Opinions on Soaking/Pressing

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Posted By: Morrie

I've soaked/pressed a few cards, and actually have one sitting at home that was part of a lot I bought from a fellow board member that I'll probably do this evening. I don't do it to remove wrinkles (that may be a minor side-effect, but most of my cards have enough wrinkles that I could run them over with a steam-roller and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference!), just to get rid of excess junk on their backs.

You can find details on the process elsewhere on the board, but a few key things include:

1. If you're tempted to use something like Goo-Gone for particularly tough and/or tacky adhesives, DON'T. Unless, of course, you want your card to glow under blacklight and have a nice pseudo-lemony scent until the end of time. (I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would use what I guess was rubber cement to stick a t206 Jennings in an album. Sigh.)
2. Only use distilled water. Never tap water that can have weird chemicals that leave residue.
3. Let the card soak in the distilled water for several minutes before lightly - LIGHTLY - rubbing at the adhesive and/or extra paper with something like a q-tip. If possible, wear gloves to keep from getting extra junk in your water. If you don't have gloves, wrap your finger in cling wrap to hold the card in place while you lightly rub the paper/adhesive off the back.
4. Be patient. Rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles. Same principle here.
5. Related to 4, I never work with a card for more than 2 minutes before I leave it to soak for at least 2 more. Especially if you're cleaning off multiple layers of paper from a scrapbook, you need to let the water soak into the layers you've just exposed.
6. Once the surface is clear, you'll want to make sure you got all the adhesive. Just because you can read "Piedmont" all of a sudden doesn't mean the card won't still stick to things. Remember point 4, and give it another gentle cleaning, being very careful not to abrade the actual surface of the card.
7. When you remove the card from the water, place it between two sheets of heavy (20# or so) bond paper and put it beneath a stack of books. This will start pressing the water out of it, but you're going to need to move the card to either 2 more sheets of paper, or a different spot on the same sheets, about every 15 minutes for the next hour. The water will leech out and saturate the paper around it, and once the paper is saturated, the water that's still in the card has nowhere to go. Once you check the card after 15 minutes and the paper around it isn't wet, switch to yet another set of paper and put the card back under your pile of books for a day or so.

Other folks may have other advice. This is what has worked for me cleaning t206s and a couple of t205s for my personal collection, and I think is consistent with what I've seen on the board.

Morrie