Preserving 200-Year-Old Agricultural Tools: A Conservation Journey

When Rust Tells a Story

In our climate-controlled conservation lab on the third floor of Panchapuri Museum, a team of three specialists carefully brush away decades of corrosion from an iron sickle — a ko — that last harvested rice sometime in the early 1800s. The work is slow, meditative, and profoundly meaningful.

"Every layer of rust is a layer of time," says Ramesh Oli, our lead conservator, who trained at the National Museum in Kathmandu before joining us in 2021. "We're not just cleaning metal. We're peeling back history."

The Surkhet Agricultural Collection

The museum's agricultural collection — comprising over 340 objects — is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in mid-western Nepal. Donated primarily by farming families from Birendranagar and the surrounding villages, these tools represent an unbroken chain of agricultural practice stretching from the 18th century to the present day.

Many were still in use when they were donated. We have sickles that were put down on a Tuesday and donated on a Wednesday, their edges still sharp enough to harvest grain. Others came to us in boxes, wrapped in cloth, having been stored in roof spaces for generations — known to be important but not quite known why.

The Conservation Process

Iron conservation begins with documentation: every object is photographed in multiple lights, measured, weighed, and given a condition report. We use X-ray imaging to understand the internal structure of heavily corroded pieces, allowing us to see what lies beneath the rust before we commit to any treatment.

The actual cleaning uses a combination of mechanical cleaning with brushes and micro-abrasives, and chemical treatment with tannic acid solutions that convert unstable iron oxides into stable compounds. It is painstaking work — a single sickle might take forty hours of careful attention before it's stable enough to be housed in our collection.