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 [...]

Time flies… the last blog update about the wool coat was April 30th of 2010! Since then, a significant part of the garment’s conservation treatment was completed. The coat is now clean, dry and thoroughly documented! Prior to freeze-drying, each one of the 138 pieces of wool were drawn for the record as well as [...]

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 [...]

As with many artifacts, finding the most suitable treatments for the wool coat involved exploring a lot of options. Ten cleaning methods and thirteen consolidation/drying techniques were tested and assessed on samples of the coat.  Quite a lot of work, but now we have them identified. These methods will properly conserve the artifact, be reversible, [...]