Making a cavity packing art box

As part of my research project on the historic armorer’s tools of the Arms & Armor department, an extra crate full of tools that belonged to this collection was removed from underground storage and unpacked so I could inventory and examine them. Although most of these tools found accommodation in the lab along with the other items that had been kept out for presentation and use for the past century, a few items were either too fragile or oddly shaped for the available storage options. I therefore made an art box for three specific items: a bellows, a breast drill, and a hand plane. First, I cut a bed for each item in a block of Ethafoam (sized to fit inside a standard conservation storage box)—the finicky part was carving out the bed for the breast drill, as it had to sit at a slight angle so the handle would not exceed the height of the box. Then, I cut outlines around the beds to tuck in the edges of the Tyvek sheets with which I lined the beds (in order to protect the objects from friction against the coarse Ethafoam). Finally, I stenciled the accession numbers of each item on the Ethafoam, so these objects could easily be identified, and then moved the three tools into their new home.