How to Soak Gummed Stamps Off Coloured Paper.

[Allanswood]

(I coudn't find a relevant thread that may already exist for this and one of the tips has been mentioned at times in various threads that may not often be read so...)


The old addage of not mixing your colours with your whites for washing also holds true for soaking stamps off those heavily coloured yellow/red/blue coloured papers.

In Australia the larger than normal envelopes seem to always appear for some unknown reason on the heavy yellow coloured paper. If soaked in plain water it's almost guranteed to run/bleed and stain the backs of your stamps yellow and ruined.


It's been mentioned a few times in the past that to avoid having the strong die/colour bleed into your stamp and ruin it while soaking - just add salt to the soaking water.


So here are 2 recipe's as I have just tried them out:


SALT SOLUTION


Disolve 2 level teaspoons of normal salt into 500ml of room temperature water and soak the coloured papers that way.

I used about a cup of this in a small plastic tub and soaked about 50 stamps on mostly yellow but also a few red heavy coloured cutouts as a test.

Soaking 15 at a time it was good for 4 lots of stamps until the water finally took on a yellowish tone.

Keep an eye on it as you watch for the stamps coming off and get them out straight away and into a second tub with just clean room temp water to rinse the rest of the residual gum off.

I had one deep red failure that has pinked the back of that stamp, but still did not affect the rest of the stamps in the pot and may have been stained when first applied to the envelope anyway.

I then rinse that tub again before setting out the stamps to dry.



But there is another method that I also tried:


USE WHITE VINEGAR.


Using a solution of 50% White Vinegar and 50% room temp water and follow the same process as above - soak a few, remove, rinse twice and dry.

I actually had better success with the vinegar and it was a much faster process. For some reason it soaked faster under the same conditions.


Plus I now have a hankering for fish'n'chips for some reason.



PS- using Salt or Vinegar may have a secondary effect of helping to kill off or nullifying any nasties that may have been lurking on the stamps as well.

[Tom Koh]

Good tips - but because I had a problem with the postmark ink staining my stamps recently, I did a search and these tips do exist in the mountain of information in stampboards.com (but like you said, the posts might be rarely read)

[Michael Elston]

Hi how long do you have to soak them as sometimes the stamp just rips in two.

[Allanswood]

Some stamps lightly attached will come off in a minute or two. Others can sit there soaking for 10 minutes or more before I even try to take them off.

I've never ripped a stamp when soaking unless someone has glued one on again that was used but uncancelled before. That happens a bit nowadays.

I ended up with these batches of having some in there for 15 minutes or more.



Tom Koh, yes I know, but no one has mentioned Vinegar before.

[Michael Elston]

Hi some of them i have sitting there for 1 hour in water before i start taking them off. About 1 in 20 rip. The self adhesive ones.... once you get them off the paper and dry them the are still real sticky on the back and stick to all the other stamps. How do you get the glue off?

[Allanswood]

That's a whole different ball game Michael. Peel and Stick are a world to themselves.

This long running thread will help. Take your time.

http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=15259&h#p130826