Removing severely yellowed tape... opinions?

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Drac of the Sharp Smiles
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Removing severely yellowed tape... opinions?

Post by Drac of the Sharp Smiles »

I'm on a several years now crusade to remove the tape from all sketches in my collection. However, some have tape so severely yellowed that I can't see the situation getting worse. Dry and gone to the point it falls off the paper as you handle the sketch. So far, I've been simply noting sketches in this situation and skipping them in favor of removing tape from sheets which are either in more immediate danger or which haven't suffered damage yet.

Here's my pondering.... Is there any value to attempting to remove whatever dry residue of adhesive is left from tape in this severely poor condition? Is it possible for it to get somehow worse after the paper is 100% yellowed from it? I tried removing it from one sheet as a test and worked for a very extremely long time with limited improvement depending on technique. (See below.) While it was definitely evident some of the residue was gone, it didn't seem possible to remove it all to the point of simply having the yellowed marks on the paper.

So.... Opinions? Go back and work on these sheets? Or chalk them up to a waste of time and leave them be?

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac


(Here's the "below", for those interested in what I tried.)

My test sheet was from Saiyuki TV (ep11), a white sheet, which had three distinct spots where tape had gone bad to the point of falling off. The paper in the area of the tape had no design. On the first spot, I approached it as I would any other tape and worked across the area with the paper resting on a piece of cardboard, one end to the other, with application of oil and scraping the surface with a dull craft knife. On the second spot, I soaked the spot in the oil for about 30min before taking it out and then working with it as I had the first spot. For the third spot, I soaked the spot in oil for about 30min, but I had it set up on a very shallow, glass dinner plate and I worked across the area while it was submerged under a little pool of oil.

Spot #3 came out the best and, while it did have residue remaining that was mostly only visible when held at an angle to light, you couldn't feel it with your fingers. Spot #2 came out close to the way spot #3 had, though a little bit of shine from residue could be more easily seen and the paper definitely felt different (rougher?) in the areas where the tape had been, however it still felt like just paper. Spot #1 didn't seem to make much difference and the residue was obviously reduced but more was still clearly visible and it definitely felt like something was on the paper, though you couldn't have tried to remove anything further without damaging the paper by over working it.

Though hard to describe, it's worth additionally mentioning the yellowed staining from the tape on spot #3 (and to a slightly lesser extent, spot #2) seemed to have a "softer" look to it. Almost like the difference between a hard painted edge and an airbrushed edge, if that makes any sense.
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Angelic-Lair
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Re: Removing severely yellowed tape... opinions?

Post by Angelic-Lair »

The dry residue might be creating additional reactions through contact, but it's hard to say how much effect it's having. If you want to do the absolute best job possible, you might want to consider removing the residue but if the paper has burned already it might not have an appreciable effect.
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