Drying Soaked Stamps Without A Drying Book

I soak a lot of kiloware and have used drying books in the past, but I find they eventually develop a mold problem as I use them so heavily.

So what I do now is to use paper towels, but there is a definite art in using your towels. Use towels folded in half. Put the stamps face down on your towels as per usual, but when your second towel is full, and the first towel not yet fully dry, stack the second towel on top of the first.

if the first towel's stamps are already too dry, they will have curled, and if they are too wet they will stick to the towel on top, so you have to judge this a little bit.

Then keep repeating the procedure until you make a giant Dagwood Bumstead towel and stamp sandwich.

Leave overnight, then remove the stamps from the towels and put the dry and almost flat stamps between heavy books for a day to give them a proper permanent flattening.

This avoids the problems of stamps curling when they dry.

Even better, re-used paper towels seem to work better than fresh ones, so don't throw them away.

(Usually a few stamps on each towel will curl anyway -- just take them off and deal with them separately.)

This has been working well for me lately. Soaking lick and stick off paper and then face down on paper towels. Then stacking those 3-4 layers deep. Super thick text books from PT school are good weights. They get pressed over night, them I remove books to allow for faster drying over 8 hours, then another 8 hours with the books back on. ~24 hours total.

Using pascoe's method with paper towels that have embossed designs will result in embossed stamps. I know this from when I was a newbie collector.

Robert

I use drying books. They are called Desert magic 2. The shop where I bought them warned me to air them and let the book dry before putting it away. I actually hang it over the radiator after use. I find my drying books ok, but I use kitchen roll as well, if I am soaking a lot of stamps.

We have 10 desert drying books that have really been hammered over the last 8+ years. So we can do 2,700 stamps in one go with that many books.

All the blotting paper is now covered with mold stains. Still works fine. And yes the drying books & blotting paper need be dried out straight away. It is very important.

Early in the piece we cut up some large sheets of thick blotting paper and use 2 extra blotting paper sheets per drying page. It only takes about 8hrs and the stamps are dry out. But we leave them for min 24hrs.

The books make all the stamps off paper real neat. My wife was very happy to not have all the kitchen flat surfaces covered with drying stamps & towels and having all the windows shut when the drying books arrived.

In the 40+ years I've soaked stamps, I place them face down on tea towels, leave them to dry, place them in stockbooks or in hagner sheets and leave them be. They flatten out in a short period of time. These desert magic books always smacked of gimmickry in my opinion.

Strangely enough...i recently have been soaking stamp sheets that were stuck together..(the stamps were given to me by a neighbor)
I have an Apak Drying Book on order...i read that they are good.
In the meantime I have improvised...
1....soak the sheets in warm water with a tiny drop of dishwashing solution.
2....once the stamps are seperated I place them face down on a sheet of those German made supper shammy clothes (100% viscose)...i place another shammy cloth on top..pat the layer down a bit..nicely absorbs any excess moisture.
3...i then place the stamps face down on a page of if a manila scrapbook and sketch pad exercise book.
4...a sheet of paper towel over the stamps.
5...close the exercise book and press down with around 20lbs of books.
A few hours later...they are completely dry and flat.
I'll report on my experience with the Apak Drying Book once it arrives and I try it out.
A lot of work for a bunch of 5 cent stamps...but worth it..knowing those stamps can be used as postage.

One item I have used that might be cheaper than a " drying book" is a watercolor paper book. I think it is the same as a drying book but named different. Get them at walmart or any other art store. Still need to dry them out. I have also used blotter paper get it at art stores usually comes in a big sheet for a couple of bucks and can be cut down to a manageable size.

I have also used the Desert Magic books. Aside from the mold issue, I've noticed that after a long time (more than a decade?) the surfacing on the plasticated page wears off, so your soaked stamps doesnt slide off easily when dry.

I got back into the paper towel habit when I was living in Asia and hadn't located the local stamps shops.

The only reason I use a drying book is because it saves space. I think vacuum man is on the right track with blotting paper as I am sure this is what the absorbent pages of the book are. The question then arises of what would make a none stick page. There again it's easier to buy a drying book and gives me an excuse to go to my favorite stamp shop!

I have a problem with drying my stamps.
I soak a lot of stamps off so I could use some help.

I use a paper towel to dry them on, just a 2-ply (2 layers in one sheet) piece of kitchen paper.
I place them on the kitchen paper face down
But when the stamps are dry, I don't get them off the paper.
And if I get them off, the face is almost always damaged...

How do I prevent damaging the face of the stamp...?
Do I need to buy a dry book or whats the trick??

I just soaked about 250 stamps (in 50 stamp batches) using paper towels.

After I place the 50 wet stamps face down on the paper towels (about 3 layers), I blot up all the puddles on the back of the stamps. I do this until there are no more glistening spots. Then I transfer the damp stamps off the wet paper towels onto a dry paper towel (1 layer will work) and set it aside to dry.

I get dry paper towels for the next batch.

By the time I was placing the 4th wet batch on paper towels, the first batch was already dry.

The key is to get the damp stamps off the wet paper towels and onto something dry to complete the drying process.

Hope this helps.

Robert

To make the drying books last a long time, and this may sound obvious to some but not others, is don't just throw the stamp on the page and close it. Blot the stamp with a paper towel until the visible moisture is gone, let it air dry for another minute, then turn the page or close the book. My books hardly look used or worn using this method.


And, they are ready to go in a pretty short amount of time. Sometimes as little as an hour

The drying sandwich.
Used for 12 years, still going faultlessly.

http://goscf.com/t/45423&whichpage=3#501332 br /

How long does the stamps need to dry, @rod222?

I am now using 1 white copy sheet.
On top a freezer bag.
On top of that 5 stamps with face up (just for try-out procedures).
On top of that 1 sheet white copy paper.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.