Supplies!

The museum recently got a shipment of supplies! Okay, maybe this isn't really that exciting to most people, but I am the kind of person who checks the mail as soon as it comes and still gets excited by a package in the mail. So imagine my delight when my most recent supply orders started arriving in great big boxes like this:


Inside, were all kinds of goodies. I got a whole bunch of 2" ethafoam planks, which are great for carving out custom cavities to hold an object very securely. I did this with many of the bone and ivory pieces we have from Alaska.


And a bunch of foam rod which is possibly the most whimsical looking of the museum supplies we have on hand. There's about 100' of it in this picture. It's great for making pot rings (.pdf) (although I've been hot gluing the foam instead of trying out NMAI's "hot dog" method) and has many other potential uses as well.


And last but not least is the sticky subject of adhesives (get it?! Sticky adhesives! I crack me up.). Adhesives in a museum setting are problematic though - a truly archival adhesive (one which will not break down over time) may never exist, but adhesives have their place and are very, very useful. Last time I ordered super long glue sticks, but this time around we're going to try their shorter counterparts. That roll in front is double stick tape which has a myriad of uses. The museum clamping devices (cough *clothes pins* cough) in the background are not from any of the most recent packages - they are from the local drug store; they're used to keep 2 pieces of glued material from pulling apart. Simple, but it works!


The packages included a few other things, but I'm excited to have the foam rod (which we didn't have earlier) and to get some more glue sticks (which we were very nearly out of) and some double stick tape (which we were out of). It's good to get supplies.