charlottesville: week 3

DAY 1

more hinge tightening, tear mending, and page guarding in the preservation room!

DAY 2
compliments on my page guarding, wonderful.  suggestions that i stay and mend books forever.  apparently japanese tissue, wheat paste, and i get along quite well.

glassine tape removal with methylcellulose

DAY 3

hot air pencil!

back to the posters!  something new: tape removal.  glassine is simple (see above) - a dab of methylcellulose left to sit for a few minutes and it comes clean off.  there's still a little bit of adhesive residue, but another touch of methylcellulose will handle that.  scotch tape is not so simple.  pressure sensitive adhesive is much trickier.  a hot air pencil and a micro spatula gets the carrier off, although it took me a few runs to get the hang of using both of them at the same time without burning the paper but still keeping the plastic soft enough to release.  i like the technique of heating up the tool instead of heat directly to the plastic but for some of the better adhered parts the tool didn't seem to get quite hot enough to get between the paper and carrier, so there was a lot of switching back and forth.  then, after all of that, there's still the left behind adhesive to deal with, which is the tedious part.  a vinyl eraser, my best friend these days, does the job but not terribly fast.  in the end though, it all came away clean.

the evil scotch tape

the magic tools: hot air pencil and micro spatula

1) removal - you can't see the hot air pencil
pointing at the microspat.  it's there.  it's helping.

2) plastic carrier removed!  adhesive... still there

3) vinyl eraser to the rescue again

everything off!  the paper is still discolored,
but that's the price of scotch tape.

DAY 4

before - eew.

finishing up the last of the scotch tape!  we're leaving the masking tape issues for tomorrow.  the rest of the day was spent in mending tears and skinning, and my first poster is complete!  total time is 11 hours (a bit more than my proposal predicted) but it looks good!  the lucky winner is the second copy of "fight or buy bonds."  only 23 left to go!

after - it's finished!

most don't have tape, so from here on out i'll just be mending, and i still have those two with linings to finish up... although now that i have a handle on the hot air pencil that might help out.

mending tools!

1 - torn up corner

2) sizing up the japanese tissue

3) japanese tissue on

4) pressure & blotter

5) rough edges but safe

6) all cleaned up!

DAY 5

we had a go at the masking tape, it went alright.  the acetone chamber turned out to be too much and the adhesive began to seep through the paper to the front a bit, so we switched to just using a soaked cotton swab, which still resulted in a bit of seeping but wasn't near as strong.  it did successfully clear up the back though!  i also mended another poster, and now have another TWO finished.

total completed posters: 3!

acetone soaked blotter, making a solvent chamber

adhesive starts to soften

removal of adhesive using a cotton swab!
(sometimes soaked with additional acetone)

charlottesville: week 2

DAY 1
just worked on cleaning and relaxing folds today.  i'll tackle the tissue again later this week, after i get a few easy ones out of the way...

folded corner

magic tools

action shot

wait a  bit..

much better!

DAY 2

more cleaning and fold relaxation.  in the picture you can sort of see the cleaned half vs. the dirty half.  cleaning sponges and vinyl erasers work magic

DAY 3

more cleaning, more fold relaxation.  and removal of the cotton fabric on the second poster with a lining, just to throw a bit of fun in at the end of the day - a little crunchy burnt spot.  we'll see how that goes once i tackle removing the heat set tissue

DAY 4
eliza is out of town so i've been shuffled to the preservation room - shelf prep and mending books

DAY 5
more shelf prep, book mending (japanese tissue with wheat paste, hinge tightening)

charlottesville: week 1

DAY 1
waiting on a background check before i can actually do anything.  everyone is quite nice and i'm very excited to start working and i hope the background check won't take too long so i can begin.  i haven't seen the lab i'll be in yet, but the rare and circulating books room (i think?) is quite nice and there are many familiar things (filmoplast, ribbon tape, reemay, eraser crumbs) so that's comforting...

DAY 2
meet the posters!  morning spent unzipping the photo files, renaming them, organizing them, color correcting.  these will be my 24 new best friends for the next six weeks.  i'll include the photos of the back once i actually start working on them.  some of them are twins:

DAY 3
documentation.  description of the posters, condition reports, and proposed treatments with time estimates.  most of them are getting the basic dry cleaning followed by tear mending.  there are a couple that have linings, which should be interesting, and some with tape that will have to be removed

DAY 4
eliza and i reviewed the documentation and treatment proposal, i fine tuned a lot of the formatting and wording but for the most part i was pretty successful with my first draft!  now it's off to be approved so i can start working on them soon.  we also took a trip over to the rare books building and did some rehousing (books with fragile pages or bindings put into boxes) and did a collection survey for rare books being used by courses (specifically, the rare book school, which isn't actually part of the university but it lives on campus and uses its books).  i really should read up on bookbinding more, they're gorgeous.  maybe in my downtime here i'll make myself a little more familiar with them, seeing as there are a few around the lab that are pretty fantastic.

DAY 5

half of the cotton lining removed

started on "teufel hunden" today.  eliza had done others with similar linings - cotton cloth with heat set tissue - that had come off easily.  this one was not quite the same.  the cloth came off in about 15 minutes, but the tissue was more stubborn.  i worked on it using a microspatula and scalpel for 5 hours and there's still about 15% left.

start of tissue removal

...still working on the tissue