F-rust-trating rust...

Our conservation intern Nat finished up with us just before Christmas but wrote a last blog post before she left. (You can see what she was working on in her two previous posts: http://lhsa.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-crocodile-in-collections.html; http://lhsa.blogspot.com/2018/12/catching-up-with-nat-and-vannis.html.) 

While she was rehousing the Ernst Levin Collection, Nat removed a lot of rusty paperclips in her efforts to provide the best possible care. Her final blog for LHSA reflects on this most untRUSTworthy means of holding sheets of paper together!

It is thought that a paper conservator’s worst enemy is sellotape (http://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/conservation/2018/10/22/icky-sticky-tape/), but it has a rival...using metal staples and paperclips is pretty destructive as well. I am sure everyone has had to use them – they are so convenient and easy. The long-term effects they have on paper, however, are not very promising. Metal paper fasteners cause a lot of deformation that usually becomes the reason for more permanent damage such as tears, but this is not the full extent of the problem: they tend to become rusty over time and this has an ongoing damaging effect on paper.

Here's an example of the kind of damage I found in the Ernst Levin Collection that was caused by the presence of metal paper fasteners that had degraded over time. 

Rust, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is a reddish- or yellowish-brown flaking coating of iron oxide that is formed on iron or steel by oxidation, especially in the presence of moisture. The metal ions react with cellulose polysaccharide chains (in the paper) and breaks them down. When the chain breaks, unstable radicals are present which, in turn, are involved in another similar oxidation-reduction process and the effect of the overall reaction gets multiplied. It only needs 10% of the cellulose chain links to be broken for the cellulose fibre to be completely destroyed. And to add to it all, other corrosive products, which may be acidic, are also produced which go on to further damage the paper surface.

It doesn't stop there though...the effect is ongoing until all of the metal ions have reacted with the cellulose and even though you think you may be looking at old rust on your paper documents, and that the damage has already been done, this isn’t always the case.

Removing all the rust requires complicated conservation treatment if you really want to deal with it, so isn’t it better to avoid clips and staples altogether?

And if you think that you only use them occasionally, you might not realise how often we are tempted to reach for that paperclip! Here you can see just some of the metal paper fasteners that have been removed from the LHSA collection.