Not too long ago all the beautiful movie and band posters I had saved to hang on my walls some day got water damage from sitting in a corner of the basement that leaks. These posters were all rolled and about three and a half inches of all of them were ruined. By ruined I mean they will not unroll without ripping (after they dried they stuck together) not to mention that they have a slight discoloration where it stained. Now what I would really like to know is if there is anyway to make them unhard so that I could possibly unroll them and see how bad it really is. I figured holding them over some steam might work. Does anyone know Martha Stewart?
Well, I’m no Martha Stewart, but I did find the following web page. Their description in Yahoo says they deal in poster restoration. I couldn’t get the follow up web site to respond, but a phone number is listed. You could call them and see what they can do.
http://www.avid-collectorposters.com/
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Steam is used to get things unstuck. You could try some of that. Or put them in the bathroom when you take a hot shower so the steam can work on them.
Steam will destroy them. Use a “dry cleaning” solution, usually benzene.
In the supermarket where spot removers are.
This is what philatalists use to separate stamps stuck together.
Sounds like you’re pretty much screwed here, sorry to say. Wet paper can actually weld together, making one big thick sheet of paper. That’s actually how they make paper, putting a big wet hunk of paper fiber into a mold and then letting it dry.
There are art restorers who can work on water damaged prints, but many posters aren’t printed on heavy paper and usually the results aren’t very good. Water staining is also hard to remove, even if they get the sheets apart, but sometimes the results are good. I’d consult with a local art restorer, they could give an inexpensive estimate to see if there’s anything salvagable, at a reasonable price. How much are your memories worth?
I have a weird storage problem myself, dry rot. I have a huge collection of mid-1970s punk rock newsmagazines, they’re tabloid 11x17 magazines printed on cheap newsprint that is gradually turning yellow. I kept them in a cool, dry place, the deterioration is not too bad yet. But every time I open the boxes, I get a huge allergy attack, I have to store them in sealed boxes or I’ll be constantly sneezing as long as they’re around. They’ve obviously gotten mildew or some other fungus. The only thing I can think of is to scan them digitally and store them like microfiche and get rid of the originals. I’m just waiting for an affordable 11x17 scanner (they’re all over $3500) and then I’ll scan off all the pages and get rid of them.
Chas, I’m sure you’ve already thought of this, but you could scan them by halves and reassemble them with any image editor. I believe Photoshop LE comes with a lot of scanners- that should work fine.
I had a similar problem scanning pages of tabloid-sized trade magazines w an 8.5 x 11 scanner at my old job. As long as you keep the sides straight, reassembly is a piece of cake. Just a suggestion.
Thanks everybody. I try the benzene on one and if that doesn’t work I’ll see what a restoration place would say. I don’t have anything too hard to replace, I just have a lot to replace. Sorry about your old punk mags though. Sounds like you have a bigger problem. And scanning them and editing could take forever! Good luck.
Yeah, I have done this reassembly thing before, but there are hundreds of pages and the task is just too time consuming. I’ve already done this for a few pages that I want to give special treatment. At this point, any process has to work in bulk, this stack of tabloid magazines is about 4 feet tall. I’m thinking of actually shooting photos of them with high-resolution B&W recording film (they’re mostly just B&W magazines) and then scanning the negatives. I can put a whole double page spread on a copy stand under glass, shoot two pages together at a time. Then get a film scanner with an autofeeder for uncut negatives. Well, it still isn’t a practical process. Maybe if I could get a 6 megapixel digital camera on a copy stand… hmm… That would be really quick to work with.
Chas: whatcha got, and how much do you want for em? If, of course, you ever get them scanned.
Its a mostly contiguous set of New Musical Express, Melody Maker, and a few misc tabloids I used to subscribe to from about 1974 to about 1980, the best of the punk era. They’re probably hugely collectable, I don’t know what they’re worth. I was thinking of framing the one with the “Sid Vicious Dead” cover. But they’re a valuable resource for music collectors too, the back pages are full of lengthy listings of indie record releases. Someone ought to collect this stuff and republish it, its all so old its probably out of copyright, I should just put it on the web myself.
Damn. I was hoping for old issues of Sniffin Glue or Cream. They’re actually gonna let me write my thesis on that kinda shit. Pretty cool. Normally, I hate it when punk rockers do research on punk rock for school, but this was an offer I couldn’t refuse. If you’ve got any actual fanzines from the period, I might be intersted in buying a stack for use as primary sources. Might even scan em for PDFs.