Drying Book

Hi Katie,
for 10 years I have used my personally designed "Drying Sandwich"
I'll look through my database, and try and find the detailed method.

It costs around $2.40  and will last a lifetime, the stamp volume is infinity.
I'll get back to you shortly.

Perhaps prices have gone up,
but scapbook, and A4  Freezer Bags should give you change from $5

Stamps to be sorted via type prior to soaking.

eg: non fugitive, self stick etc.

WARNING : Seperate stamps on coloured paper / envelopes they shall stain others
In this example, low value, used, non fugitive with hinge remnants.
Articles required:
Large and small glass mixing bowl.
2 new laundered tea towels
tweezers
Large format disposable book with non-glossy paper pages
New scrap book with soft white thick pages.
Packet of A4 sized freezer bags.

Method
Rip the scrap book pages into A4 sized sheets
Submerge the stamps (60 at a time) in the mixing bowl of water
with cold to bordering on, tepid water.
Leave for 15 minutes,
Remove the stamps one by one checking for
any gum remaining.
Place into a second smaller bowl of clean
cold water.
When all removed from larger bowl,
lift the stamps from the smaller bowl,
onto a laundered tea towel, face up.

Any stamps showing sign of curling, can be
flattened in seconds by caressing the rear of the stamp
gently via the curved end or the tweezers (whilst on the towel),
they flatten out as if by magic.

When all stamps are on the tea towel, flop the second tea towel
on top, and pat dry. Remove the top tea towel.

Place an A4 sheet of scrap book paper, with a freezer bag
on top, begin to use the tweezers to lift each stamp and place
on the freezer bag.
When stamps cover the freezer bag, place another A4 sheet on top,
and place the “sandwich” into the disposable book
Leave about 15 pages between each “sandwich”
Put another random book on top, and leave for 4-5 days

I allow around 30 minutes to complete 60 stamps. The finished product is a clean flat stamp which,
under the scanner the fibres on the perfs are generallyaligned and neat.

They will <never> (apart from badly soaked self stick stamps) adhere to the freezer bag, and will just slide off when dry.

The pic is 10 years old, but you get the picture
Long nosed tweezers is the preferred weapon for Philately (but expensive around $15)

If you need a video on self stick removal, let us know.

I swear by my Desert Magic Books - I think I only paid around $6 each but that was back when they were still building the pyramids so they might be pricier nowadays.

I do the exact same thing as the pic above. Alternate the books in a stack so the bindings don't prevent them from being perfectly flat then stack a bunch of hefty books on top. 8-10 hours later they are flat, dry and then the fun begins!

Speaking of soaking etiquettes - Rod, did you know your Constellation mailing etiquette survives my paint thinner self-adhesive soaking method? I have a few of them drying in the books right now ...

Zuzu's art stamps survived too!

Ryan

The only US self-adhesive stamps I can't remove are some of the red date 1996 coil & booklet Flag over Porch 32 cent definitives. Some of them can be removed with water - those that can't are also stubborn with my paint thinner. Everything else I've tried from the US can be removed (so far). It fails to remove a few others, though - some die-cut self-adhesives from Tonga, Norfolk Island, etc, but others from Tonga come off fine. I have to try them to find out, I don't yet see a difference between the ones that work and the ones that don't. And there's an Italian self-adhesive with a hologram on it - complete destruction with my paint thinner! ha ha

Ryan

Thanks everyone for your detailed and thoughtful replies. I am also using some of these techniques with my long loved drying book (the tea towels to allow the stamps to dry a bit before placing them in a book which I have the perfect sized heavy book placed on top). I also hold mine for a week, but that's mostly because I only get time to do this once per week anyway.

I will look into these options before I decide to dump $20 on a book. I will still have to track some things such as scrapbook paper and I live in a tiny town so that's a trip outside regardless (and I don't get the newspaper either!).

Hi Katie

I also use Desert Magic drying books.  I started with the "half-page" size as that was the only thing available. Now I use the "full -page" size. After I put the stamps in them I weight drown the drying book with an old book.  They last for a long time but not forever.  

Here is the link to Subway: www.subwaystamp.com/SHOWGARD-DRYING-BOOK-11-SIZE/productinfo/ZAGDRYT507/

katie: Don't throw away the" bad" page.  I have had stamps stick to an older book. Like you, I removed the page and put it back into the soaking bath.  The stuck            stamps came right off.

Jerry B

I tried the drying books. I also tried watercolor art books from the hobby shop that someone suggested on another forum. I didn't like any of these methods. Now I use old beach towels. I can do several layers at a time and then weight them down. They are dry within a couple of days.

I just the Desert Drying book.

Maybe try putting them in the freezer for an hour first before soaking. It occasionally works. Once frozen try gently separating with your fingers. Worth a try daniel  

Hugh's (hdm1950) idea didn't work for me but thanks for the suggestion. So, I used an old, but clean, frying pan since it had a large surface area. The stamps floated off quite quickly and I left them to soak off any hinges and bits of paper. I dried off the excess water with a paper towel and then put them in the drying book, weighted down, overnight. This worked perfectly. Dealing with stamp that still had gum was more tricky since you need to remove the gum first by wiping it off.

All in all, the results were very satisfactory.

Daniel

I used to dry soaked stamps on paper towels until I found some of them sticking to the paper. That made me go back to dish towels again where that seems to happen far less often.

I've tried "drying books" but find their page size too small and too often the pages get wrinkled or warped until they're unusable. So I've settled mainly on using plain cardboard of the grey variety. Loading up a sheet of cardboard with stamps, then putting a second piece of cardboard on top and adding some serious weight (books, weights, old record albums . . . ) works wonders in forcing the moisture out of the stamps pretty quickly. Occasionally a stamp whose gum was not completely removed in the warm water bath I gave it will get stuck. Sometimes I can gently "pop" it off the cardboard. Other times, I cut up the cardboard (it's cheap) and re-soak it.

Neither dish towels nor cardboard seems easier or better -- just different.

One suggestion: Don't bother soaking all the stamps you have, but only the ones you plan to mount. If you don't need a stamp for your album, there's no point in soaking off the paper it's stuck to.

And one more suggestion: For modern self-adhesive stamps where the gum will not soak off, I spray Citrus air freshener on the back of the paper they're stuck to. Makes the room smell really nice and it lifts the stamp away from the paper fairly reliably -- without any harm to the stamp that I've ever seen. It's citrus oil which seems harmless enough. Also cheaper and likely less dangerous than chemicals. Or just clip the stamp close to its perfs and mount it attached to its paper. No harm in that.