Drying wood

From Xavier Hiron who has no e-mail

    We are dealing with a peculiar case of (waterlogged?) wood
    conservation. It is a wooden sculpture (Iron Age, 180 BC) found
    on an archaeological digging, which does not present the usual
    aspect of waterlogged wood. Its drying seems to be very advanced
    but it still has a water content (between 30 to 50 %). Its
    surface is attacked by micro-organisms as deep as 1 cm which
    makes it very powdery. We already did a gamma radiation to
    sterilize it but we can not immerse it into a bath for a
    classical PEG impregnation followed by freeze-drying.

    We are now looking for people who had experience on drying and
    consolidating very fragile wooden artefacts (even furnitures).
    Any reference is welcome

    Xavier Hiron
    Conservator
    ARC-Nucleart
    17, rue des Martyrs
    38054 Grenoble cedex 9
    +33 4 76 88 55 94
    fax: +33 4 76 88 50 89

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 10:52
                Distributed: Wednesday, December 4, 1996
                       Message Id: cdl-10-52-007
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