Paper Help For Homemade Drying Book?

I probably will just go with draying books once I can get the bigger ones at a decent price. I've just had so many fall apart of me I was a bit nervous but Desert Magic seems to have very good reviews.

I thought I was doing something wrong, perhaps not shaking off enough water, not patting dry well enough, needed more weight. But seems I just got low quality books.

BettyAnn,
My soak/dry process may not be the best, and likely you do the same, but here it is:

- Soak about 50-60 at a time in a 6x8 plastic storage box, using very warm water
- As I remove stamps from the soak and clean off remnants/paper, I place them on a paper towel
- When the batch is completely removed from the water and on the towel(s), I put another towel on top and lightly press down. This removes all excess water.
- Remove all the stamps from the paper towel and place in the drying book, where they are left overnight.

By using the paper towels to take up excess moisture, the stamps curl less and are easier to place in the drying book, and because of less moisture, the drying books seem to last a very long time.

For what its worth............

Desert Magic books are great. I do a lot of soaking (about a pound just in the last two days) and I try to fill the books to maximum capacity with every soak. I can generally fill a large drying book to capacity in around 45 minutes, start to finish.

Before soaking, I sort the stamps by size and count out the correct number of stamps that will completely fill the book. I get every stamp off paper and into a 2nd rinse bowl before putting any of them into the book. I then grab a pile of wet stamps and shake the excess water off of them. Filling the pages from there goes pretty quickly. The top stamp on the pile will stick to my thumb as I draw it across the pile and since they're all the same (or similar) size, I can just plop them down in neat rows, one after another. I blot the excess water off before turning the page and they're about 95% dry after 24 hours. If I had enough drying books, I could soak a pound in an afternoon without too much difficulty. I ran a timer last night as I soaked 2 batches of 336 stamps each (max capacity for that size of stamp) and it took me 24 minutes to get them all off paper and another 24 minutes from there to fill the book. A batch of jumbo-sized commems would go even quicker, a batch of all small-sized defins would take a bit longer.