Posts fromLaurie King

As mentioned in ourprevious post, we’ve been spending quite a lot of time working in the turret the past few weeks! We’ve been taking a lot of photographs, to document how the conservation process is proceeding. We’ve also been doing some assessment for the future. But most importantly, we have been cleaning away the concretion (marine growth) and mud that is trapped in the rails.

Some of you may remember that when the USSMonitorsank, it turned upside-down. The turret is still upside-down as that is the most stable position for it to be in at the moment. Which means that in the picture above, Lesley and I are actually standing on the turret’s ceiling! The ceiling was constructed out of railroad tracks, which means there’s plenty of nooks and crevasses for concretion and corrosion to build up. AND there’s plenty of places forobjectstohide!Read more

That’s right folks, it’s almost turret season! We will be draining the turret tank on July 31st, and from then on it’s turret all day, every day for those of us in the conservation lab. And trust me, we’re all very excited to get back in the turret again!

You may remember from our previous blog posts that last summer we worked on removing all of thenutguardsfrom the interior of the turret. This summer we’ll be assessing the status of the nutguards and possibly even dry ice blasting them, so stay tuned for more nutguard updates!Read more

过去的这个周末,我们几个人从监视器b got to go on a grand adventure to learn about one of our favorite topics, archaeology! (Conservation of course will always be number one in my heart, but archaeology runs a close second) The Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference(MAAC) was hosted this year in Virginia Beach, and not only were we able to attend, but we were accepted to present in the conference as well.

MAAC kindly allowed staff from the Monitor Lab and some of our colleagues from Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab, to form a session specifically on Archaeological Conservation. The lectures ranged from the conservation of archaeological objects, to explaining some of the science behind conservation. Kate talked about some of the manymakers marksdiscoveries made through conservation. And below is an images of Hannah, discussing how technology can be used to bring both conservation and archaeology to the public!Read more

Hello USSMonitorFans!

We have another fantastic lecture coming up in our Civil War Lecture Series! If you are able, please join us at The Mariners’ Museum and Park on Saturday Nov 12 from 2:30-3:30 for “3-D Mapping of Shipwreck Sites” presented by William Sassorossi, a NOAA Maritime Archaeologist.Read more

Do you love reading about the details of our conservation treatments? Are you dying to hear more about dry ice blasting? Are you going to be in the Hampton Roads area this weekend? If so you may want to consider your Saturday afternoon already booked!

Please join us this Saturday, September 10^thfrom 2:30-3:30 for the Civil War Lecture: Keeping it Cool! We will be discussing dry ice cleaning at the USSMonitorCenter, explaining how dry ice cleaning works, including the details of our research and testing procedure. You’ll also hear about upcoming research being undertaken with dry ice, and how this new research will speed up the treatment of the USSMonitorobjects.Read more