New Faces of Old Weapons

Weapons are like any other object conceived by the human mind and made by human hands, a testimony to creativity, imagination, and science. Even though they are meant to kill, hunt, and wage war, they don't cease to elicit admiration for the skills involved in making them. Many prestigious museums have impressive weapon collections that they offer to the public. Museums restore and preserve weapons as heritage artifacts, even though they are related often to tragic events of the past.

Romania's National History Museum continues a series of events that commemorates the centennial of WWI with exhibitions of weapons used a century ago. The museum's expert selected from the museum collections in storage some weapons that they restored for putting into exhibitions. We asked restoration expert Paul Popa about what he does:

"The exhibition New Faces for Old Weapons consists of weapons from WWI, most of them heavily restored. Restoring weapons is like restoring anything that is metal based, but for weapons you need more technical knowledge and understanding more. I restored the entire weapon, including its mechanism. First you have to take apart the weapon piece by piece, then put it back together likewise. The procedure means removing rust and corrosion, then oiling the parts, and maintaining them in good working order."

The exhibition New Faces for Old Arms offers visitors the opportunity to see close up objects that have changed the destiny of millions. Restoration expert Bogdan Mladin spoke to us about the concept of the exhibition that he was in charge of, alongside his colleague Paul Popa. The two wanted to have an exhibition showcasing not just weapons, but other military equipment as well, such as the Adrian firefighter helmet, which helped save countless lives. Also, in order to give the exhibition a personal touch, they included the diary of a soldier.

"We have a wide range of weapons, from semi-automatic pistols to revolvers, carbines, rifles, and machine guns. One special piece is the Chauchat machine gun, 1915 model French weapon, which was brought in 1916 in Romania by the French mission. It took the most work, it had the worst problems, missing parts, and this was the most challenging on the technical side. We managed to restore it in the end, we also had models where we could manufacture the missing parts. Overall, most weapons in the exhibition had such problems. We also have captured enemy weapons, we have a Russian Nagant revolver, model 1895, we have German Steyr semi-automatic pistols, so we have weapons from many countries, purchased or acquired by the Romanian armed forces. We also have ammunition and bayonets. We tried to pair up weapons with their respective bayonets, where we could. We also have the Adrian helmet, brought in 1916 to the country by the French mission. We exhibit munitions, spent rounds, as well as two diaries kept by a Romanian soldier."

We asked Bogdan Mladin if the weapons have been used, and asked him to trace them back to the war, to tell us how they got from the front lines to the display case:

"In order to make sure that they have been used, we need ballistic analysis. We suspect that they mostly were. They were in a fairly advanced state of degradation. In the 1970s they were given to the Romanian National Museum, by transfer from other museums, and they were in a pretty sorry state. They needed restoring in order to have them exhibited. Here we have weapons exclusively from WWI, but the National History Museum collection has weapons from most historical periods. We will gradually bring them to the lab to restore them, in order to be able to offer them to the public to see."

Weapons remain an attraction, they are part and parcel of human culture and societies. The more newer generation advanced weapons appear, the more people are fascinated with the old ones, in their boundless curiosity.