various sizes are separated out while at the same time washed by a steady stream of water to remove loose sediment and rust. The additional washing makes the identification of small artifacts easier and speeds up the overall screening process.   

In the two image below you can see Elsa and Gary working at screening stations, which were fabricated by Gary.  

In the image above you can see the average size of the materials which are too large to pass through the top screen to the smaller one underneath it.

In the image below you can see Dave and Gerry screeing fine marterials though the smaller lower mesh. Notice the size difference compared to the materials on the top screen! 

So, at this point you may be asking yourself, ”Hey Will, if the large chunks of material do not pass through the upper screen, what happens to them?” I am so glad you asked!!! In the image below you can see Mike carefully breaking up chunks of concreted material with a hammer.  Once in smaller pieces, the material will then be passed through the screens a second time.

Overall the screening process is slow and tedious, but we do find stuff!!! The image below shows a fragment of glass recovered by Elsa. 

Jeff Johnston at the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary just forwarded this information to me.  I’m not sure how Google’s auto mailing system works, but somehow it decided to send an advertising postcard to the sanctuary office that was addressed to William Jeffers, Monitor‘s second appointed commander!

I hope Google doesn’t get too upset if he doesn’t respond to them…after all Jeffers passed away 128 years ago!!

Google’s postcard to Jeffers made we wonder if this type of thing had ever happened before.  I didn’t take long before two historical parallels came to mind.  In 1955, Marty McFly wrote a warning letter to Dr. Emmett Brown that indicated his life was in danger.  The letter ultimately saved Doc Brown’s life in 1985!

And in 1885, Doc Brown sent Marty a telegram that he received from Western Union 1955!

I wonder if that means William Jeffers is alive and well in the Old West…

This is our 100th post, and it’s an important one!  The Virginia Collections Initiative in conjunction with the Virginia Association of Museums is once again generating its list of “Virginia’s Top Ten Endangered Artifacts”. 

http://www.vatop10artifacts.org/

USS Monitor‘s revolving gun turret is on the list of nominees for 2011, and we hope to be selected for the final Top 10 designation.  The goal of “Virginia’s Top Ten” is to raise public awareness about care of collections throughout Virginia and D.C.

Please click on the link above and take the time to vote for USS Monitor‘s revovling gun turret today!  Once you are on the Top Ten page, you can vote by logging into Google/Picasa, but the easiest way is use the secure voting form on the web page.  The website contains other great information and media, including videos related to the nominees.  Check out the videos, including two different Monitor clips, by clicking this link:

http://www.vatop10artifacts.org/p/our-favorite-conservation-videos.html

As concretion removal on the turret has continued, a host of new finds have been discovered!!! The focus of concretion removal has shifted around a bit during the last several weeks (look at previous blog posts). We began work with the documentation and removal of the roof stanchions, which then moved to the excavation of concretion between the roof rails and beams, and currently to the removal of corrosion and concretion in and around the nutguards.

The following images show the variety of discoveries we found during the excavations.

To the right in the image above is a fragment of leather discovered between the roof rails alongside the starboard hatch.

To the left in the  image above one can see the top section of a glass pipe, which mostly likely is a component to a monitoring instrument such as a thermometer or manometer.

In the lower right in the image above you can see a monkey wrench concreted to the wall of the turret. On an interesting note, the jaws of the wrench are open to approximately two inches, which corresponds to the width of the nuts nearby.

In the upper right in this image one can see a knife concreted to the wall of the turret resting diagonally  on a nut. In the picture below you can see upon removal from the turret wall that the knife has a bone handle with an iron blade.

In the images below you can see a silver/alloy spoon embedded within  concretion, and upon excavation, many ornate and interesting details were revealed.

In the images below fine raised relief detail on the spoon can be seen as well as the initials SAL written in the center on the front side of the spoon handle with the letters USN underneath. The initials correspond to the name Sammuel  Augee Lewis who was the Third Assistant Engineer on the ship, and was one of the sailors who perished the night of the sinking. However, this artifact is not the only belonging we have of Lewis’ in the Monitor collection, we also have Lewis’s fork! The details on the spoon appear to be identical to that of the fork.   (click on the picture to enlarge it)

Lastly, our collection of rimfire cartridges now moves from five to six with another being discovered during nutgard excavation this week.  The cartridge is in the lower center of the image.

After the removal of remaining roof stanchions on the turret (see previous post below), conservation staff shifted their work efforts to its interior.  Over the last several weeks we have been using an assortment of pneumatic and other hand tools to remove remaining concretion and loose corrosion products embedded in between the roof rails and on the main roof support beams.  The following link is a video put together by The Daily Press, which provides a good overview of the work.

http://www.dailypress.com/features/family/dp-nws-monitor-turret-20110730,0,7028584.story