Foxing, Staining & Iron Gall Ink Corrosion plus Treatments

Oh, thanks for clarifying.

I was given a demonstration by a fellow collector who came to exchange stamps earlier in the summer.

This is what we used and it worked superbly, no after effects (he showed me items he did a year ago).

1. a few drops of  Kalium Permanganate in water.
2. Soak stamp for  30 seconds, the stamp will go an 'icky' brown.
3. Take out with tongs (old ones) and put into Lemon juice. When stamp is clean...
4. Put in fresh water to rinse.
5. Dry a little and press.

Perfect every time.

Londonbus1.

I'll contact my friend in Tel Aviv after cooking and cleaning. Will get more details if any are to be had. I believe the little bottle had a dripper attached to the cap and we used 6 or 7 drops.
I will get exact details later.

Londonbus1

As far as I know, "staining" of stamps/cinderellas is dur to mold feeding and growing on gum. Thus, a biological, not a chemical process. Due to this, the treatment with a disinfectant (like Sodium Hypochloride) solves the problem, as well as bleaching the stains. But, being a food-microbiologist by training, I could be somewhat biased...

Further to my post in September 2020 and at the request of others, here is the full 'recipe' for cleaning toned, stained or dirty stamps. This method came to me by a fellow collector here in Israel. His friend, a Book restorer in Jerusalem, gave him the same demonstration he gave to me in my home last June. The method has been a proven success for paper and card items.

Work outside or in a workshop/workroom if possible. Extra care should be taken if working in your Kitchen/Bathroom (Only because of staining).

1). Prepare 3 dishes. Plastic containers are fine. Fill one with lukewarm water, one with sieved lemon juice with 10% water added and the third with cool water. The amounts needed depend upon how many stamps one is cleaning.

2). Put 3 small scoops of Kalium Permanganate crystals (see image above) into the lukewarm water and stir with old spoon or other utensil. The bottom of the container should not be visible.

3).Make sure any hinges or other gunk are removed from the stamp beforehand. Stamps that have been coloured by envelopes (Red/Yellow/Orange etc) should not be included. No more than 30 stamps at a time, because timing is important.

4). Place stamps in KP mix and press down so completely covered. Leave for 5 minutes.

5). Take out stamps with old tweezers/tongs, they will be a horrid 'icky' brown colour. They will look awful !! Place into the lemon juice mix for 3 minutes.

6). You can view them slowly becoming clean.After 3 minutes put into the clean water.

7). 2 or 3 minutes and they should be ready for drying in the way you are used to, shaking off the excess water or using a paper towel first before pressing.

OTHER TIPS.

Use a plastic sheet on the work surface if working in the kitchen or other area of importance to avoid staining.

Wear an apron.

Wear plastic gloves.

On really heavily toned stamps with marks in the centre of the stamp, it might not work 100% but equally, it might. A second attempt can be made.

Work carefully and with patience. If you have just had a row with your other half, do not attempt this until you have kissed and made up !!

RESULTS.

It works. I have stamps here that look great, even with handstamped overprints but I cannot guarantee that all overprints will be OK because of the different types of substances used. It can be an experimental work for overprint types.
It has been tested in Jerusalem for long-term results and they are excellent. I don't have details but I did see stamps that have been cleaned years before with no return of foxing.
I tried it on one cancelled stamp and the cancel did fade very slightly but I am told that is not always the case. Again it depends, most likely, on how and with what, they are cancelled.

Some of the items I posted in the 'Jewish National Fund' topic (Cinderella Category) were cleaned in this way. Some were very badly toned.

So there it is. From an expert in Book Restoring in Jerusalem to an International Stamp Forum online.

Have fun, good luck and above all else.....Happy Collecting !

Londonbus1.....

K.WURTT FAHREND POSTAMPT I translate as Royal ( Konglich) Wurttemberg Traveling Post office Probably on a train ?

I have to say that GWIDDION scan is impressive! Far better than retroveal. It does seem to work on different layers .

GWYDDION sounds Welsh ?  but I see it is Czech!



I tried downloading but my security blocked it as not secure and " unsafe" . 

Aaron, as usual, a very interesting item from you, thanks for this!  Lots of great discussion and contributions from Robert (WERT) and Alex (vikingeck).... really enjoying that.

Coming back to your original question, the item does not look like it is foxed or moldy to me.  I also don't think it is stained.  Personally, I think that the reason that some of the blue paper is no longer blue under certain handwritten parts is because someone has made a correction.

As an insufferable perfectionist myself, I can attest that if the blue striped paper is surface colored, then if someone tried to use an abrasive eraser to make a correction, they would have removed that surface design in the process.  I also note that the ink seems darker or heavier in those places where the background is gone, which also would suggest that it could have been a correction, because people often write more heavily when trying to cover up an unwanted mistake.

I have no special expertise in this area, but this is how it looks to me.  If it has foxing, I think it would also be present on other parts of the cover, and there is no evidence of that.  Just my opinion.  Hope this may help a little with your decision to "plunk" or not!

Many thanks for your reply, Alex (vikingeck ).  If there is anything I have learned in life and in philately, it is when to bow to superior knowledge, and I happily do so now!  At the very least, we agree that there is no evidence of foxing. 

If the discoloured areas then, are due to a chemical reaction between ink and paper, rather than any sort of erasure or abrasion, is it logical then to link the writing of heavier ink to the reaction itself?  I would then further suppose that the only reason that the same reaction did not occur in all inked areas was simply a matter of how much ink was applied?

The budding alchemist in me is trying to work this out, because otherwise, I would have thought that there would have been discolouration underneath all of the written areas.  That said, if what we can see on the cover is due to a reaction with the ink, then it does indeed seem to correlate with the amount of ink applied, as the areas of lesser application do not show the reaction.

Really interesting discussion, Alex, thank you!

Alex (vikingeck), thank you very much for naming this phenomenon as "iron gall ink corrosion".... very helpful.

Question: I did a web search using that specific terminology, and I found examples of documents where the ink had actually eaten all the way through the paper, not just bleached it a bit.  When does the corrosion process stabilize, do you know?  Should Aaron (kasvik) be concerned that the corrosion might continue and eventually destroy his cover?

The short answer is I have no idea!       Google and Wikipedia are my friends!

These inks all vary in composition , many were home made concoctions, so no uniformity. Thousands of contemporary covers exist showing no obvious harm or bleaching. 

It is a problem for Archivists, but as Aaron's cover has lasted 150years I suspect it may outlast all of us!