Tamara,

Storage of such materials is a matter of risk assessment, and it is always
better to err on the side of safety.

Any live flammable or explosive material poses a threat to both collections
and personnel. Fortunately, with respect to cartridges and shells, it is
possible to deactivate them with a minimum of damage to the historic shell
(i.e. the projectle and cartridge casing.  You would not believe how many
live shells are used to door stops to this day!

DO NOT try to deactivate materials yourself. Contact your local military
ordinance team and ask them about removing the projectiles from cartridges
or artillery shells, emptying the powder and exploding or removing the
primer. They can also remove the powder from paper or skin cartridges
rendering them less flammable. This has to be done with special equipment by
knowledgeable persons. While the artifact will no longer be in  its
"original" state, you and the collections will. There are a few exceptions
deemed to dangerous to handle, such as Japanese WWII hand grenades and
anything contained "aged" TNT or anti-tamper devices (booby traps). These
are pretty much write offs.

As for matches, my suggestion (although there will probably be dissenters)
would be to carefully cut the heads off paper matches and to discard wooden
matches. The paper packs or containers could then be kept. There is zilch
that we do not know about how matches were made, so no data will be
destroyed. I am sure that some conservation whiz could figure out a chemical
means of neutralizing the match heads, but is it worth the cost?

One caution. Be careful about letting the local bomb squad or ordinance team
do the work unsupervised. Many bomb squads simply take the material, wrap it
in primer cord, and blow it up on the nearest range.
----------------------
Byron Johnson, Director
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
P.O. Box 2570, Waco, Texas 76702-2570
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
"...Unless a people are educated and enlightened it is idle
to expect the continuance of civil liberty or the capacity
for self-government."
Texas Declaration of Independence,  March 2, 1836.