Pog

If I was pressing books professionally I would have a walk in humidity room, with RH and temp monitored and controlled, like a mushroom growing room. Or like a chicken egg incubator. I might also weigh the books before they went in and again when they came out. They should weigh more after a few hours in the chamber because they will have more water in them. There must be a preferred range of moisture content for comic book pressing. You would have to experiment a bit; Weigh a disposable book at room temp and RH. I'm going to call that the ambient moisture content. Dry it out in an oven overnight. Weigh it again. That is the dry weight, no moisture in it at all. Put it in the humidity chamber at a known RH and temperature for XXX hours. Weigh it every hour or so until the weight doesn't go up any more. The differences in weight is the moisture in the book, so now you know what the 'ambient' moisture content is, what the 'dry weight' is, and what it is after a given time at a given temp and RH. Experiment a few times like this and you can say the book probably has a certain amount of moisture in it before treatment, and predict the optimum time it will take to raise the moisture content to the desired level. Then when it is pressed and treated, you can weigh it again to see if it is at the same weight as before you started the process. You will know it is at the moisture level it should be, or that it was before you started. I think after it is heat pressed (and cold pressed?) it should be the same 'ambient ' weight again. If it is higher, then you left more moisture in it than it started with. This moisture is going to evaporate...will that curl the paper as it does so? so if a book is 50 grams before treatment(ambient), 45 grams after drying out(dry weight), and 55 grams after being humidified you can say there is 22% moisture content in the book after treatment (55-45)/45=22% Ambient moisture content was (50-45)/45=11% I think my small one book humidity chamber would be insulated to help prevent condensation. If the walls of the chamber are the same temperature as the air inside it, there should be no, or very little, condensation. Would a high end cooler work for that? Would that mean the water could be a bit warmer, and would this speed up the humidification process? There are Rh gauges and water heaters that could be used to control the water and air temp and RH inside the chamber. Aquarium or reptile cages, chicken egg hatchers...same temp and RH problems as with comics. Or, this must be dealt with already in rare book and art restoration circles, which has been going on for 100's of years. I don't think I would be dipping anything in vinegar: it's acidic. And does distilled water matter? Distilled water is basically water that has been evaporated-turned to a gas and then condensed-turned to water again, to take all the solids out of it...which is exactly what a humidity chamber does. The solids will build up in the reservoir but shouldn't be in the air at all. To be clear, I have not pressed any books, but I plan on doing it soon. I am still at the 'thinking it through stage'. Just thinking out loud, here.