About 15 artifact accession numbers correspond to untreated textiles recovered from the Monitor. They were all taken out of the climate-controlled wet storage about 2 months ago to begin treatments. For documentation, I started looking at the textile fibers under a microscope and was happily surprised to find out that many of these pieces are silk (or silk mixed [...]

During the past five months the Monitor’s engine has been in electrolytic reduction treatment to reduce corrosion and remove chloride salts.   Analysis of the sodium hydroxide electrolyte solution has shown that the concentration of chloride in the tank had reached 65 ppm (parts per million), meaning that this amount of salt has been removed from [...]

Last week, treatment began on a large fragment of cast iron flooring from  Monitor‘s engine room. The fragment was discovered in situ during large scale deconcretion efforts on the engine in December 2010.  In the images below, you can see the fragment in place on the engine being supported with straps while concretion was removed to separate it from [...]

In 2001, along with the engine, several wrought iron structural members associated with it were also recovered. In the image below on the left, is a recent x-ray of a fragment of engine bed plate, which revealed a series of relatively intact rivets.   If you look closely at the x-ray, you can see the outlines [...]