The Danger of Using Sellotape (Scotch Tape)

So I decided to try out some of Perfs14 ideas on removing tape stains from stamps on a few examples I had laying around.  First the stamps were soaked (outside on the porch) in Ronsol lighter fluid.  This was followed by a short soak in isoproply alcohol, then a bath in hot water with detergent. 

As the scans below show, this process cleaned them up somewhat.  They do look better than before, but the stains are still there.  I think the hot water may have been a bad idea (as some of the colors faded) and should have stuck with Perfs14 suggestion of just warm water.

Also, maybe the below freezing temps out on the porch reduced the effect of the Ronsol.

Before image (front and back) on the left, after on the right.






This stamp may just have a lot of "hinge crud" on the back and not tape stains.  It did have gum too, but not any more.
This one faded quite a bit, probably from the hot water and detergent.

Old envelope flaps was a common one too.

That Dorian fruit tastes like an old sock wrapped up in a dead animal but smells even worse...terrible! I been hotels that have signs banning them from the property..ee-yuk!

Well done Jen B! My results were pretty similar. Your treatment seemed to clean-up a lot of the foxing as well.

I used some diluted (just a few drops) dish washing detergent. I was going to use some laundry liquid as these are more directly designed for cotton/cellulose products, but many have optical brighteners (to make clothes look whiter than they are)so I changed my mind.

Rick, I used the same as Perfs14, just a few drops of dish detergent. 

Found a few more tape-stained stamps when sorting through an old mixture that I'm going to experiment on.  This time I'm going to scan between the Ronsol and the washing stage to compare each step.  Won't use hot water this time and might try Orvus paste instead of dish detergent.  Orvus is closer to plain old soap than dish detergent.

Chlorinated water will also brighten stamp paper somewhat because it acts as a bleach (Clorox has the name it does for a reason, chlorine is the base ingredient for bleach).  Bleaching is now a common part of the paper-making process to whiten the paper fibres as much as possible.  Most people who live in a city will have a chlorinated water supply so soaking stamps in tap water can change paper colour for most of us.  This is most noticeable on old stamps from before the days when brightening agents and bleached paper was common.  In Canada, paper doesn't show any brightness under UV light until the issues of the early 1960s, and the truly white paper doesn't come into use until perhaps the late 1960s.

Ryan

Thanks for the warning!  By closer to plain old soap I was thinking of something with less additives than dish detergent.  This is how Orvus is described at one website:
Sounds like it is probably about the same as dish detergent.  You are right that plain old soap should rightly describe something like old-fashioned lye soap.

I have been working on mounting classic Belgium today and have a complete used set of 4 of the International Water Exhibition Liege, 1939. Two of the stamps have tape stains and I was searching for a way to possibly recover these stamps. I found this old thread that I thought might be useful for others that have had to deal with this issue recently. As I read through it I noticed some good advice that I am going to try.

Below are Sc. no. 318 and 320.

kostia84, you asked for an update and here it is below. Initially I tried to use Pure Citrus and it had some effect but the tape stain remained on the stamps. So I went with the method described in this thread and gave it a good soak using simple dish detergent and warm water and let it set overnight. Here are the results. Pretty darn good.

darkormex , wow, pretty darn good indeed

as I am looking at theose stamps ruined by tape, it just brings back bad memories, oh the HORROR  !


janetc -- I LOVE Your avatar!  My favorite dragon is the WELSH dragon, a tip to my ancestry!