[Nhcoll-l] Recommended method(s) for cleaning taxidermy mounts.....

[Gali Beiner]

Hi Cory,

If you are aware of the safety requirements, then I won't go into this
subject (and just mention the words ventilation - PPE). As for cleaning the
taxidermy mounts, we have our own ongoing project of cleaning and
surveying a bird taxidermy collection. The basic procedures in use are:

1. Dust removal from feathers - using a vacuum cleaner (the sort with a
switch to control suction level, turned down to minimum) and a fine textile
mesh. The mesh is first carefuly laid on the bird, one hand is used to keep
the mesh in place and the other hand holds the rubber tube we had attached
to the vacuum cleaner to create a smaller suction arm. This way, dust can
be vacuumed without pulling out feathers. The net has to be lifted off very
carefuly at the end of the process, but once one gets used to how it's
done, it is easy.

2. Glass eyes, and keratin beaks and claws - We mostly cleaned these with
deionized water in very small quantity - simply using cotton wool swabs
dipped in the water, pushed on the edge of the water container to squeeze
out extra water and then appled to the surfaces to be cleaned. Usually
works well, and because so little solvent is used, the risks to the
substrate matter are small. It turned out to be more effective in dust
removal compared with other solvents, and of course safer to let our
student workers work with.

3. Mounts - usually the same as in article 2 above, because upon testing,
water turned out to be safer that other solvents for the type of paints
most often used in our mounts, but that needed to be determined for each
mount individually. You may need to do your own solubility testing for
yours, just as any paintings conservator would do with a painted surface.
In our case, the mounts were most often painted wooden rectangles, with the
occassional fake rock and many with attached natural wooden branches (with
bark, etc.).  A diorama may differ considerably in this respect.

I don't know whether you need to do feather repairs, but there is
information on how to do that. At the time, a few years back, I had
participated in a workshop on this subject and the recommended adhesive for
repairing broken feather shafts was mowilith, 50%-50% in acetone. Since
then, I had used that successfully in our own bird collection. The workshop
had demonstrated techniques as well, taught by instructor Allyson Rae.

As for the arsenic and other stuff quite possibly present on your taxidermy
specimens, if you have any possibility of calling someone with a portable
XRF to do some random non-invasive sampling of surfaces for you, this could
give you a clearer picture of what exactly is present. We did a little of
that ourselves and plan to do so more extensively in the future. It really
helps, both in terms of getting some real information and in terms of
making the hazards clear to everybody involved in working with the
specimens.

Hope this helps,

Gali

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 6:17 PM Cory Redman <corymredman at gmail.com> wrote:

> Our museum will be tackling the task of cleaning our three largest
> dioramas.  Each diorama has 30-40 birds and small mammals taxidermy mounts
> that have not been cleaned in a decade.  The dioramas were created in the
> mid 90's, but the taxidermy mounts are much older than that (assume the
> presence of arsenic).
>
> Any recommendations about method and tips or tricks you can pass along
> about cleaning would be greatly appreciated.  I am aware of the safety
> protection/precautions that need to be employed.  No one on the team,
> including myself has tackled such a large job as this.
>
> Cheers,
> Cory
>
>
>
> --
> Cory M. Redman (BSc; MSc; PhD)
> Science Curator
> Grand Rapids Public Museum
>
> 272 Pearl Street NW
> Grand Rapids, MI 49504
> www.grpm.org
>
> office: 616:929:1766
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-- 
Gali Beiner (ACR)
Conservator, Palaeontology Lab
National Natural History Collections
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Berman Building, Edmond J. Safra campus, Givat Ram
Jerusalem 91904, Israel
Fax. 972-2-6585785
*gali.beiner at mail.huji.ac.il <gali.beiner at mail.huji.ac.il>*

*https://nnhc.huji.ac.il/?lang=en <https://nnhc.huji.ac.il/?lang=en>*
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