26 Sep
2014
26 Sep
'14
6:02 p.m.
On Sep 26, 2014, at 3:49 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
My original statement could be misinterpretted. I did not mean to say
that conserving fien art is trivial, or not important, or anyhting like
that.
My point is hat the whole purpose of a piec of fine art is to give
pleasure by its visual appearance. And thus its appearance is very
important. That is wha tneeds ot be preserved. But a computer (or a
clock, or a steam locomotive, or...) real purpose is to operate. Yes,
many a beautiful to look at too. So while protectign tha appearanec of
such artefacts is important, IMHO it come second to preserving them in an
operational state. Which means to me that anti-static precautions are
more important t han preventign fingerprints on the PCBs.
Indeed. Though the barbarian practices you describe later also violate elementary ?don?t
make it ugly? principles.
True. :-)
I?m not surprised. But that?s precisely the point. If you don?t know what X is, you?re
not qualified to run an X museum.
OUch!.
Regular hardware store screwdrivers, and those found on swiss army knives, are rotten
tools because they are wedges. Proper screwdrivers are found in clockmaker/watchmaker and
gunsmith supply shops. I have such a set that I use whenever I can, because it can?t slip
out of the slot. There?s a nice set available from Brownell?s in the USA, about 6 width
at 4 thickness choices each.
Indeed, and square key tools are readily available, at least if they are the Robinson
pattern. I once picked up a ?security bits? tool set, 100 bits for $10 or so. Not strong
at all but good enough for occasional use, and it included oddball stuff like triwing
(like Phillips but 3-fold symmetry instead of 4-fold). If you run into Bristol spline (in
1950s electronics like the Collins 51-J) it gets a little harder, but those too are still
available at modest prices. And as you point out, any tool you could possibly want is
easy to make with a bit of machining.
paul
What is worse to me is that many museums seem to regard all exhibits as
being pieces of fine art and conserve them accordingly. One 'horror
picture' I saw (relating to a major London musuem) showed some of the
workers handling parts of a prototype electornic device wearing
disposable rubber gloves. Yes, fingerprint oils and sweat do damage
objects. But ESD is a much worse problem for MOS ICs (which I happen to
knwo this deviec was full of). And yet they did nothign about that (no
wrist straps, etc0. In fact the gloves probably made it worse.
That tells me they are not in fact conserving it as if they were
pieces of fine art. Instead, what you describe is an establishment that is, plain and simple, incompetent ? unfit to
pretend to be a museum at
all. Or at least, they hire people who are utterly unqualified for the
job and who should make fish & chips instead.
I am wondering why you want to cvause an outbreak of food poisoning here :-)
Job #1 of conservatorship is to understand what is required to
conserve the thing you?re told to conserve. If you don?t know that
conserving electronic devices requires ESD safety practices, you?re too
stupid to work there, it?s that simple.
I am not sure they _did_ know that :-(Certainly the descriptions o nthe
exhibits do not demonstate much techncial knowledge.
Mind you, I was in siad museum a few weeks ago. I happeneed to see one of
the memebers of staf refittign the covers on a one-of-a-kind device afte
cleaning them. The convers were fixed with slot-head screws and some
quater-turn catches. The former h fitted with a swiss army knife, the
screwdriver blade of which was not the rifght size and was burring the
heads. The latter should have been locked with a square-section key (I do
not know if straight or tapered). Instead he jammed a blade of the swiss
army knife diagonally across the sqare hole and used that to turn it.
The same point I made above applies here, only more so. This is no
different from someone ?restoring? a painting with a paint roller.
(That apparently did happen, at a major museum in Holland, 20 or so years ago. Big scandal. The museum claimed to
have done nothing
wrong.) Again, if someone thinks ?conserving? something means damaging
it by the use of wrong tools, that person doesn?t have enough
functioning brain cells to sweep the floors in that place.
FWIW, I feel the 'swiss army knife' and 'Leatherman' type tools are very
sueful in an emergency. But the screwdriver pladeas are no way a complete
range of sizesm and they are not as comfortable to use and a normal
screwdervier (read : if you don't feel comforatable holdign the tool you
are more likely to let it slip out of the screw slot).
i would expect somebody working in a museum to have the right size
screwdriver for such work (specially ground if necessary).
Especially when the tools in question are readily available for very
small sums of money ? it?s not as if you had to get them custom made.
(And of course, if you work on museum pieces, you DO have to be prepared
to get tools custom made if necessary!)
I have no idea id the square key tool is easy to get, I do know that any
machinist could make one in a few minutes on a millign machine. And
that's what I would do. This si not exactly complicated?