• Journal of Conservation Science
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.821-830
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• 2021

The weapons excavated from the de-militarized zones (DMZ) of Korea are vulnerable to corrosion due to the immediate and drastic environmental change. Especially, the chloride ions (Cl^-) in iron weapons cause active corrosion and require removal. In this study, conservation treatment and de-salination was performed for the discovered weapons from excavation sites of soldiers killed in action during the Korean War. Furthermore, an attempt was made to prepare the most stable plan for conservation treatment through the comparative study of soaking weapons in distilled water without chemicals and in a solution of sodium (SSC) at different temperatures. In the preliminarily experiments, the comparison of the eluted Cl^- ions according to different conditions of de-salination showed that the highest number of ions were detected from the de-salination with SSC at a temperature of 100℃, and its duration was much smaller, i.e., 1~2 weeks. Accordingly, for the parts from the guns and rifles amongst other objects, a six-time de-salination was conducted in the SSC solution for 8 hours at 100℃ and subsequently, for 16 hours at room temperature during which the distilled water and SSC were exchanged every week. However, in the case of a loaded rifle, the de-salination was not conducted, considering the risk that the high temperature and pressure by impregnation in vacuum could cause an explosion