Complete Restoration Experiments

[Hero Restoration]

Book 7 More tape

Work done:

dry clean

remove tape and tape stains.

remove smoke stains

reattach front half of cover

press

 

I really enjoy removing tape. I feel like I am doing the comic a favor. The adhesive is like a cancer for the paper. Left in the paper eventually loses its bonds and

is no more. Less is still more so I try not to have to do restore afterwards unless it looks necessary . On book 7 it will be necessary to repair the tear or the

book will not be safe to handle as the piece is completely detached from top left at the spine to the bottom right. Let's have a look shall we?

[font:Comic Sans MS] [/font] Amazing Spiderman #3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You will notice a tideline on the after of back cover. This was due to a drying mistake of a tear repair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here I wanted to show what the staple placement look like when I was done. I know it looks like one is pushing through a little but thats how it was originally.

 

 

In the end I was not able to do much with the smoke damage.I dont know what burned in the fire so it makes it really hard

to find a way to get it all off.

[Warlord]

That's a very nice improvement!

 

I'm surprised by the smoke being difficult to remove. I don't know any better, but would have figured it would just more or less "wipe" off. Guess it is a little more adhesive or ingrained than I imagined.

 

What is your approach for smoke removal - solvent or dry cleaning or ?

[Hero Restoration]

That's a very nice improvement!

 

I'm surprised by the smoke being difficult to remove. I don't know any better, but would have figured it would just more or less "wipe" off. Guess it is a little more adhesive or ingrained than I imagined.

 

What is your approach for smoke removal - solvent or dry cleaning or ?

 

I wish it would wipe off. I tried solvents and dry cleaning but dry cleaning colors is super trick and usually not worth the trade off. This was fire smoke which could have any number of compounds in it.

 

I had a fire several years ago in my shop and I was not successful in removing smoke damage from most of my items.

[Hero Restoration]

[font:Comic Sans MS]Book 6 Continued[/font]

 

I have already shown the results of the tape removal and polled to

see what restore should be done on it. The book is now finished

but I am disappointed in the results. If I didn't already start posting

this book I would have passed on posting it now. I am ok with the

tears around the edges and the centerfold. The spine tears and the

piece fill came out terrible IMO. I have been experimenting with a paper

paste and thought I could paste extra over the seam and it look natural

but I did the opposite. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JvR11]

That's a very nice improvement!

 

I'm surprised by the smoke being difficult to remove. I don't know any better, but would have figured it would just more or less "wipe" off. Guess it is a little more adhesive or ingrained than I imagined.

 

What is your approach for smoke removal - solvent or dry cleaning or ?

 

I wish it would wipe off. I tried solvents and dry cleaning but dry cleaning colors is super trick and usually not worth the trade off. This was fire smoke which could have any number of compounds in it.

 

I had a fire several years ago in my shop and I was not successful in removing smoke damage from most of my items.

 

I just found out about this stuff called OdorXit to remove all kinds of odors, including smoke. You might try this.

[Ze-man]

Hey Mike, well first of all it takes guts to post work you yourself were not happy with so kudos to you for swallowing your pride and not just posting the "pretty off angle photos"

 

As an exercise, this book certainly allowed you to cut your teeth. Sure the books appearence was less then you hoped for aesthetically, but structurally it's improved.

 

Tape and stain removal went well, (especially for a SA cover), the interior centerfold/staples are now secure and the tears while fugly are at least sealed.

 

The tear seals and top edge BC piece fill, well as you said..not so good. Think more about how you can seal the tear using traditional methods(youtube has tons of vids on basic tear seal applications on books, but these methods can be directly translated to comics) And work on how to best piece fill a missing area without having to do much more work on the actual surface. Trick being to make it look seamless, easier said then done I know.

 

All in all you should be pleased, not frustrated. If it was easy everyone would do it.

 

I am constantly reminded of a quote from John Ford when asked how he was able to shoot "How Green was my Valley" in only 8 weeks.

 

He said.."It took me 26 years to learn how to do what I do look easy, but it was anything but easy."

 

Or something akin to that.

 

 

 

 

[That Ron Dude]

I am extremely impressed. You should be very proud of yourself.

[Hero Restoration]

Thanks guys for the encouragement. I hope to improve on piece fill really soon and won't stop till it looks natural and original.

 

[font:Comic Sans MS] [/font] Book #8

[font:Comic Sans MS] [/font] Creepy #27 A [font:Comic Sans MS] [/font] cover

 

 

Dry clean colored area's.

Press big book

 

 

 

So, I did not know you could dry clean a colored area on a cover without

removing ink until this last week. The first book wasn't documented so

this is my second try at it. I may have not completely removed all the

stains because I am still scared I will accidently remove color.

Reviewing these photos I noticed two spots on BC where it looks like the dirt was hiding a color chip and a CB along the spine.

 

 

Pressing a larger thicker book is a little more trickier and required

slightly different settings.

I only pressed the book once and would only press it more if I really

wanted to hammer those 3 NCB on the spine. This is my book so I

didn't feel the need to take it that far.

You can expect in the near future a crack, press and resub experiment

soon courtesy of Starbuck.

 

[Warlord]

As soon as I saw your comment on dry cleaning color I immediately recalled your previous comments that you only did white areas out of concern that otherwise it would lead to a loss of color. Glad to see you've come up with something! Very nice work on the cleaning and the crease removals!

[Hero Restoration]

Pushing this to next page due to heavy on photos.

[Hero Restoration]

Mike's Sunday Post

 

Book 9 Avengers GGR #4 Ratachewy

 

Undo the staplemania.

Clean

Piece fill

Press

Color touch

 

This book was a good chance to really sink my teeth in piece fill work. It has been an ongoing project for 2 months now.

Original I wanted to CT the whole cover but for several reason I decided to only CT the piece fill and to make it look as natural as possible.

So let's get started and take a look shall we?

 

 

 

It's in bad shape and totally worthless the way it was so it seemed like a good book to experiment doing things for the first time and refining others.

So the first thing I needed to do was remove the foreign staples plus the original (produced with only one). You can see from the scan of the back above

5 staples total were stamped in and rusted. Down below is a pic of all the staples I removed. Can you guess which one is the original ?

 

 

 

Next I submerged the cover in an organic solvent to remove any oils. The cover has water stains and as of now I still don't have another solvent other

than water to remove these types of stains.

 

I submerged the cover in water. After 30 mins there was no change so I added a mild surfactant.

30 mins later no improvement so I added a stronger surfactant. That removed most of the stain, unfortunately it also removed some of the ink.

Looks like back to the drawing board with water solvent washing. The news isn't all bad. After I washed it I resized it and then dried it between some

blotters in hopes this will be the time the cover dries perfectly flat. As you look below you will see I got really close. The top and bottom are perfect

and the side's are close enough the after assembled and pressed they are perfectly flat.

 

 

 

Up next was the piece fill of the cover and then every page and CT the new area's to blend in with the old. The added pieces were butted together rather than overlapped so the thickness wouldnt be different.

 

 

 

You can see in the close up below I experimented with dot matrix CT but it came out darker than the rest of the buildings.

 

 

 

 

 

The left corner blending in a little better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I did the cover I moved on to the centerfold. It was detached than reatteached off centered. This caused one side to stick out and get damaged

to the point of paper loss. Below you will see those repairs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I piece fill the corner's and spine, CT them and re-assemble the book followed by a pressing.

Below you can see more of the before after stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As always I welcome all questions,comments and suggestions both public and private.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FFB]

The book is still ugly as hell but I have to admit that you did a pretty ok job considering your experience level.

 

I am really impressed that you did the dot pattern CT. What mechanism did you use to do it?

 

As for the rest of the book, part of the problem with the final appearance is that you've color touched only the parts you filled with new paper. Color touch is always ten times as obvious if you only color touch a portion of the ink loss on the cover.

 

The other parts of the problem are that you did not remove all of the staining (understandable, as the stains were pretty bad) and because the areas of new paper look like aftermarket paper.

 

I recommend that for areas of loss, you do some google searches on leaf casting paper, build a leaf casting table, and start experimenting. It's great for you to learn the manual way of filling areas of loss, but if you're going to restore books with huge chunks missing, you're never going to get the manual piece fill to look natural.

[Hero Restoration]

The book is still ugly as hell but I have to admit that you did a pretty ok job considering your experience level.

 

I am really impressed that you did the dot pattern CT. What mechanism did you use to do it?

 

As for the rest of the book, part of the problem with the final appearance is that you've color touched only the parts you filled with new paper. Color touch is always ten times as obvious if you only color touch a portion of the ink loss on the cover.

 

The other parts of the problem are that you did not remove all of the staining (understandable, as the stains were pretty bad) and because the areas of new paper look like aftermarket paper.

 

I recommend that for areas of loss, you do some google searches on leaf casting paper, build a leaf casting table, and start experimenting. It's great for you to learn the manual way of filling areas of loss, but if you're going to restore books with huge chunks missing, you're never going to get the manual piece fill to look natural.

 

Thanks allot for your input Scott, it really helps to have someone tell me what looks good and what doesn't.

 

I wouldn't have guessed that full CT would have been preferred.

 

I think if I told you how I did the dot matrix pattern you wouldn’t be so impressed. This one was done by using material from another comic. Next experiment will be scanning a good area in high res then reprinting it on vintage comic paper stock but that idea only sounds good on piece fill, not for general ink loss.

 

I also have some idea’s for printing directly on the original cover but so far I haven’t had a chance to explore that. The biggest stumbling block there is getting complete very high res scans of a cover. The next problem is resources. My apps and printer can only do so well.

 

I want to start leaf casting but making one is difficult and my information on the subject leaves allot of details out.

[*paull*]

I think lining up the existing dot pattern with the new dot pattern is going to be near impossible. I think it would be easier to print on new paper and attach that piece and doing minor fill where the dots line up.

[bullseye]

Wow, lots of great posts on a very interesting topic. Can never get enough of learning and watching about restoration. Definitely an art form that carries no stigma with me.

[TheDanimal]

Awesome work! Can't wait to see what you do with my Capt. Marvel!!! A lot of goodies in mine that will keep you busy and give you all around practice. Expect it soon!

[Ze-man]

Mike, considering how far gone this book was I think you should be pleased.

 

As you progress you will probably look back at this book and have a chuckle. But it's an important book in terms of what it represented, a major undertaking. It would have been hard for anybody to make that book look perfect again.

 

Only thing I would caution is the wet washing. I have not owned, nor worked on any GRR and do not know how they differ in inks, coverstock, clay etc.. to similar era SA books. But an hour in the water seems a LONG time to wash an early SA Marvel, I think you should feel lucky you only lost the inks you did. And would not use this result as a litmus test for future washing of SA covers.

 

And regarding the CT?, I think given the extensive nature of the work done, additional minor CT here and there to improve overall eye appeal would have been acceptable.

 

 

[divad]

I have not owned, nor worked on any GRR and do not know how they differ in inks, coverstock, clay etc.. to similar era SA books.

 

My experience is that they don't sigificantly differ in any way.

[Hero Restoration]

Mike, considering how far gone this book was I think you should be pleased.

 

Thank you.

 

As you progress you will probably look back at this book and have a chuckle. But it's an important book in terms of what it represented, a major undertaking. It would have been hard for anybody to make that book look perfect again.

 

I already look back on my first books and chuckle so I am sure I will with this one in no time. Edit I should add there was also books that make me bang my head against the wall that I did what I did to them. Most of you know about those.

 

Only thing I would caution is the wet washing. I have not owned, nor worked on any GRR and do not know how they differ in inks, coverstock, clay etc.. to similar era SA books. But an hour in the water seems a LONG time to wash an early SA Marvel, I think you should feel lucky you only lost the inks you did. And would not use this result as a litmus test for future washing of SA covers.

 

I am losing interest in wet washing with water. If it wasn't for the water stains I wouldn't have even done it. The cover did seem a little thicker than a regular SA but its hard for me to tell. I am still learning how to use "the force".

 

And regarding the CT?, I think given the extensive nature of the work done, additional minor CT here and there to improve overall eye appeal would have been acceptable.

I am going to work on it more and see about improving its appearance and will post it when I am done. I am learning you can always do more but is really hard to return more to less so I am glad I got some feedback first.

[Hero Restoration]

[font:Times New Roman] [/font] Hi, my name is Mike Dechellis and this is attempt #2. (©NBC )

 

 

 

 

[font:Comic Sans MS] [/font] Book #10 Tales To Astonish #53 The Guinea pig

 

 

 

This is my first try at Leaf Casting the front cover and back cover into one piece. I don't have in stock many that need this

process which is what has led me to this book and here's a brief history since I purchased it.

 

 

I bought this book for $2.50 at a con a while ago with the intention of experimenting with tape removal.

That was back when I was just floating the cover in solvent to remove stains rather than using a suction table.

You will notice the book still has tape stains and since I experimented with water bath on it the tape adhesive is now permanently

fused to the paper.

 

Water really is the last resort to use on paper so one of my goals is to do everything with alternate chemicals.

Its more expensive but I think it's going to be worth it. Even the slurry for Leaf Casting doesn't have to be water but for

now water is what I will be using.

 

 

I had only one goal with this experiment. I wanted to join the two half's and get the alignment straight. I wasn't concerned about

how much paper was used or the color of it. I also forgot to put it face down so as a result the feathered look is on the outside

and an excessive amount of pulp is covering up artwork.

 

 

So overall I would give the fill a fugly minus.

I am amazed the cover is one piece now and more solid than I could have done with mending tissue's. I was afraid to fold the

paper fearing it would split in half but it didn't. This will open up a whole new world for me where anything is possible and I can't

wait till the whole package is pro material.

 

Tune in next Sunday for attempt #3 with experiments in paper color matching, color graphs and freehand color touch.