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Scoffing at My Scuff Marks: Attempting Repair on a CAA Medal

 

      Step 1: I examined the medal to see where I should target my repair efforts.
  Step 2: I attempted to scrub the medal with some "Method" hand soap and my damp cloth.
   Step 3: I realized that the removal of the marks on my medal would not happen this evening.
      Step 4: I placed the medal back into the case I previously withdrew it from.

Unfortunately, I could not for the life of me track down a care/maintenance guide dating from the early 20th century to clean medallions. I was quite surprised by this because I found plenty of Great War forums and blog posts which dealt with cleaning a war medal, but I could not find a pamphlet from a specific publisher or company that produced a guide to the cleaning of medallions. On an interesting note: my search did lead me to coinage cleaning and then to the term numismatics: the study or collection of coins, tokens, and paper money and sometimes related objects (such as medals).[1] In my twenty-four years of life, I can honestly say that I have never heard of this term before, so hooray for learning!

I will corral myself so that I can stay on topic. Though I could not find a relevant maintenance guide from the early 20th century, I did find two websites with helpful information about cleaning war medals. The first website was of the Dalton and Company Professional Cleaning Supply based in Muncie, Indiana whose site not only provided instructions on cleaning medallions but listed out the names of certain war medals and why each medal would be given to a recipient. This site suggested that you should use a chemical called “silver cleaner”, which I could not get my hands on, so I opted to use something else.[2] I would like to credit the site’s suggestion to remove the ribbon from the medal before applying any chemical to it so that someone would not accidently tarnish this portion of the medal.

The second website that I thought was useful was a site of the Australian Government’s Department of Defence (I thought that I was spelling defense wrong, but it turns out that this is how it is spelled on the site)! Anyway, The Australian Government website was helpful for me to clean my medal because it suggested using a “non-acidic cleaner” and a damp cloth.[3] I could get my hands on a non-acidic cleaner and a cloth, so I decided to use a very sparse amount of hand soap and a blue cloth to attempt to remove the two scoffs on my medal. This website was also helpful in that it warned anyone who took on the task that they should be wary of chemicals which may irritate one’s skin. This information may seem like common knowledge, but I do appreciate the warning available to anyone who may need it.

 If I were to remove the ribbon attached to my medal, I would have to tear the ribbon’s thread apart. Since I really value this medal, I chose to skip this part of maintenance and to place the ribbon away from the medal’s base. I dampened my cloth and applied some soap to it and started to lightly scrub at the scuff marks on my medal. After five minutes of scrubbing, I realized that the marks on the medal could not be removed with the soap I had on hand. Though I wanted to finish off this process by placing my medal in a glass case, I again was lacking the material to take care of my medal as many curators see fit. After letting the medal dry, the best that I could do was to place it back within the box in which the medal was bestowed to me.

I am aware that with objects like medallions, museums take great measures to ensure that they are properly housed in areas which prevent oxidation or erosion and in dry temperatures that will not damage the material of the medal. I appreciated the fact that both the Australian Government website as well as the Dalton and Co. website recommended dry areas and to avoid damp storage areas for medallions. From personal experience, I am also aware that museum professionals would prefer casings that provide UV protection as well as prevention against damp environments.

 

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