iron conservation

This morining before the Homestead opened at noone the other interns and I started this summer's iron conservation project. I will have to apologize once again for not having any pictures, but my camera is not functioning and I have no idea when it will be back to normal. I will try to describe as best I can this project.

In our collections room in the Deturk eduaction center we have a lot of iron stuff that is old and a little rusty. It is mostly hoes, hammers, axes, stuff like that. Us interns were assigned to clean it up and help preserve it. To do this we first wipe it down with acetone to get the first layer of dirt off. Then we loosen up all the rust by going over the object with a wire brush. Next we wipe it off with acetone again, and a lot of the rust usually comes off at this point. You can see it on the rag that you are wiping your piece with. Next we apply a stove polish with a brush. This makes the piece look really nice and black and shiny, and it provides a waxt coating that protects the iron. This also allows us to buff the iron periodically and it makes it look shiny and new again.

I did three pieces today, just cleaning them, not aplying any polish. I did two ordinary hoes, and one ditch hoe. A ditch hoe was used to clear out the stuff that would grow in the ditches farmers used to irigate their meadows. Tomorrow I will probably be polishing.