Ironing: It's Not Just For Clothes Anymore!

This may be old hat for some, but for me this came as a recent revelation.

Being a collector of revenue documents, I frequently encounter documents that have been folded or curved for 150 years, and as the paper is extremely brittle or rigid from loss of moisture. Trying to get them to lay flat for scanning, presentation, or repair can be QUITE difficult.

Historically the solution other than reverse folding the document against the existing folds, which breaks or at the very least weakens the paper fibres and reduces document integrity, was to lay a document flat between two smooth surfaces and stack books/bricks/anvils on it for several days or weeks. Sure, it works in a pinch, but what if you don't want to wait a week to work with the document, or as I found myself after purchasing an accumulation of billheads, how/where to flatten several hundred documents?

P.S. Soaking/humidifying is absolutely NOT an option, even if the documents do not have stamps affixed. I learned this the hard way, unfortunately. Residual water of any kind, even vapor, will frequently cause spotting, toning, or smearing of manuscript ink on paper this old. Stay FAR away from water.

After doing some research online, I found some references to "ironing" documents to remove (or at least minimize) creases, folds, wrinkles, etc. I did some experimentation, and damned if it doesn't work extremely well... but with several caveats.

1. While you can use a normal clothes iron, that is NOT recommended as they are heavy and clumsy, and you run a very high risk of accidentally damaging the material you are working on. Also, the temperature controls on home irons can be very vague and inconsistent. Instead, you want to look for an "edge banding iron". This is a light hand-held iron with digital controls. I purchased the following ($62.99 at Amazon):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y2X7JYW






2. Even at its lowest setting, it is QUITE hot, so you want to be careful (100 degrees celsius = 212 degrees fahrenheit is the lowest temp). As shown above it comes with the holder, which you want to use.

3. You never want to apply the iron directly to the document or cover you want to flatten. Instead you want to place a piece of paper on top of the document and apply the iron to it, never allowing it to sit still, constantly move the iron. I use the following packing paper from Wal-Mart. It's cheap ($5.97 for 50 sheets) and it's large enough (22-inch x 22-inch) that it can be used for oversized documents or torn down for smaller documents... multipurpose.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pen-Gear...ts/440522923


I use a sheet of tempered glass as my working area, as it's perfectly flat and won't be marred if the hot iron accidentally slips or rests on the surface.

Some pictures of my working area and before, during, and after shots:

1. Iron in holder showing 105 degrees Celsius current temperature. As you can see, the billhead in question has curled over the last 160 years and does not want to lay flat.




2. Torn sheet of the packing paper on top of the billhead. You can't see it, but I place the billhead face DOWN so the printing/stamp is away from the heat source.




3. After 20-30 seconds of even pressure, focusing on the folds, the document now lays flat with no assistance.




4. Now a slighly larger document with multiple folds, which would be a pain to deal with on the scanner or trying to insert into a page protector or sleeve.




5. Face down prior to using iron. As you can see, its "natural resting position" is quite janky due to years in folded storage.




6. One minute later... you can still SEE the folds, but they are no longer an impediment to working with or presentation of the document. With new/recent printed materials, lightly wetting the paper surface before ironing *might* eliminate the folds almost completely, but (1) as I originally mentioned, for documents this old we don't want water anywhere near them, and (2) technically, when paper is actually folded, paper fibres are broken, which is a destructive action, meaning you will never truly reverse it without major surgery.

The goal here isn't to make the folds or creases disappear, but to be able to effectively work with the documents.




All in all, I'm thrilled with the results, and once you get in a rhythm, 30-60 seconds per document means you can go through quite a few in one sitting.

At some point I want to see if this same method works for large-format vellum indentures. I have several that I have never been able to image because the existing folds are so rigid.

I've seen references in auction catalogues to stamps' (the GB QV £5 orange springs to mind) having ironed-out creases. I don't have any that would be worth the treatment.

I don't know that a brute force approach like this would do anything for individual stamps over simply soaking and pressing them. This is more for cases where you can't soak something.

This was being done to covers many decades ago; I was about 22 when I was shown how to do so. Haven't done it much since, but........

revenuecollector:

Thank you for this post. That's a great device, and I'll have to get one.

It's great to see someone else faced with this situation.

My experiences..



This is a photograph of a large group of post office registry receipts and other related documents, all from a post office that operated in the 1870s. They were originally rolled "tightly" and tied with a string on a month by month archive. After some debate, a friend and I resorted to the standard steam iron to flatten them out, using a very low heat, and it worked but I can appreciate the value of a specialized iron to do that work. We never made a complete count but there were at least 300 receipts in the lot.

They are now organized in a series of notebooks where they can be examined and researched.

Another similar project, as show in the original auction listing. I think that many had been tied with string which was removed for the photograph...



Similar process and good results. These again were post office documents, many were the Post Office quarterly reports filed by postmaster to calculate their salary or commission. Many were the large 8x15 in size, all dating between 1840 and 1860. Many had a second or third postal form inside the folded outer documents.

I am continued to be amazed that accumulations like these are still coming out of the woodwork in their untouched state after 150 to nearly 200 years.

Mike

Oh yeah, this iron would be perfect for that sort of material IMO. Again, it won't make the folds disappear entirely, but they'll be reasonably flat.

Darn! I gave my mini-iron away when I gave away all my flying model aircraft stuff. These irons are used for attaching self-adhesive shrink fabric.

For what it's worth, ironing is a known (and much reviled) practice in the currency hobby.

My wife, who is a certified archivist, tells me that ironing is never an accepted archival practice, because it risks physical and chemical changes that cannot be reversed.

Yes, any time you introduce heat to a substance, you run the risk of changes. I would not recommend this for scarce or high-value items.

I'm not acting as a conservator for a museum here. We're talking about mountains of comparatively low-value (under $20 per) paper here, and I have yet to hear/read of a viable alternative to flatten them in order to be able to work with them.

P.S. One could argue that soaking stamps also risks changes to the stamp based upon the temperature and composition of the water, the paper and inks of the stamp, etc., and yet it happens every day.

There has to be a balance between the ideal and the pragmatic. This ironing method, while certainly not the former, makes up for it in the latter, depending on one's need.

I'm just offering options based on things I discover or learn about; I'm not suggesting that this is how others should choose to practice.

I bought a collection on auction a couple of years ago where many of the stamps were mounted in homemade folded mounts. Various materials had been used to create little, tiny, neatly folded, Christmas wrapped packages - glassine interleaving, cellophane, even good old Saran Wrap. All did a number on the stamps and they came out tightly rolled, badly warped, wrinkled, etc. I did some experiments and found that a warm to hot iron and a lot of steady pressure helped the appearance for those stamps or sets that I wanted for my collection. It was far too labour intensive to use on everything though. The process did not seem to do any harm to the stamp and we are speaking of 1930's and 1940's Belgian material here for the most part. An aside, the cellophane material had aged and become brittle, and it seemed to have affected the stamps the same way with them becoming brittle and yellowish as well and the gum turning shiny and smooth. Those I had to discard.

I have to agree with revenuecollector here. We have to adapt our preservation practices to match the items being preserved.

In addition to the two examples shown in my earlier post, I probably have several 1000 small, inexpensive post office forms, documents and letter size circulars from the 19th and early 20th century in my "collection". Many have a minimal value ($1 - $10) and it is impractical to treat them like a document with significant monetary value. But in some cases, the totality of a group of inexpensive items may tell a more significant story than one $1000 document.

My goal is to treat these materials with the best respect that I can afford. Small items get sleeved like my postal history covers. Larger items that fit into sheet protectors go into office supply quality sheet protectors. On most of these, I don't attempt to press out folds, just add them to the sheet protectors and organize them in an appropriate 3-ring binder.

More valuable items at the $100 and up level get a different but appropriate treatment. Postmaster Commissions, which are always oversized (8"x15" to 18"x24"), are often received as folded documents when received in a purchase.

These are carefully unfolded, major fold separations are addressed with archival tape if appropriate, and then placed in archival quality library book dust jacket covers or archival storage sleeves, and then they are filed in artist portfolios to prevent any future handling damage. Other very large items get similar treatment.

I occasionally acquire a postmaster commission that has been stored rolled in the original mailing tube. These pose a serious dilemma, and my only solution has been to unroll these as best I can and press with a large stack of oversized books (atlases are best). Time eventually relaxes some of the curl from the document.

Eventually my collection will return to the marketplace, or it may go to an institutional archive for research purposes. The new buyer will probably start again with the handling and archival issues, as many items I purchased were not in archival quality storage when received, and probably removed from any original holder by the dealer who acquired that item. An institution will have to make their own decisions as to future treatment.

My role is to preserve these items the best that I can for the next generation. That is what drives my enjoyment.

I am aware of some of the literature on preservation and conversation. I have a MS in Library Science, specializing in Special Collections and Archives. I never worked professionally in the field, but I do understand the challenges faced by Librarians and Archivists, at least from the time I was being educated. I do try to follow advances in the field, but there is little published for dealing with low value items like these.

It is not my intention to recommend that anyone facing a similar situation follow my approach, but they should develop their own standards the treatment of their material.

Mike L

I apologize to revenuecollector for hijacking his thread about this useful device. If you would like me to move this to a separate post, contact me through the SCF message feature.

No apology needed; your comments are perfectly on-topic IMO.

Part of the reason for forums/message boards is to have ongoing dialogue and debate; something that Facebook and other social media platforms that have replaced message boards are woefully inadequate for.

Follow-up: I ended up returning the iron. About 2.5 weeks after receiving it, during a session after being on for about 30 minutes (at minimum temperature setting), the LED display went bonkers, as if the "liquid" all leaked (see pic below). It made the temperature display completely unreadable. While the display cleared up after cooling down, I wasn't about to chance it.

Before buying a replacement, I'm going to experiment with a small travel clothes iron.

This makes me a bit nervous, and not just the heating "iron" breaking down when it might suddenly have overheated and ruined a valuable stamp, but the fear that such stamps treated to heat might not be described as such.

I'd expect any stamps I was buying that had been "ironed" to be labeled as such. Why? There's no telling what the heat might do over time to the paper, the ink, or the adhesive on the stamp. To not do this, it seems to me, is to be less than honest about what you are selling, and it would seem to fall into the same category of noting "no gum" for unused stamps or mentioning stamp repairs of such things as perforations or thins. If you've done anything that might alter a stamp, you need to note this. If heating up a stamp to smooth it out proves to do no harm, then all will be well, but if it changes the paper, the color, or the gum in some way that takes time to notice, a buyer needs to be told that you've done it.

Consider this: If I can brighten up the color of a faded stamp by immersing it in a chemical, do I have the right to do that? Only if I warn any future buyer what I've done to the stamp -- especially if that chemical could possibly be doing long term damage to the stamp. "Peroxide used to brighten stamp color" is simple enough to note. Or just write in pencil on the back "Peroxide dipped" or even more briefly "H202 dipped". A repaired painting might be done so well that the repair is invisible, but it still must be sold as "cleaned" or "tear repaired" or whatever was done to it.

A few seconds of exposure to heat isn't going to do anything "long term" to a stamp. Using your logic, a stamp that was stored in a hot attic at any point should be explicitly disclosed as such, along with any stamp that has been soaked and/or placed in a weighted drying book. Where does it end?

Also, the discussion has been about reducing hard creases/wrinkles from DOCUMENTS so they can be worked with, not about ironing stamps.