Storage of weapons

Jaap van der Burg asked for experiences in storing weapons. I work
for the Royal Armouries, the national museum of arms and armour, and
have been involved in moving our collection to a new site. This has
involved setting up new stores for about thirty five thousand
objects.  Whilst we certainly have not come up with the definitive
solution for the collection, it has enabled us to look at the
storage requirements of  the objects and try to improve the existing
storage.

As a very brief overview, I will describe how we have stored certain
items. For any detailed questions please contact us again. Our
collection in store is a working study collection that is used by
both the curators and by the public, and so our storage must
accommodate this unhindered.

Our extensive handgun collection is stored in drawer cabinets and
eventually (when we have time!) will be a specific location storage
system.

Boxed sets are, at present, stored complete on shelving.  There is a
problem with lead bullets in the wool felt lined box but there has
been no overall policy to separate these two materials.  Each box is
dealt with as a conservation project when and if necessary. The long
arm collection (muskets, rifles etc) has caused the most debate
between curators and conservators. We store the guns upright in a
traditional style gunrack with some modifications to make them
object friendly. Traditional gunracks have the gun with the barrel
uppermost fitting into a wooden cutout. Instead of a wooden cutout,
we have a dense grade plastazote cutout which will not scratch the
metal. The stock rests on a shaft, again lined with plastazote with
a small block behind the toe of the stock to stop it falling
backwards.  The curators insist that the lock is outermost for easy
visibility without handling. This throws the balance of the gun so
that it can easily fall outwards. Turning the gun around so that the
lock is innermost will keep the gun in the rack a lot better, if you
can persuade your curators. We use velcro loops around the breech
and the barrel to secure the gun. By storing the guns in racks we
can fit about 3000 guns in a 30m X 10m space.

Swords are all stored on plastazote covered shelves laying
horizontally with their pommels protruding for easy identification
without handling. Our stores are meant to be dust free and have
elaborate air conditioning ( ie too sophisticated to actually work
properly)

Spears and polearms are stored vertically for space reasons and fit
into rows of plastazote notches and secured with velcro. We do have
very long polearms which are too tall to fit vertically. These are
stored on shelving made up of spur shelving with plastazote covered
shelves. The uprights with brackets are spaced every metre to
provide sufficient support along the objects length.
I hope this is of some use,

Alison Draper
Conservator
Royal Armouries
Leeds LS10 1LT
United Kingdom
+44 113 220 1807

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 10:91
                 Distributed: Wednesday, April 23, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-10-91-003
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