Possible rescue for gummy photopolymer stamps

[gregzgurl]

I'm currently doing a major purge of ALL of my stamps, and some of my oldest polymer stamps (circa 2003-2004) are soft and gummy. I'm not sure what made me remember this but, many moons ago, I was washing stamps in a warm dishwashing liquid bath. When I rinsed them off, I noticed that some of them seemed a bit firmer than before. I looked again at the dishwashing liquid and realized that it said "with bleach". I was somewhat alarmed, but no harm seemed to come of it. Fast forward to now... Since I was going to have to toss some of these older, gummy stamps anyway, I decided to soak them in a bleach/dishwashing liquid concoction for a while and see what happened. I don't know how things will play out long-term, but some of those that I thought were goners are usable again. If you're brave enough, you may want to try this yourself before tossing the sad, soft ones...

[Alice in Md]

This sounds interesting! About how much hand dishwashing liquid did you use to how much bleach -- and did you dilute it from there?

[gregzgurl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alice in Md

This sounds interesting! About how much hand dishwashing liquid did you use to how much bleach -- and did you dilute it from there?

I had a container that deli ham came in that I'd saved and I put about half an inch of bleach in it, added a small squirt of Dawn, swished it around with a plastic fork and set enough stamps into it to make a single layer. After ten minutes or so I fished them out with the fork and dropped them into a plastic cup of clean water, then laid them on paper towels to dry. A couple of them went back into the solution for another round to see if it helped firm them up a bit more. Your results may vary. Since the stamps were headed for the trash anyway, I figured there was nothing to lose.

[hoptownracer1]

I hope it worked well for you! Let us know how they turned out! TFS!

[gobarb26]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregzgurl

I had a container that deli ham came in that I'd saved and I put about half an inch of bleach in it, added a small squirt of Dawn, swished it around with a plastic fork and set enough stamps into it to make a single layer. After ten minutes or so I fished them out with the fork and dropped them into a plastic cup of clean water, then laid them on paper towels to dry. A couple of them went back into the solution for another round to see if it helped firm them up a bit more. Your results may vary. Since the stamps were headed for the trash anyway, I figured there was nothing to lose.

Were the stamps still able to stick to the blocks or stamping thing (MISTI, TH, etc.)?

[gregzgurl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gobarb26

Were the stamps still able to stick to the blocks or stamping thing (MISTI, TH, etc.)?

Yes, they function just fine! They're still a bit softer than the photopolymer that never went gummy, but there is definite improvement. As I said before, I'm not sure what the long-term effect will be, but if it allows me to use the stamps instead of tossing them, I consider that a win even if it's short-term.