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These overlays on the body armour give an idea of the major areas and kinds of damage the suit had suffered.
Much of the damage was caused because the lacquer had been degraded by strong light. Lacquer damaged this way loses its durability and lacks its normal resistance to water and other solvents. Under a microscope, a great deal of scratching could be seen. And the etching caused by acid from fingers was so clear that the fingerprints could have been used to identify their owners!
Changes to humidity would also have affected the lacquer. The leather substrate on which the lacquer is applied expands or shrinks with rising and falling humidity. But the lacquer is barely affected by humidity, meaning that it cracks and loses adherence to the substrate with changing humidity. The protective box would have acted as a buffer to humidity changes, but at some point in the armour’s history, the box was lost.
Several sections of detached lacquer were reattached using a synthetic resin, which is the Western conservation approach. The Asian technique is to repair and restore the lacquer with new urushi, the milky sap from trees which is the raw material of lacquer.
Before work began on the lacquer, loose surface dirt was removed with a sable hair mop brush and then ingrained dirt was removed with non-aqueous (non water-based) solvent.
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