New white paper on wood repairs
Historic New England has just published a new white paper on the marking, or labeling, of wood repairs. Marking our repairs with a visible date not only helps us document repairs that we make to our museum properties, but it also allows us to more easily differentiate repairs made today from previous repairs or even the original work. This technique, when used in combination with photographic and written documentation of projects, enhances our understanding of repair work done to our properties across their lifetimes.
- The backs of clapboards are stenciled with the year to help identify repairs.
Today we use either date-stamped copper tags or stencils on repairs that will be hidden from normal view. A more subtle approach is used when the repairs will be visible to the public.
Click here to access the white papers on Documentation.
As a historical note, the marking of new material is a tradition at Historic New England that reaches back to our founder, William Sumner Appleton. Appleton looked at the issue in 1917 with four other restoration professionals and developed a trial system based on furniture tacks as a subtle way to distinguish new and old wood:
“For the moment attention was limited to a signal for painted woodwork…An ordinary rounded-top upholstery tack was the signal finally selected, one tack to be driven into each end, or at each corner of the new piece of wood. Were an entire object new, a group of three tacks forming a triangle in a corner, preferably the upper right-hand corner, was the signal selected…A signal must be found too for unpainted wood. The danger in using tacks there is that on taking them out, or on their falling out, their absence would be unnoticeable and they might not be replaced. On painted wood, the missing tack would uncover the unpainted wood beneath. Perhaps a system of burning or stamping the signal into the unpainted wood would suffice. No appropriate signals for brick, tile, stone, iron or plaster work have been decided on and yet they are needed, since our old New England work contains all of these materials.” (Bulletin of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, volume IX, No. 1, Serial No. 18, 1918, page 34-35).
If you look very closely at the woodwork on your next tour of the Otis House, you will see the tacks are still in the woodwork that was restored.
