Flattening Stamps
This may sound like a beginner's question, but I'll ask anyway. After soaking a half or full pond of kiloware, one ends up with a large quantity of stamps. No problems with soaking and drying, but I have not perfected any specific way to flatten them all. If the stamps are placed in a large pile and covered with six Scott catalogs, the results are not too good; they are still partially wrinkled. Any ideas on how to accomplish this task successfully? Thank you very much.
Comments
Put well rinsed stamps (I often prop them on side of bowl first so most water drains off first) on paper towel face down, once it is full, put another paper towel on top, and a light magazine on top.
Don't pile too high, can sometimes put a couple/few layers of paper towels between magazines.
Depending on how humid the house is, how many layers it may take a couple days for them to dry completely.
I often do a few layers of paper towels and each morning, night flip the pile and take the magazine off the top for a bit.
Notes:
- one needs to use a magazine one doesn't want to keep as it does it no good.
- too high/magazines means too much weight and the lower levels will take on the indentations from the paper towels
- if the stamps aren't rinsed good enough they'll stick to the paper towel and be hard to remove.
1, Once the stamps are fully rinsed/clean as others have described, place them face up on the plastic side of the book then soak up excess water with a clean dish cloth. Then cover with 3 pieces of paper towels (as Ron described). Close book and use a catalogue or something of weight on top. I use paper towels to save the absorbency of the velum and extend the life of the book.I've been using the same book for 5 years and I soak stamps almost everyday. You can also save the paper towels and use them again several times.
2. When the stamps are dry - fully dry not damp!- place them on pages in a phone book. Use several pages between each placement and be sure to write down what pages the stamps are on so you can find them. The newsprint type paper will absorb any moisture left in the stamps that we actually don't feel.
3. Then I place the stamps on manila stock pages and cover each sheet with cardstock and a weight on top. After a day the stamps are ready to put in inventory, list, etc. or can remain in this stage until you're ready for them.
I like the book because everything is compact, in one place and I don't have stamps soaking all over the kitchen. Plus, this becomes sort of an assembly line - some soaking, some in phone book, some on stock cards and over and over.
I tried pulling a pile out of the water and putting the pile in front of the fan in the window (as close as we ever got to air conditioning when I was a kid).
Theoretically the stamps would dry on top and fly off the pile.
Sort of worked, but the old US stamps liked to stick to other stamps more than fly off the pile (probably didn't rinse well enough) and mom didn't like the dry ones blowing off the pile so much.....
So it was back to the paper towels and "Golden wonder books" I had a lot of them, sadly the soaking drying for many years wasn't good for them.....
As for what I do with all the stamps on paper that I accumulate, JerBear can tell you what I do with those stamps. I have some super nice one accumulating now!
So many ideas and we all accomplish the same result.
He actually cut a hole in his furnace piping and built a removable cover there and a square basket that hung underneath. He put his stack of paper towels (or whatever I never actually asked him) in the basket during the drying process.
Sadly he didn't believe in separating coloured backings out, there was a significant problem with yellow backs and fronts of stamps as a result, which very seriously reduced the value of the overall hoard he had.
Still the drying system he created was very inventive!!
AUCTION!!! Large accumulation of nice stamps on paper. Really a GREAT deal. Keep an eye on Michael's Store (The Online Stamp Shop) - this is one auction you don't want to miss.