Soaking Stamps

I would echo Steve's response, I have managed 400 at one soak, but was very tiresome.
I now do a small glass bowl, from 8 to 30 stamps, plop them in cold water as I make my morning coffee,
2-3 hours later, or when time permits, pre dry them in a new tea towel, then into my stacked drying sandwich books.

The big payoff, is opening the bottom drying book and retrieving the results.

The self stick are different, I collect in a spare envelope, then do perhaps 4 or 5 with white spirits.
I tend only do the stamps to be mounted, duplicates I leave on paper.

Not something I really enjoy doing.
With todays mail many of the stamps arrive cancelled, Canadian ones go into the glue stick drawer . Any other countries that come not cancelled I just return them clipped on piece to member of that country .

Most of my soaking is to remove old hinges and clean up the stamps a bit.

I know the newer self adhesive stamps can be real hard to soak, luck the Canadian ones seem to have 2 layers of glue the one closes to the stamp seems to be soluble with water and will lift quite nice in a water bath.

If the stamp has a nice cancel I will leave it on piece just clip with a nice margin to save the postmark.

I going to write a tutorial later on soaking stamps.

I'm very much a fan of soaking - I put on the Bollywood station on the TV and get to work!  I do a fairly large batch at a time - 40 grams of clipped, on-paper stamps or 16 grams of off-paper stamps (I like nice clean flat used stamps and I soak off any hinge or gum remnants).  A batch that size fits on to a large hand towel as they come out of the sinks (one for soaking, one for rinsing), and from there they go into a drying book.  I also segregate the stamps on coloured paper and get them off the paper as soon as I can to avoid staining.  I use room-temperature water and because Calgary has such a dry climate, I soak the hand towel so the stamps don't dry out while I'm working.  If I don't, the stamps will curl and that makes it a lot tougher to get them in to the drying book, plus they come out flatter if they go in damp.  A batch will generally fit on 5 pages in the drying book, so I have a book full after two batches.  Like Rod, I have multiple books and it's like a second Christmas each time a book comes off the bottom of the stack.  In my case, I really have no clue what might be in the book since I have 13 of them in use, and lately I haven't been doing much soaking.  I bet the current book on the bottom dates from the spring time - who knows what is lurking within ...

And also like Rodney, I work on a few unsoakables with each batch, in my case using paint thinner to remove them from their paper.  I then soak them in water after I get them off the paper, to wash the chemical away, although there are some US stamps that can't tolerate soaking in water once they come off the envelope because they wrinkle - those get a very quick wash in water, then get sandwiched immediately between two flat surfaces for 15 minutes or so before they go in the drying book.  I start on these as soon as I put the main batch into the sink, and while I'm doing that, the main batch starts to come loose from their backing paper.  I'll usually do about 16-20 unsoakables at a time, that gives enough time for the main batch to receive a good soaking before I start working on them.

Ryan

One thing I sometimes do is soak the stamps a second time, as the "bathwater" sometimes gets full of glue that re-attaches itself to the stamps. I especially noticed this recently on a batch of French Polynesia stamps from the 1950's and 1960's.

I buy stamps off paper. I hate soaking.

What about adding some laundry detergent the one that's surprise to stop dye from running. It may stabilize the red pigment from being activated in the water.
Some dyes are water based, trying something other then h2o might be your answer something like rubbing alcohol . Just test a small square of the red paper . Maybe hand sanatizer would work.

Off to your lab Rod and experiment

I can't speak from experience but I wonder if Supersafe's Stamp Lift Fluid, sparingly applied, will release the paper without staining the stamp.

It has been a long time since I received a water-based adhesive stamp on red paper so I have none for experimentation.

If you don't have any of the fluid, send me a stamp or two and I'll see if it does the trick.

This article on the American Philatelic Society website suggests adding salt to the water when soaking stamps on coloured paper.

Ryan

Thanks Ryan,
For the record, I have used salt experimentally in the past,  for manila envelopes (yellow Brown) , shades of Lilac, light blue, I have had success with this method. (Salt + cold water)
The Red is extraordinary, it bleeds profusely, even under humid box, it migrates.
Steve is our remaining hope


 

Thanks Steve! 
I can handle any of the ones you have shown.
Most  stamps would be duplicates, so I would leave on piece, but for the odd scarce one, or the good postmark, your residue is passable for me.

Wow!
you must have different water in Canada  
my attempts were less successful.
Thanks for broadcasting your results, Steve.
Where can I get stamp lift fluid?

PS:  The damage to the self stick issue, is common,  I have a 20% failure rate for these.
It largely depends on the material to which the stamp is adhered.
Common porous envelopes, no problem.  Coated papers failure rate, escalates.


 

Another odd thing I notice with later Australian self-adhesives - if I don't leave enough room around the perforations when I trim the backing paper (I always trim the backing paper, makes for fewer fuzzies while soaking), I can't get the paper bent away from the stamp. With 5mm or so of extra paper, I can almost always get the stamp off without damage (haven't tried many of the corrugated tin building stamps yet, though). If the stamp is trimmed right close to the die-cut perforations, chances are good that I'll end up ruining the stamp ...

Ryan

Hi

A long time ago I wrote a letter to Linn's in which I described a "soaking box".  I took a plastic shoe box, they do exist, and put holes near the top, about 3/4  to 1 inch down from the top.  I filled the box with warm water and set the faucet to a small stream of warm water into the box.  I then put the stamps to soak in.  What one has is a box where the water is fairly clean of gum residue since the water is continually changing due the run-off through the holes around the top.  I do not do much soaking now, pretty much none at all, so I gave the box away.  For the little soaking I have to do I just use the plastic box with no holes. The most I have to soak at a time is 10 or less stamps.
Jack:  Neat video. It may be another use for WD40 but if someone tells me that duct tape works well for hinges I am going to give up

Jerry B 

Hi Rodney

Besides colored envelopes I have had problems with some Manila envelopes. Some did not stain and some gave an eerie yellow color to the stamps. The box I made did work rather well with "normal" stamps.

Jerry B