Ugh...moldy cab

[jrmintz]

This Victor cabinet I found works great, but it must have sat in a damp basement for 50 years and it had a lot of mold on it. I took it apart, washed everything with Murphy's Oil Soap, let it dry in the sun. It's better, but the mold still smells awful, and my eyes are burning after working on it. Anyone have any ideas how to get rid of it?

Thanks

[Frankenamp]

Be careful. Some of those molds will give you Legioniers Disease (Legionella Bacter) and other nasssty things. Use Clorox bleach and water diluted about 1/4 cup to the gallon. wet everything down good and rinse well with distilled water. then let dry. If the cone and suspension look OK, don't do them unless you have to. see if sunshine will do the trick there. Wood will need to be scrubbed down good with the bleach though. let the wood spend a lot of time in the sun, if it still stinks after this- do it again. mold is nothing to fool with.

[PRR]

Mold never goes away. You can scrub the visible growth (the fruiting body) but the spores hide in any crack or porous area. Mold spores are VERY tough. Anything that will kill spores will ruin wood (paper, leather, tolex, etc). They are there forever. The best you can do is keep it VERY dry so they won't sprout again.

Scrub it hard with something nastier than Murphy's fine soap. Visit the bathtub cleaners at the supermarket, but beware that many of these are formulated for ceramic and plastic, will damage wood and other materials. Also look at deck cleaners. But none of them really do the job 100% (if they did, you wouldn't buy more every month).

If you can get most of the visible mold off, DRY IT. Sun is good, dew is bad. I'd be thinking a couple 150W spotlamps, so the surface is warm to the touch, much warmer than the room (low humidity). And if you ever chopped firewood, you know that most of the wood-water comes off the first months but it takes years to get wood bone-dry. Even with strong heat, it may take a month or more to bring 50 years of dampness out of the boards.

When it is so very dry that no spore can sprout, scrub it or sand it, dry any superficial water, then shellac it. Use -fresh- shellac on a very dry day. Ideally thin a 3lb cut 50:50 with shellac alcohol to make a very-thin mostly-spirit brew that will soak into the wood and leave a very thin film in every pore.

Very clean and shellacked will not smell so much.

Shellac won't make the wood water-proof. Long-term, water vapor balances with the room air. You will always need to keep it in a place that is dry almost all the time. What the shellac does is prevent an outbreak of mold if you happen to have one wet day- good shellac will retard water so it takes several/many days for the wood moisture level to rise to the sprouting point.

Legionnaire's Disease specifically is not likely on a damp amp (LD likes liquid water). But there are dozens/millions of other serious health issues with the zillions of molds in the world. Molds get ahead in the world by irritating or poisoning other life forms to gain a little place to live and a little food to grow on. They don't intend to kill you, but all life has similar chemistry, so you can be sickened, possibly very seriously.

At some point you gotta ask yourself: is this worth it? Or should you take pictures and measurements and reproduce it? 

[jrmintz]

Thanks for your help guys. PRR, you nailed it - I don't think it's worth it. I doubt the covering would stand up to the scrubbing necessary. Maybe I'll just save the cool metal grill and throw the rest away. I was surprised at how much I was affected by the mold - I'm not usually an allergy sufferer, but this was different.

Thanks again,

Seth

[PRR]

> I was surprised at how much I was affected by the mold - I'm not usually an allergy sufferer, but this was different.

There is mold allergy, unusual sensitivity and histamine response (runny nose, itchy). There are also outright poisons, 'mycotoxins', in -some- molds: "...can pose serious health risks to humans and animals. Exposure to high levels of mycotoxins can lead to neurological problems and in some cases death." "mycotoxins have the potential for both acute and chronic health effects via ingestion, skin contact, and inhalation. These toxins can enter the blood stream and lyphmpatic system, they inhibit protein synthesis, damage macrophage systems, inhibit particle clearance of the lung, and increase sensitivity to bacterial endotoxin."

Athlete's foot and Jock Itch are mold-type fungi (molds are fungi which grow a certain way).

"...some mold spores may begin to grow on living tissue, attaching to cells along the respiratory tract and causing further problems in those with weak immune systems. "

> Maybe I'll just save the cool metal grill...

The metal grille is salvagable. Molds won't grow on metal. Molds will grow on dust, so you gotta get it totally clean.

> ...and throw the rest away.

"A conservative strategy is to discard any building materials saturated by the water intrusion or having visible mold growth."

BTW: "Improper methods for cleaning mold include exposure to high heat, dry air, sunlight (particularly UV light), ozone, and application of fungicides. These methods may render the mold non-viable, however, the mold and its by-products can still elicit negative health effects." cite

"The main impact of direct sun is drying, and this may be useful if materials are damp and the mold is "active." Ultraviolet radiation in daylight is detrimental to paper-based materials and has a minimal effect on mold. It may temporarily inactivate, but will not kill or remove mold. Ultraviolet radiation in a laboratory setting requires appropriate eye and skin protection and is of questionable applicability to paper-based materials."

Mold techniques for libraries and museums.

[jrmintz]

There is one other thing I thought I might try: there's a product called Starbrite 'Mildew Gas' that I read about. It's a fumigant used by boaters to kill molds in bilges. It comes in a bag like desiccants and you put one in a space and seal it up. Supposedly it kills molds and spores. After some time period you air the thing out completely. I thought I'd put it in the cabinet, close it up, then put the cabinet in a big plastic bag and seal it up for a month or two. I suppose it's worth a shot.


Update:  I ordered one of these things. It's a sealed bag of crystals and it comes with a mesh bag. You put the crystals in the mesh bag and put that in the space and seal it up. I have a respirator that will protect me from the gas, I think. I'll report back.

[PRR]

> I have a respirator that will protect me from the gas,

Very unlikely. Chlorine Dioxide and the chlorine that comes from it are not stopped by standard respirators. It "can" be used safely, but be very-very careful about it. It is a potent irritant, and has caused deaths. (OTOH, weak stablized ClO2 solutuions are used as strong mouth-wash.)

Good luck, and let us know how/if it works.

[jrmintz]

Thanks PRR. I will be very careful. I'll definitely let everyone know how it works out.

[Frankenamp]

See if you can find a MkV gas mask at the local military surplus store (and a few extra cartridges) might be a little better than the usual 3M mask. Chlorine gas was one of the agents used in WWI and by no means the worst. Hopefully we will never ever see Mustard, Phosgene, or VX (nerve) agents used in the theater of operations ever again. Parathion*, Malthion* and DDT* though have found their ways into the food chain as insecticides... (remembers with a shudder the bags of yellow, tan, and white powders laying about the basement- with the little red skull & crossbones on either side of the instructions)


*wonderful little witches' brews that were brought over here from Hitlers chemical weapons programs- were to Dow & Dupont et.al. what Werner Von Braun & his toys were to NASA.

[TubeStake]

Wondering about the progress report on this project. Did you gas your cabinet yet? If yes, did you notice discoloration?
I have a tweed Gibson GA-6 with moderate mildew spots in the tweed fabric and grille cloth. I've yet to do anything about it other than store it in a dry place with good air circulation. I suspect ClO2 would have a bleaching effect on the color in the fabrics.

[jrmintz]

I put the packet in the cabinet and put the cabinet in a plastic bag in my garage. It's been about three weeks or so and I've been very busy so I haven't had a chance to check. I thought I'd leave it for a few more weeks. The directions don't say how long to leave the packet in, but my sense is it's designed to be left in a boat closed up over the winter. I'll let you know what happens.