Re: Vasa Problems (underwater archaeology "sub-arch" forum)

Back in the early 1980s a ship was found at the "175 Water Street Site" actually not a single building but a consolidation of previous addresses encompassing a whole old city block in New York City on the edge and resulting building shadow into the South Street Historic District there, a trade-off reported in the press for new zone additional floor(s) for the archaeology, reported in the press after the work. One of the problems with the wood of the "Ronson" ship was that it was supersaturated and its was thought cell wall structure had broken down which leads to structural problems of preservation, which I have no idea how the "apple cheek " bow was conserved reported to be treated at the Newport News Mariner Museum now also in partnership with South Street. On another site, the so-called "Assay Site" after the US Federal use of it also near the Seaport District, and its sand blasted chimney stack recovery and "floating vault" on vertical railroad track as rebar, so one could see under it, thwarting would-be tunnels into it was removed a number of thought British cannons and pieces thereof were brought up by the French firm digging the narrow "slurry wall" into the landfill and chiseled into the bedrock, through a mixture of bentonite and water whose specific gravity keeps surrounding water out of the trench and carries the rock and debris out. The pieces were placed in "coffin liners" modified with spigots to recycle the water and remove salts from them. A company provided a stearate based treatment which we applied and re-immersed the cannon pieces which I was told absorbed the stearin or stearate based solvent thereby displacing the water molecules in the what was becoming porous iron structure. Perhaps something similar might work in wood? Mr. Jed Levin, now with the NPS in Philadelphia, PA, working on the former slave quarters of our first presidents was the person who gave me the can and asked that it be applied. He would have more knowledge of it. The cannons left on a flatbed trailer in their coffin liners for extended treatment in Tallahassee, Florida where they were placed in circulating water tanks I was told. They may have been ballast or dumped before, during or after the American Revolution. Maybe it was WD-34?