Surfaces of modern metals in Heritage conservation questionnaire

This questionnaire is an attempt to access how the heritage conservation community understands the surfaces of modern metals. It is being conducted by David Hallam as part of a project  on the Recognition and History and technology of oxide coated modern metals.

Oxide coated modern metals

What are modern metals?

Any metal or major new alloy grouping commercialised after 1851. They may be the core of an object (as in stainless steel) or just the very surface as in metal coated plastic.

I consider oxide coated modern metals to be those that are primarily used in a bare state in such a way that the oxide is the primary interface with the environment. These metals maintain their stability thru the passive nature of this oxide. The oxide may be as a result of the alloy constitution or may be synthetically produced.

Examples are;

• Anodizing
• Zinc plate
• Phosphating
• Chromating
• MBV coatings
• Sheridizing
• Electroplated Tin
• Monel Metal
• German Silver
• Zinc-anneal
• Parkerizing
• Black Oxides coatings
• Electroplating
• Electroless plating

If you are a conservator, restorer, heritage manager or conservation scientist please go to;

http://goo.gl/forms/rS8xfPTSFo

And fill out the questionnaire.

Thanks

 

David Hallam

Wrapping up the Getty.

This week is wrap-up week.

I think I’ve achieve most of what I want. Working as a scholar at the Getty has been an amazing experience. I would recommend anyone with a serious conservation project that can be done succinctly within the timeframes should apply for a GCI scholar term.

When you arrive at the Getty you are told that the three months will disappear very fast, they did. As ever you start your project with certain parameters and ideas about what you’re going to get out of, your project then evolves as you gather information and results. Mine went through several stages stages of expanding and contracting. I now have some half decent timelines for metal finishing processes are massive database of PDF files which will be turned into a substantial bibliography and history and technology article. I also have a wide-ranging selection of conservation papers for the conservation review article. I’ve played with various forms of digital scholarship and have started to refine my processes even further.

On the Mac I’m using Zotero, Evernote, Scrivener, and Dragon. Most of this is transferable to linux. I’m pretty sure Dragon will work in wine.

Over the next few months I will post timelines, parts of chapters, bibliographies, and draft articles to this website. I will be asking for your candid non-critical feedback. I will be trying very hard to adopt the open source principle of release early and release often so initially I don’t care if there are problems with a page or information I don’t have I will put that in the post hoping that other people can help.

I’m looking for people who can help me decipher some of the German, Chinese, Japanese and East European articles I have. These articles I think outline the development of metal finishing in their home countries so it would be good to add these to a timeline. Currently my timelines are worldwide but I would like to make some of them regional.

I’ll be sad to leave here on Friday but I’ll be going on a road trip up to Seattle with my daughter to see some of the US. That should be great fun.

 

Salt and Sugar

Coffee, Salt and sugar.
I’m amazed how much salt and sugar is hidden in average American sorry United States food. To make it even worse it’s hard to tell where this material is hidden because the labeling seems to give a priority to calories and lists everything as a percentage of the average daily income which is assumed to be 2000 cal. So things like sugar and salt are then listed as a percentage of the average daily in take for a mythical portion.
I used to moan about food labelling in Australia because it wouldn’t list many things by name but this system means that you never know whether one food has more salt or sugar than another because each of them tends to use different portions in their calculations. The Australian system of doing it as a percentage of the product by weight may not be ideal but it beats the hell out of this crazy system over here.
I think the only way of avoiding excess sugar salt and other additives is to buy directly from the producer or to make it yourself even then I wonder...
Mind you I must admit I am having a wonderful time discovering or rediscovering things about the United States and its consumption of food.
Did find decent coffee though. At a Vietnamese bakers. See around soon!