Restoration, conservation, cleaning
 

Hi Guys,

Why on this nice site we don't have a Forum on Restoration, conservation, cleaning??
I'm cleaning some stuff during the week end and it's extremely difficult to find good threads, ideas are all over the place...


:(

Fully agree!

I believe we should have a separate section of the forum dedicated to this as it is a recurring and very important topic.

HI
I put up some posts on this topic WRT my restorations and they seem to attract some interest. I feel I do not know enough to comment on a lot of what is on the forum so I like to give back when I can with some information.
You do not want to split forums too much though as then people tend just to go to their pet area and ignore others.
This happened with Sword Forum International and i do not think it helped the forum much overall in the end.
Perhaps a sticky on restoration projects?

Regards
Ken

I do also think that it should be a separate section. Restoring a blade is what brought me to this forum in the first place. But I also think that the restoration posts should be strictly technical, i. e. just techniques, tips and advise, and not about the types of weapons, otherwise we will get carried away in the usual discussions and that will defy the purpose of the separate section. LOL

This is a good idea. Nevertheless there were already several (a few) posts about the restoration of blades, here.
What I am missing is information on leather and textile professional treatment (scabbards/sheaths). As far as leather - especially return of old dry and wrinkled sheaths to their original nobleness (probably only African specificity ?). I reached best results with soaking in ethanol (the whole set incl. the blade) and drying under the weight. Any other recommendation ?
As far as textile - I would like to learn anything about the methods of cleaning the old (and "fragile") textile surfaces attached to various materials (without damaging patina on this other materials ..., without damaging colour and structure of the textile - this is really not easy ...).

I dont know if this advise is useful, but in the 1960'ies the Danish Army Museum used white bread to clean damp-stained flags.
I dont know how they did it, but it seems to have worked. I am sure newer methods are now used, but I know close to nothing about the subject.

The white bread rubbing is also used in superficial cleaning of oil paintings.

Tim, do you know how it is used?

Maybe the same way "damasquinado de Toledo" is cleaned:

1. take a piece of white bread without crust and compact it into a ball of dough
2. tap the surface to be cleaned with the dough

I was taught by one of the few remainig artisans mastering the art of damasquinado in Toledo, Spain.

:shrug: maybe

PS: It has to be real bread, not the spongy thing you get in most of the supermartkets.