Tom´s Restorations

[Tom_Restorer]

Something different until I can post more fotos of the grenade.

Just cleaned a 1694 half reale from the Association, sunk in 1707 wich I want to show you.

The upper fotos show the acid cleaned coin, done by the salvors, still with some conretion in the deeper details and no nice surface.

It has now much more details like the lions and castles and also "CAROLUS" is now good to read and the upper details are much smoother.

Diameter: 15 mm Weight: 1.4 Gramms

 

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[Tom_Restorer]

Just a quick photo after electrolysis and hot wax treatment. Looks better in original! Because the flash it shows more as it is to see in real.

Next step, after making the first paintings, is to fill the cracks and put the canvas and ropes back in original position.

 

[Tom_Restorer]

Grenade is finished but unfortunately I have again problems to upload pics to the forum....

 

[Simon1]

That was a great job Tom. What is going to happen to the grenade now ? Museum or your private horde ?

 

[Tom_Restorer]

next try...

 

[Tom_Restorer]

That was a great job Tom. What is going to happen to the grenade now ? Museum or your private horde ?

--

Budddy, it is on the way back to my friend who salvaged the Princess Maria and I guess he will sell it.

The next project I get from him is a cartridge case.

Like the one on this photo. Made of Brass, leather etc.

 

[Tom_Restorer]

PS: This grenade needs to go in a museum because it is the only known one in this complete condition!

Would be a shame if it just goes into a private collection and only a few people will be able to see it.

 

[Simon1]

Again nice job Tom. How old is the cartridge case and how much of it do you have to work with ?

 

[Simon1]

PS: This grenade needs to go in a museum because it is the only known one in this complete condition!

Would be a shame if it just goes into a private collection and only a few people will be able to see it.

========

I agree with you. Was there any kind of estimate on its value ?

 

[Tom_Restorer]

========

I agree with you. Was there any kind of estimate on its value ?

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I saw grenades in bad condition without or just a very ugly plug gone for 1500 Euros some month ago on an auction.

I guess one like this has may a value of 2500 with this provenance.

 

[Tom_Restorer]

Again nice job Tom. How old is the cartridge case and how much of it do you have to work with ?

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Same ship, same age! 334 years old

It is nearly complete, just the leather lid is gone.

 

[Tom_Restorer]

just an other before - after pic.

 

[PetesPockets55]

just an other before - after pic.

Absolutely fantastic job on the preservation and documentation.

Before and after images are just jaw dropping and inspiring.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

You are truly a credit to your profession.

 

[Tom_Restorer]

Absolutely fantastic job on the preservation and documentation.

Before and after images are just jaw dropping and inspiring.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

You are truly a credit to your profession.

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Thank you Pete!

It was a lot of fun to restore it. Specially because the complexity with the different materials.
In a wet condition this would not work but if the canvas (or wool etc) is in a dry condition, it is quite easy to clean and to remove.

 

[xaos]

Beautiful restoration job and perfect documentation of the process, artifact, and construction materials!

I believe the cast iron was brazed, not welded, hence the softer metal you are encountering.

Cast iron doesnt do well under tension and becomes even more brittle with the stress of the brazing. With these stress fractures, it make it more likely to fracture into small pieces. From what I understand, this wasnt really successful, and the fragments were large, but still better than a complete casting.

There seems to be reference to adding graphite to the cast iron mix to make it better for small piece fracture, and easier to construct and weld. By any chance, did you do a spectrographic analysis of the metal?

An ongoing study https://exarc.net/issue-2018-01/mm/shifting-sand-replicating-black-powder-grenades

Three artifact collections were utilized for this study; The Queen Anne’s Revenge, the 1715 plate fleet wreck, and the 1733 plate fleet wreck, which together offer a sample size of 60 grenades. A similar shipwreck, the Whydah, established a typology system for grenades, but is too limited in its range of measurements and flexibility to include other collections (Hamilton 1992:277–296). In consultation with Eric Farrell, a conservator at Queen Anne’s Revenge Laboratory, a new archaeometry system of measurements was developed to resolve previous shortcomings. The measurements of the corpus were subjected to a statistical analysis of mean variance to determine average measurements of each feature. Overall, the exteriors of the shells measure 76 mm, with an interior cavity of 50 mm and a fuse hole of 12 mm. These measurements were used as the basis for replicas of both material types.

The sizes represented appear to be close to the size of the grenade that you restored.
I feel that your valuable measurements, especially the wood plug and power weight would be invaluable to this study and reconstruction testing that they are doing. A collaboration of your findings and their testing and reconstruction efforts would be incredibly valuable research.
The results of the study, with historical reference and the test results, (showing damage), may be interest to your friend for valuation purposes!
Afterall, everyone wants to see the kind of damage a munition does!

(what is your native language?)

 

[capt dom]

Thank you enrada!
You can´t compare this with a modern welding wich is real hard in fact. This is cast iron and I don´t know yet how good the contact between cast iron and the welding material is. If you break casted iron, you can see how weak this material is. Also I have to check the inside if the weldings goes over complete area and ends inside. We will see this later but I guess that the two parts are still open on the inside. If there is no seam inside but a line filled with red rust, we only got an out side welding here wich makes it indeed easyier to "pop off".
While cleaning I recognised also that the material of the seam is a little bit softer. Ok, it is not iron but Oxyde, but the differense was to see.

The metallurgy back then of ordinance was quite interesting. Some cannon balls were often cast of layered metals, I assumed to they would fragment upon impact. Many of the early Jupiter Wreck cannon balls were "pegged". as well with a wooden peg.

 

[Smithbrown]

I suspect they are cast in a two part mould- that is the usual procedure for this period. Because they are grenades, no one cleans up the seam. No brazing, no welding.

 

[Tom_Restorer]

Beautiful restoration job and perfect documentation of the process, artifact, and construction materials!

I believe the cast iron was brazed, not welded, hence the softer metal you are encountering.

Cast iron doesnt do well under tension and becomes even more brittle with the stress of the brazing. With these stress fractures, it make it more likely to fracture into small pieces. From what I understand, this wasnt really successful, and the fragments were large, but still better than a complete casting.

There seems to be reference to adding graphite to the cast iron mix to make it better for small piece fracture, and easier to construct and weld. By any chance, did you do a spectrographic analysis of the metal?

An ongoing study https://exarc.net/issue-2018-01/mm/shifting-sand-replicating-black-powder-grenades

Three artifact collections were utilized for this study; The Queen Anne’s Revenge, the 1715 plate fleet wreck, and the 1733 plate fleet wreck, which together offer a sample size of 60 grenades. A similar shipwreck, the Whydah, established a typology system for grenades, but is too limited in its range of measurements and flexibility to include other collections (Hamilton 1992:277–296). In consultation with Eric Farrell, a conservator at Queen Anne’s Revenge Laboratory, a new archaeometry system of measurements was developed to resolve previous shortcomings. The measurements of the corpus were subjected to a statistical analysis of mean variance to determine average measurements of each feature. Overall, the exteriors of the shells measure 76 mm, with an interior cavity of 50 mm and a fuse hole of 12 mm. These measurements were used as the basis for replicas of both material types.

The sizes represented appear to be close to the size of the grenade that you restored.
I feel that your valuable measurements, especially the wood plug and power weight would be invaluable to this study and reconstruction testing that they are doing. A collaboration of your findings and their testing and reconstruction efforts would be incredibly valuable research.
The results of the study, with historical reference and the test results, (showing damage), may be interest to your friend for valuation purposes!
Afterall, everyone wants to see the kind of damage a munition does!

(what is your native language?)

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I can say now for sure that it was just brazed at the outside! I looked inside and there was nothing to see.
Unfortunately I am not able to make spectrographic analysis myself.
My native language is german.

 

[Tom_Restorer]

Restored cannonball from the Association 1707

How it looked when I bought it, after cleaning the black paint off and finished after electrolysis and hot wax finish.

Size is 7 cm, weight 3 pounds

 

[xaos]

Grüsse Gott! Welcher teil von Deutschland? Ich kann das netzwerk erreichen und sehen, ob es einen pXRF in ihrer nähe gibt.