Nancy,

With already rusting steel shelves I would be concerned about the 
transfer of ferrous stains to materials or objects in immediate contact 
with them - especially if relative humidity really gets elevated or, if 
for whaterver cause, the shelves get wet. And yes, often collections 
will get wet when you least expect it!

Iron goes very readily into solution and can wick right into any 
absorbant materials, be they acid free of not. So, I would reject 
anything like cotton or tissue and use a shelf liner such as coroplast 
(an inert semi-ridgid archival plastic).

Trying to clean up the rust and repaint the shelves gets you into the 
issues of the paint and the volitiles that it contains, so you may be 
compounding the original problem by the hardware store solution.

Finally, since you have received grant funds, do you really want to 
have donated rusty shelving in your project photos or in view of the 
folks who awarded the money?

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Conservator
Los Angeles, California

-----Original Message-----
From: Nancy Reddy <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent:         Thu, 4 Aug 2005 15:29:54 -0400
Subject: Rusty metal shelves

   Hi everyone,
I wrote a grant application this spring and was awarded $1,500 to spend
on preserving our town's historic artifacts. I included metal shelving 
in
the application but have since been given a donation of shelving. 
Trouble
is, there's a bit of rust on most of the shelves.

Is this going to be a problem for the shelves that I will be setting 
acid
free boxes on? How about if I want to set a larger artifact on a shelf
(say, something leather or wood)? Should I protect the item by putting
cotton sheeting between it and the shelf or should I reject the rusty
shelving altogether and buy new ones?

Excuse my continued ignorance...I'm a volunteer and doing the best I 
can!
The information you all have provided so far has probably saved our
collection!

Thanks for your advice,
Nancy R.
non-professional volunteer historian in a mostly apathetic community

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