Just what IS cleaning and pressing?

[BassGMan]

Hi. Yeah, I'm sure this has been covered on other threads but I must have just missed them all. Does anyone here know exactly how cleaning and pressing is done? Pressing is easy to understand, I think. I assume it is just putting some high pressure on a book in order to flatten it out in some way. What is cleaning and how is it done? Who does this? Just curious about the whole thing and looking for explanations.

 

One little sory of mine. A year or so ago I pulled out a long stored copy of ASM #300. A beautiful book but since it had been pressed against other comics for so long inside of a comic box, the book in front of it was settled in the box so that the backing board made an indent right along the spine of my ASM #300. Kind of a warp from top to bottom, about 1/4" from the edge of the spine. Not a sharp crease, but a soft rolling warp. I'm sure many of us have seen this in tightly packed boxes before. Anyway, so I placed a backing board inside the bag in front of the comic for protection and then placed it under five full heavy boxes of comics for a couple weeks in order to flatten out that warp. It did look better once that I looked at it again. It must have worked because I sent the book in and received it back as a 9.8.

 

Moral of the story, so did I alter the book, or restore the book by "pressing" it? Because that is exactly what I did. -----Sid

[BronzeBruce13]

the question everyone will want to know is... if you still have it, is it still flat in the well or has it started to curl slightly to the shape it had when you bought it?

[supapimp]

i think timely knows what "pressing" is, i remember he mentioned it when he got into a flame war with stephen fishler of metropolis.

[BassGMan]

the question everyone will want to know is... if you still have it, is it still flat in the well or has it started to curl slightly to the shape it had when you bought it?

 

Good question, sold on Ebay for $475 soon after I received it back from CGC. I bought it new off the stands as flat as anything, the warping happened inside of a tightly packed comic box for 14 years or so. Understand that I had no idea if what I was doing is considered restoration or is unethical. Just trying to flatten out a book is all. I have done it a few other times as well. Sometimes works better than others. Is this a bad thing? Have any of you tried to "press" your own books before? This is a hot topic now but was a non-issue until recently, as far as I know. I am more interested in how this "clean" process is done. Personally, I don't see how any kind of "pressing" should be considered restoration if the book is not being altered, and really, doesn't even need to be touched to press, at least the way I did it. -----Sid

[FFB]

Bass,

 

What you did is considered "pressing without disassembly," and CGC does not consider it to be restoration. DRY cleaning, meaning erasure, is also not considered to be restoration by CGC. WET cleaning, where the book is disassembled and the cover is immersed in a bath of naptha or some other cleaning liquid, is considered restoration by CGC. Pressing WITH disassembly (meaning staple removal) is also considered restoration by CGC. The difference at this point between resto and non-resto seems to be whether you took the book apart to press it and whether your cleaning was dry cleaning or wet cleaning.

 

the question everyone will want to know is... if you still have it, is it still flat in the well or has it started to curl slightly to the shape it had when you bought it?

 

Good question, sold on Ebay for $475 soon after I received it back from CGC. I bought it new off the stands as flat as anything, the warping happened inside of a tightly packed comic box for 14 years or so. Understand that I had no idea if what I was doing is considered restoration or is unethical. Just trying to flatten out a book is all. I have done it a few other times as well. Sometimes works better than others. Is this a bad thing? Have any of you tried to "press" your own books before? This is a hot topic now but was a non-issue until recently, as far as I know. I am more interested in how this "clean" process is done. Personally, I don't see how any kind of "pressing" should be considered restoration if the book is not being altered, and really, doesn't even need to be touched to press, at least the way I did it. -----Sid