Freezing Drums

Before I say anything else, I should say “Don’t try this at home” these are experiments… and do not constitute conservation advice. The current, and standard, conservation advice concerning low temperature treatment of drums is DO NOT DO IT.

I have to say this, as every time I tell people about my research they seem to have some kind of online heart attack, and start going…”NO… are you crazy, don’t freeze drums”… and I have to explain the nature of experiments… that these are not museum objects, but, objects I made or acquired for testing…. So, Ok.. warning over, now….

This week I am getting back to my second half of my research project, working at the Museum Conservation Institute (MCI) to conduct mechanical testing of hides, to try and find out more about the effects of low temperature treatments on the material.

This is a fascinating project, and we are getting good results. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until we publish the results before I share them with you here on the blog!

Besides we haven’t finished testing yet, so until all results are in I couldn’t really comment anyway!

But here are a couple of images of the tensiometer machines we are using to test the materials. We are testing for stress/strain data, isothermic and thermo coefficient data. Testing both newly made objects (some of the drums I made on the Rosebud – see earlier post in blog) and some older material donated by various people and institutions. (For which we are thankful).

Tensiometer in action!

Freezing a tensiometer

Understanding materials is a central part of conservation, with this project we are aiming to try and find out if the materials themselves are susceptible to damage from low temperatures. We are taking our samples down to -40 C. We want to find out if this causes damage to the material, especially when stretched… stay tuned to find out our results!!!