Found a trick for cleaning old pottery shards without damaging them

I was scrubbing some medieval pottery finds from a site near Norwich and kept scratching the glaze off with a stiff brush. Tried soaking them in a mix of distilled water and a tiny bit of oxalic acid for 10 minutes and it lifted all the dirt without any damage. Anyone else use a chemical soak that works better than plain water for delicate pieces?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannah_perry1mo ago

I mean, that's kind of like how you find one little hack that works for everything.

annaw731mo agoMost Upvoted

but like, does it actually work for everything or is it just that you've convinced yourself it does? i feel like there's a difference between a tool that's genuinely versatile and just getting used to forcing a round peg into a square hole because you don't wanna learn something new. have you ever hit a wall with that hack where it just completely failed you? cause i swear, every time i think i've got a one-size-fits-all trick, life comes along and smacks me with a situation where it's totally useless.

the_aaron1mo ago

Oh yeah, I've totally been there. Found a trick for getting my kid to eat vegetables by mixing them into a sauce, and it worked perfectly for months until I tried it with kale and he literally spit it out. That's when I realized every hack has its limits, but for me the key is just having a solid toolkit of a few different hacks rather than one magic fix.