Vinegar & Water

     On day 1 I went to the museum for 1 1/2 hours. On this day I worked with water and the dental pick to continue cleaning the bone I was working on last time. There's so much dirt on these bones, so they take quite a bit of cleaning. The other difficulty with these bones is that they've been sitting for a year with the dirt drying out on them. This means that I have to use a lot of water to loosen the dirt up so I can get it off. I think I need to scrub these bones down with water and a toothbrush to loosen up the dirt enough to really remove it all. I'm excited to get them cleaned so I can play around with them to see how they fit together.

     On day 2 I went the lab for 2 1/4 hours. This time I decided to work with another one of the bones I've been working on to practice cleaning with vinegar. I started out with cotton swabs and vinegar, which worked well but was using a lot of cotton swabs for not a lot of progress so I changed my tactic. I decided instead to scrub the bone down with vinegar and a toothbrush to loosen up more of the dirt. This plan worked really well and I was able to get the majority of the dirt loosened up. I followed this up with water and a toothbrush so that the vinegar wouldn't be left of the bone to eat away at it, this is a very important step. After this process I was able to get the majority of the dirt off. So I followed this up with the small air scribe to take off small amounts of caliche at a time. You can see the progress below.