Soaking Stamps - A Rookie Mistake...

A couple things I have noticed over the years; Several of the Madonna and child stamps for the US Christmas runs will curl when soaked to never lay flat again. Having to do with the foil, as the paper expands and the foil does not causing irreparable damage. For these PSAs, I use Ronsonal and then dust the back with white billiards chalk, which is 100% pure talc. Hinges will never stick so a mount must be used. Pure Citrus air freshener works as well however much more expensive.
The only difference I have seen with other countries is the length of soaking time needed due to the different glues used for the water activated stamps.
I like to use the Manila stock pages after the soak and dry cycle. Being a paper product, the stamps continue to cure nice and flat as KGV pointed out previously.
I have heard that there are a couple countries that have some issues that are flat unsoakable. I think it was france that had a couple but I cant rightly remember.

I've always left them in the drying book for 24 hours, but still had a few curl on me. Based on what I've read in this thread, I'm going to leave them in for 2 days to see if I can achieve "zero curling."

I never use Hot water. Only room temperature water. I use paper towels and a weight. I leave them 5 or 6 hrs or overnight. I rarely have a curl problem. The rookie mistake jogil made will never be made by him again. No harm done though just a little extra work.

face up or down when drying? The few I've done so far I dried face down thinking it would keep any residual gum from sticking to the towel. But I read recently on another site to dry face up. is there a best practice here?

Thanks for the memories...I can't remember the last time I soaked stamps...but I do recall one caveat: don't mix coloured envelope paper with white, unless you want to end up with a bunch of dyed stamps (red envelopes from Christmas being a major culprit).

I leave mine in the drying book for at least a day, then transfer them between the pages of an old Minkus catalog for another day, and they cone out dry and flat. I've also used dictionaries for the flattening and never had any problems with any ink transfers from the printed pages of these books. I also put my drying book out in the sun, opened to dry it out too.

well I did what docgfd mentioned - one of my stamps recently was on a red corner from an older Egyptian envelope. Man, did it bleed fast. But I quickly noticed it and removed it before any damage was done! Phew.....

I leave mine in the drying book for 5 days. I also set a catalog or two on top to keep everything nice and flat.