Much work has been carried out on the object along with several interesting discoveries since the initial blog post about the artifact on March 15, 2010. The best thought at the current time is that the artifact is some kind of swing valve. After several weeks of the object having gone through electrolytic reduction, the [...]

Last week we were able to remove the other cap square of the carriage along with the nine bolts that were maintaining it. Another significant copper alloy part removed! See Gary below having almost removed the cap square in the left image and the surface underneath it once removed, on the right.      Our [...]

Of the approximately 1600 artifacts recovered from the USS Monitor, 1/4 of them have been conserved.  Many but not all of the 400+ conserved artifacts are now on display in the USS Monitor Center at The Mariners’ Museum.  So what do we do with the artifacts that aren’t currently on display at the museum?  The museum [...]

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the memorial of one of the brave sailors who was lost when the Monitor sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras on December 31st, 1862.  Jacob Nicklis, son of William Nicklis, a prominent tailor in Buffalo, New York had re-enlisted as an ordinary seaman in the US Navy [...]

 Monitor’s two gun carriages are the focus of a new disassembly project. The gun carriages are composed of copper alloys, wrought iron and wood.  The iron and copper components are in contact, which causes galvanic corrosion. Contact between metals of different nobility will generate, over time, the protection of the more noble metal to the [...]

The nutguard discussed a few weeks ago has now been removed from its desalination bath. It was dried under a fan overnight then coated with a tannic acid solution to stabilize the surface. It was necessary to carefully scrape away numerous large flakes of rust from all over the surfaces of the object before the [...]