Got to have the right tools

for the job you're doing. You may have noted that one thing I really like to talk about are the supplies needed to do this job properly. This post is another in that vein.

One class of tools we frequently use is cutting tools.


When making boxes, cutting foam, etc, we need to use a sharp edged object.

On the left is a box opener, like you'd find in any hardware store. This is used for cutting cardboard, cutting foam, and sometimes, yes, even opening boxes.

Second from the left is our newest cutting tool: A foam knife. The foam knife is a thing of beauty. We often use 2" thick blocks of ethafoam which can be tricky to cut with smaller, less stiff knives. The interns who work with me have found that this foam knife makes precision work with the foam much easier. Frankly, I am pretty excited by the usefulness of this knife.

In the middle is a plain old kitchen knife. I picked it up for $.49 at the local thrift store. It has served well for cutting foam, but with the presence of the foam knife, it may no longer have a purpose.

Second from the right is a trusty standby: the Exacto knife. Excellent for precision work, cutting thin material, or poking holes through cardboard.

And on the far right is a blade similar to the exacto, but with a useful hook tool at the opposite end.

Not pictured is the noble scissors. Scissors are used from time to time to.... you guessed it, cut things. Notably for cutting tyvek or acid free tissue off of a roll and into shape.

Also not pictured: The First Aid Kit. When one is working with sharp tools designed to cut things, it is important to have adequate first aid supplies on hand. So far we have had no serious injuries. Primarily I've gotten paper cuts from the cardboard which sting like the dickens but are note serious.

So those are the sharp things we use to make proper housing for the many museum objects we care for. In fact, we actually have a drawer with many more exacto type knives and a couple more box cutters. And replacement blades. In the photo above, the blades are sitting atop a self healing cutting board, another extremely useful tool when cutting cardboard and other materials, as it keeps the blades from dulling against hard surfaces and keeps hard surfaces from being marred by blade marks. All tools of the trade.

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.

This is how we roll

Last Friday's Whatzit garnered 2 guesses: serape or a "contemporary version of a Buddhist sand mandala." While both guesses are interesting, I'm afraid it's much simpler than that; it's a rug.

More specifically, it's a small woven rug from Iran and it is the first textile in our collection to be rolled.

Yep. Rolled. Rolling is standard practice for storing museum textiles. Folding rugs, blankets, etc. like you might do to store them in your linen closet is not good for long term preservation. The fibers along the fold become brittle and it becomes difficult for the textile to be laid flat. Small textiles can be stored flat, but when it comes to a blanket or a quilt, most museums simply don't have the space to do so.

The rug in question has been folded, probably for several years.


These are the rolls that our textiles are going to be rolled around.


Yes, they look like giant paper towel tubes. And, in essence, they are. Except they are acid-free and unbuffered, which makes them more expensive than giant paper towel tubes. The first step involved wrapping the tube in Tyvek. Even though the tubes are "museum quality" they'd been shipped unwrapped and moved around in that state, so I wanted to provide a definite layer between the textile and the tube.

Then I unfolded the rug and laid it on a long piece of acid-free, unbuffered tissue paper. I carefully, tediously, made sure all the fringe was laying straight:


Since the rolling will have the textile resting against itself for a long long time (unless we use it for an exhibit, or it is the subject of research), any bent fringe, any folds in the textile will be reinforced over time, putting extra stress on the fibers - the exact thing we are trying to avoid. In the same vein as having all the fringe straight, it's important not to let the roll drift, and to make sure the edges of the rolled textile are stacked exactly:


In the above photo you can see how ingrained the creases are already. The tube, prepped with tyvek, is placed in line with the textile. Then we're ready to roll!

Halfway rolled:


To get to the halfway rolled point, I had to start rolling a half dozen times, each time adjusting slightly to make sure the edges of the textile stacked exactly.

All the way rolled:


The textile is entirely rolled, with an outer covering of tyvek to protect it from dust, and a couple of cotton twill tape ties, along with a very important label to let folks know exactly what is inside this mysterious roll.

CWU's Collections Management and Curation course is working with our collection of Navajo textiles this quarter, part of which will require them to roll or otherwise properly store the textile they are working with. So, in the near future, an important portion of our textile collection will be stored this way.

In the words of Optimus Prime: Roll out!

SPOON!!

Not, SPOON!, as in the battle cry of The Tick. But spoon as in a utensil used in the preparation, distribution and consumption of food.



I've been making slow and steady progress through small portions of the collection. One of my projects this week was the rehousing, cataloging, and photography of a small collection of Northwest Coast wooden and horn spoons. The above is pretty typical of the wooden spoons, undecorated with a large bowl.

I should have taken a "Before" picture of storage, but I missed my chance. This is how the spoons are stored now:


I made custom cavities in 2" thick ethafoam for the smaller spoons. The larger spoons are required by space constraints to lay on their sides for the time being. They will be given custom mounts when we have moved. Some of the boxes are not permanent, thus there are some foam spacers in boxes to prevent the movement of the mounts. The boxes are custom made as well. And now the spoons are just about ready to be packed and moved, which is the ultimate goal.

Foamy, foamy, foam!

When I went to graduate school for a degree in museology, I learned things I never expected. Like about foam. You know how foam on, say, those headphones from 1987 crumbles right off and is gross and disgusting. That foam is what will call unstable foam.

Appropriate foams for museum purposes are pretty stable. That is, they don't break down as much over time. In fact, we use things that aren't supposed to break down at all, or very very slowly. When materials break down, they release gases which we usually don't notice because they usually don't affect us. But if you put a very fragile old object on materials that break down (like that gross old foam), the gases and acids given off by unstable material can cause the object it's touching to discolor or grow weaker.

My original point was meant to be this: My supply orders are beginning to roll in, and I have some foam!



That's 6 planks of 2" think ethafoam. Useful stuff. Also in the picture are nitrile gloves and an acid free box. But there's more!



Let's see, that's more nitrile gloves, acid-free lignin-free file folders and paper, cotton tying tape, and some good old aluminum foil. Aluminum foil? What's that for?

Well, remember what I said about foam decaying and giving off gases? Wood does that too. A lot of our current storage space is made up of pressed board wood shelves, which is wood plus nasty chemicals. Currently, most shelves have a layer of paper on them on which the objects sit, but it's possible that those gases and unpleasant things released by the wood could migrate right through the paper. So I plan to lay a layer of aluminum foil between the paper and the shelf. Aluminum foil makes a barrier that the gases can't penetrate, at least not so easily. That's the story on aluminum foil!

I'm still waiting on two rolls of 1/8" thick ethafoam, and a roll of acidfree, unbuffered tissue paper. What's unbuffered? Let's save that for another day. And maybe another day I can tell you all about the kinds of foam I know. :D