Antiques, their restoration and preservation / by A. Lucas.

  • Alfred Lucas
Date:
[1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Antiques, their restoration and preservation / by A. Lucas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    however, ensures more than a limited protection against certain kinds of insects. The best cure for materials that are attacked is fumigation, either with carbon disulphide or with a mixture of ethylene dichloride (3 parts by volume) and carbon tetrachloride (1 part by volume), the latter being added to make the material non-inflammable. These are liquids that on exposure to the air evaporate, forming gases that are very effective insecticides. The simplest and most satisfactory method of using them is to leave them, contained in suitable receptacles, ex¬ posed for several days in the upper part 1 of the show-case in which are the articles to be treated, or to remove the articles to a special air-tight case in which the fumigation may be carried out. Liquid carbon disulphide is very inflammable and very volatile and the vapour is also very in¬ flammable and when mixed with air in certain small proportions is also explosive ; it must there¬ fore be used with all necessary precautions and fires, naked lights and smoking in the vicinity must be avoided. Carbon disulphide, too, has a 1 The gases are heavier than air. Leechman (D. Leech- man, Technical Methods in the Preservation of Anthropo¬ logical Museum Specimens, 1931, p. 136) recommends 0-8 pounds weight of carbon disulphide or 1*4 pounds weight of the ethylene dichloride and carbon tetrachloride mixture for each 100 cubic feet of space.
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