Glass bottle preservation guidelines

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eleutheradiver

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James Cistern, Eleuthera, The Bahamas
I've been researching the best way to preserve my bottle diving finds, and there seems to be a wide variance of opinion on what is necessary amongst both wreck-diving book authors and bottle divers themselves. Some divers simply let the bottles dry and plop them on a shelf, others (like me up until now) soak them in frequently-changed fresh water for a few months before letting them dry. I've also read at least one source that said it's only necessary to soak pre-1800's glass (although it's not clear whether this is a function of the fact that it's handblown glass, or that it's been underwater for 200+ years... in which case a 100 year old bottle should be soaked for half as long, as opposed to not being soaked at all under that guideline).

Has anyone encountered factual research that suggests what kind of desalination steps are necessary, and in which cases? Personal experiences with the fate of bottles of various ages that were soaked vs. not soaked is also welcome!
 
I've been researching the best way to preserve my bottle diving finds, and there seems to be a wide variance of opinion on what is necessary amongst both wreck-diving book authors and bottle divers themselves. Some divers simply let the bottles dry and plop them on a shelf, others (like me up until now) soak them in frequently-changed fresh water for a few months before letting them dry. I've also read at least one source that said it's only necessary to soak pre-1800's glass (although it's not clear whether this is a function of the fact that it's handblown glass, or that it's been underwater for 200+ years... in which case a 100 year old bottle should be soaked for half as long, as opposed to not being soaked at all under that guideline).

Has anyone encountered factual research that suggests what kind of desalination steps are necessary, and in which cases? Personal experiences with the fate of bottles of various ages that were soaked vs. not soaked is also welcome!
http://icua.hr/images/stories/publikacije/Conservation_of_underwater_archaeological_finds_Manual.pdf
Start at page 24.
Personally I just soak them in a tub of vinegar for a couple of days to weeks followed by gentle scrubbing inside and out. I do not polish or varnish them but that's a personal preference.
ZDD
 
I hear it's not good to drop them. :D (My sister did just that to me a long, long time ago). Other than that, I have had no problems with the few that I have found.
 
Great links, guys! Some good info on that happens to bottles that have been underwater for long periods, and how to treat them.

Hamilton's paper seems to imply that desalination is a yes/no question, and not on a linear time scale. Specifically, if your glass is old enough, say, to be hand-blown (one mention in Hamilton says 18th century and newer is generally stable, another says 19th century and newer), then it should be desalinated, and then dried out with alcohol, and then stabilized if necessary, but otherwise you needn't do anything beyond rinsing the found bottle off. It seems like there is no need to soak anything more modern that isn't either 1. cloudy-looking (a sign of chemical leeching/crystalization), or 2. uneven-looking in its composition (e.g., I've got an 1850's bottle that is brown, but has some strange blue glass inclusions in it too, so that might be a modern candidate for desalination prior to drying).

I think, based how drying salt crystals generally act, I'd also soak anything that was cracked, but not completely broken, to keep the crack from expanding during drying.

NetDoc, are you saying your sister dropped you when you were a baby? :tongue2: Or dropped one of your antique bottles? Because honestly I'm not sure which is worse!
 
NetDoc, are you saying your sister dropped you when you were a baby? :tongue2: Or dropped one of your antique bottles? Because honestly I'm not sure which is worse!
While I meant the latter, I'm sure she accomplished the former as well. I found this apothecary bottle in the mountains of SC at an abandoned grave yard near the Appalachian trail back in '73. I carried it on my back for six additional days. We had already determined the bottle was from the early 1800s and it was quite the souvenir for a young boy who loved archaeology. She dropped it on our terrazzo floor while I was unpacking. It survived over 150 years in the wild, only to be destroyed in less than five minutes by carelessness. It was a bitter disappointment and I don't believe I have shown her any of my other finds since! :D
 
thanks for the information, folks. Great discussion!
 
Here is what I've put together from the references on the best way to deal with a bottle containing a cork that was pushed down inside (and survived the ravages of nature because of it!). This is the only method I found that doesn't require exotic chemicals/fungicides/preservatives.

1) Desalinate the bottle and cork as above (just leave it down in the bottle for the fresh water rinse process)
2) After your fresh water flushes are done, drain the water, and now submerge the cork with 100% isopropyl alcohol, or with ethanol (denatured alcohol). Do a couple of extended flushes of this.
3) After your alcohol flushes are done, drain it out, and now submerge the cork in acetone. Do a couple extended flushes of this.
4) The guides now advocate an ether flush, but only if it's really delicate wood. I don't have any ether, and it's just a cork, so skipping that.
5) Let the cork dry. (The purpose of steps 2 - 4 was to very gradually dry the wood cells in the cork; if you simply let the cork go from waterlogged to dry without these gradual steps, it can dry unevenly and weakened wood cell walls can will burst, and the cork can warp/distort/shrink excessively)
6) Extraction without breakage: there are some good YouTube videos on how to non-detrimentally remove a cork from inside a bottle by twisting up a plastic shopping bag, putting it partly down into the bottle to sandwich the cork between the bag and the bottle shoulder, blowing into the bag to inflate around the cork, and then pulling the whole mess out at once with the cork. Also, by waiting until it's dry to remove the cork, you can take advantage of the fact that the cork is smaller when dry, and hopefully it will get less strained/damaged during removal.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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