Seperate Stuck Stamps..

Have some modern stamps for the Netherlands. Someone sent them to me within the last 15 years.. anyway.. it appears some of the stamps have the edges overlapping and stuck to the one below it.
They must have gotten some moisture.. so it's just a 32nd to an 8th of an inch where they are stuck. I have 6 stamps that are stuck, 3 pairs..
Should I just soak it a bit to remove it. They are not high value, and I could probably use them as postage if I was in Holland... But I do want to keep them.

Soaking in lukewarm water would work, but it will remove all the gum.




Butch

yeah, I want to try and preserve the gum..
anyway to loosen it up enough to remove.. humidity perhaps?

Build Your Own Stamp Sweat Box
Sometimes soaking isn't the solution. Sometimes it's best to let humidity work on the
glue before you try to remove a hinge remnant or separate a mint stamp stuck to
another stamp or an album page. The same trick works for getting stamps off
envelopes whose inks you know will discolor the stamp when placed in water.

If you live in a hot, humid area you could experiment with exposing your stamps to
the elements, but for most of us the answer is a sweat box. It's simply an airtight
container with a couple of sponges and a cradle to keep the stamps from coming into
direct contact with the sponges.

The basic idea is to raise the humidity in the sweat box so that it dampens the stamp's
gum just enough to loosen the stamp from whatever it's stuck on without saturating
the stamp or the paper, or diluting the gum.

The basic parts of the sweat box are

1. A small air tight container. (picture #1) A small, clear plastic disposable air-tight
food container works well. The smaller the container, the quicker the humidy rises. If
it's clear you can check on the stamp's progress without opening the container, which
would then also drop the humidity.

2. A clean, never-used sponge or two to hold the water moisture. (picture #5) Two
clean kitchen sponges are fine. You can try this out with what you have in the kitchen,
but if you want to keep your sweat box working, you'll want to replace them with
never-used sponges.

3. A screen on which the stamp on piece rests. I used a plastic basket that stores sell
strawberries in. (picture #1) I then trimmed the sides down low enough to fit between
the two sponges.

4. Spacers (picture #4) These raise the screen above the bottom sponge and must be
non-porous, plastic, metal or cork. I used two bottle caps, but now use two pieces
from a backgammon set.

To put together a your own homemade sweat box read the following and refer to the
pictures.

1. Soak the bottom sponge in water. Wring it out so that it is still heavy and wet with
water but not dripping and place it on the bottom of your box.

2. Affix the top sponge to the center of your box's top lid with two push pins as shown
in picture #2.

3. Soak the top sponge in water and wring it out so that it is still heavy and wet with
water but not dripping.

4. Now trim your screen so that it will fit between the upper and lower sponge. See
picture #3.

5. Place your two spacers on top of the bottom sponge and rest your screen on top of
it. See picture #4

6. When finished and set up, it looks something like this. See picture #5. In a while,
depending on the sponge water, the size of the box, ambient temperature, humidity
and sunlight on the box, water droplets will form on the sides of the box.

7. I cut a wine cork into ½" thicknesses and used them to cover the sharp ends of the
push pins holding the top sponge in place on the cover.


The object of the sweat box is to have the humidity in the box seep through the paper
and loosen the stamp's gum, but remember paper and gum interact in different ways
depending on the age of the paper, the age and condition of the gum and the humidity.

Self-adhesive stamps can be sweated off, but what happens with a SA stamp is that
the binder layer dissolves separating the top paper layer from the bottom adhesive
layer so that you can't save the stamp with its adhesive.

And if you think stronger measures are necessary, just give the sweat box more time
to work. Remember "STEAM is EXTREME."

With a little experience and patience most glues finally break down under the
humidity. Expect a gummed stamp to take 30 minutes to loosen from paper, and
gummed mint stamps a bit longer to release from each other.

feckin brilliant..
I love you man..

You can count on the Rodster.

Hang on guys
cannot accept those accolades,
The author is one "GS" from
"stamp collecting for beginners"

so all kudos to him/her.

I must say, it is one of the contraptions I built
from his/her advice and it actually worked :)
I separated a wad of French Guyane that were given away
as stuck together.
I was a bit impatient and destroyed a couple as the print image lifted off.

So be patient :) and separate lightly with tongs only.

hi rod222, is there any way you could get back to me, I need to see your pics on separating stamps..im new and need to try your idea.thanks so much...james

G'day James,
scroll down about 2/3rds here:
http://www.xes.cx/MT/archives/philately/

Hope that helps.

Finally I have an answer to my KGV penny reds that need to come off paper!

I can see a way to add more heat to this system.

I wonder if it will work on some of those nasty self adhesives on paper!

Thank heaps for sharing Rod!

Too much heat John, and the gum will liquefy,
be very careful.
I doubt will work on self adhesive, although I have never tried
it, may have to be left overnight.

Look forward to hearing your results.

Yes you are a 100% right Rod!

It will not work on self adhesives! It just makes the gum bubble.

The more artificial heat the more the gum bubbles.

For the first time I have used very hot water on these stamps, to get them off paper, and it is the best result I have had, with the recent self adhesives. An ink on one of these stamps is going to let go but none have changed in colour as yet!

Hi John,
Yep, there seems to be a window when the self adhesive
lets go, with cold water, which I use, around 20 minutes,
hot water, which I don't like around 3-7 minutes.

I have begun to cut around the stamp with a small margin and leave on paper, as you say the paper is beginning to be very thin on
modern issues, and a backing paper does not look that offensive.

My thoughts were kerosene and a match. Rod's suggestion seems more reasonable...

With that... g'night.

very cool idea!