Damaged, Repair, Clean, Preserve Soviet Awards And Documents.

[CtahhR]

Now the clothing is something else all together. After years and when you think the smell is gone..... it gets a little wet and your nose returns all the memories...

[Bill Garvy]

Olfactory memory is the most persistent . .

[EricFG]

The result: nice and clean!
Just hot water and dishsoap in a small bowl and then a rub with a dampened microfibre cloth, a rinse and then buff to dry it all.

[progress]

EricFG,
you did a good job but you should avoid hot water. Enamels can have invisible cracks or can have inclusions "born" during enamelling process. Hot water can break enamels if there are these "invisible problems".

[EricFG]

I didn't subject it to superheated steam or anything such, just warm/hot tap water. I've had zero enamel expolsions due to my cleaning experiments but I will be more careful in the future

[CtahhR]

I have often boiled my hard enamelled items..... not yet had a problem with them... Often removed the fake though..... If something is damaged and waiting for it, you can't be blamed for being part of history.

[progress]

EricFG and CtahhR,
enamels can be considered glass. As you know glass is an amorphous material. We consider it a solid material but it is technically wrong. It is a high-density fluid. Glass is like a sea. You see it and you think it is only water because our eye can’t ‘understand’ all the currents ( try to think to the Gulf Stream). Hot enamels have a similar effect. Experts knows they have to cool slowly their glass/hot enamels. This process gives the time to amalgamate enamels and eliminate those ‘currents’. They often have to cool slowly their items for hours or an entire day in a special furnace. If you try to cool quickly your item its hot enamels will break. If those ‘currents’ are not perfectly eliminated you item can be damaged by temperature changes. Your item can be perfect for 50 years or have this problem after 5 minutes. When I wrote ‘inclusions’ I was thinking to these ‘currents’ (not bubbles). Soviet made enamels are stronger than European/Japanese ones but they are not indestructible as you know. Try to see your soviet orders with little chips: they have conchoidal fractures. These fractures can be observed on amorphous materials.
CtahhR,
You can’t be responsible if you didn’t damaged it but you have the responsibility to preserve it and its actual conditions. This is my point of view.

[PaulR]

I have never even heard of serialized Campaign medals before... they are not logged or archived, so what would be the point? I can see a veteran doing so to sort of "name" his own medals, so that they match up to his CM Medal... but I would not think that this would raise the value of the grouping or etc.

BTW, nice Stalingrad bar!

[desantnik]

Originally Posted by PaulR

I have never even heard of serialized Campaign medals before... they are not logged or archived, so what would be the point? I can see a veteran doing so to sort of "name" his own medals, so that they match up to his CM Medal... but I would not think that this would raise the value of the grouping or etc.

The serial number matches stamped into the medal matches the recipient's document number.

A s/n'd award could be of higher value due to the unusual/rarer nature of it, but because it is so easy to do (or fake), buyer beware.

[PaulR]

Thanks for the reply. Who would hvae stamped the number into the medal? Not the mint, right?