Rat chewed GA cover leafcasted, a photo journey.

[Ze-man]

For quite a while now FFB has bugged me to see a leaf casted cover. Normally I would tell him to find a book to restore, but since many others have also been curious I took the time to leaf cast as tattered a cover I owned to show the process to anyone interested after Scott sees it.

 

Cover before any work done.

 

Un trimmed, Leaf Casted Cover, after dry/wet cleaning.

 

Trimmed and folded cover. Notice the spine near the girls arm, a loose piece shifted during casting. A casualty of casting such a tattered cover.

 

Interior cover before work done.

 

Cover suspended in a water bath. Loose paper floating everywhere!

 

Cover as it looks directly after being pulled from the leaf casting table. A wet, pulpy mess

 

Trimmed cover flat

 

Trimmed cover folded.

 

Close up exterior spine before work done

 

Close up after washed and casted, flat.

 

Close up after trimmed/folded.

 

Close up top spine before

 

After casting, flat

 

Trimmed/folded.

 

 

Interior cover, close up before

 

After casting, untrimmed and flat

 

After trimmed/folded.

 

Close up of cover before

 

And after casting in a curled flex test.

 

 

Folded cover after all work done.

 

After I mail this cover to Scott(FFB), he can mail it to anyone who cares to see it. PM me your addy, shipping is on me.

 

Truth be told, Scott pushed leaf casting on us. And I am glad he did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[oakman29]

You have a gift.

[Hero Restoration]

Nicely detailed post of the different stages of the leaf casting process. Looks real smooth where the casted paper meets the original.

[nocutename]

Kenny, another fine job.

[shadroch]

I am intrigued by leaf casting, but how do you grade the finished product?

does CGC denote leaf casting or does it say something like pieces added?

[mackenzie999]

Very nice work... (P) resto = presto!

[Ze-man]

I am intrigued by leaf casting, but how do you grade the finished product?

does CGC denote leaf casting or does it say something like pieces added?

 

 

Hey Bill, I don't think CGC cares if a cover was leaf casted, or filled manually with japan paper and glue. It just makes note of whatever is added by way of "pieces added", or "spine reinforced" etc.

 

Although leaf casting might help raise the overall grade vs other manual methods because it is so fluid in nature. Extensively leaf casted covers are typically seamless compared to what can quickly become a patchwork of added japan paper and glue.

 

And is among the main reasons I used this Thrilling comic as an example to send Scott. When I think of trying to repair this comic by hand, it gives me a headache.

 

While possible, it's a logistical nightmare of loose, tattered paper. And even after countless hours of labor the results would not be anywhere near what leaf casting can provide. Although leaf casting a cover has it's own set of obstacles, mainly being you are working with a cover while it is wet, which makes it more fragile. The results far outweigh whatever roadblocks there are.

 

Which is why most major conservation labs leaf cast their artifacts.

 

And why someday we might see more comics have this done. Without feeling it necessary to recreate the art that might be missing. Because this is not cost effective on all but most major keys. But leaf casting in itself offers an alternative to having your semi precious comic lying in pieces in a mylar.

 

 

I think I said leaf casting a few too many times.

 

 

 

 

[Ze-man]

I added some captions to the photos after being asked by more then one person what it was they were looking at exactly.

 

Sorry bout that, thanks for looking.

 

 

[KPvD2011]

Nice sharp corners (thumbs u

[zzutak]

Awesome! You have a real gift, Kenny.

[shadroch]

I own a book that you leaf casted. I forget which title it is but it features The Black Terror. I've shown it to two collectors who were stunned by how nice it looked. A hands on examination allows to feel the difference but a visual observation doesn't.

[TheLiamSturgess]

I'd love to see it after Scott!

[Ze-man]

I own a book that you leaf casted. I forget which title it is but it features The Black Terror. I've shown it to two collectors who were stunned by how nice it looked. A hands on examination allows to feel the difference but a visual observation doesn't.

 

Was it the cover with a small tape pull on the Terror's face?

 

As I recall the casted area was just a blown staple with a large tear that needed repair.

 

But you are correct, posted photos of work done only go so far to really convey how the book feels in hand. That is the true barometer when judging restoration work.

[FFB]

Truth be told, Scott pushed leaf casting on us. And I am glad he did.

 

YESSSSS!!! At last, the truth is known. All credit goes to EffEffBee!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Hero Restoration]

I am intrigued by leaf casting, but how do you grade the finished product?

does CGC denote leaf casting or does it say something like pieces added?

 

 

Hey Bill, I don't think CGC cares if a cover was leaf casted, or filled manually with japan paper and glue. It just makes note of whatever is added by way of "pieces added", or "spine reinforced" etc.

 

Although leaf casting might help raise the overall grade vs other manual methods because it is so fluid in nature. Extensively leaf casted covers are typically seamless compared to what can quickly become a patchwork of added japan paper and glue.

 

And is among the main reasons I used this Thrilling comic as an example to send Scott. When I think of trying to repair this comic by hand, it gives me a headache.

 

While possible, it's a logistical nightmare of loose, tattered paper. And even after countless hours of labor the results would not be anywhere near what leaf casting can provide. Although leaf casting a cover has it's own set of obstacles, mainly being you are working with a cover while it is wet, which makes it more fragile. The results far outweigh whatever roadblocks there are.

 

Which is why most major conservation labs leaf cast their artifacts.

 

And why someday we might see more comics have this done. Without feeling it necessary to recreate the art that might be missing. Because this is not cost effective on all but most major keys. But leaf casting in itself offers an alternative to having your semi precious comic lying in pieces in a mylar.

 

 

I think I said leaf casting a few too many times.

 

 

 

 

Some good points here about the benifits of leaf casting over traditional repairs. One this I like to add, while tradition piece repair can look good on the outside of the cover due to color touch I believe the inside is far more presentable with the leaf casted paper.

 

Truth be told, Scott pushed leaf casting on us. And I am glad he did.

 

YESSSSS!!! At last, the truth is known. All credit goes to EffEffBee!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indeed you deserve credit Scott for pushing me to do leaf casting as well, I don't know how restorers could have done well in the past without it.

[Ze-man]

Truth be told, Scott pushed leaf casting on us. And I am glad he did.

 

YESSSSS!!! At last, the truth is known. All credit goes to EffEffBee!!!!!

 

 

 

 

Simmer down Scott, you're not getting my Bud Light.

[FFB]

I am intrigued by leaf casting, but how do you grade the finished product?

does CGC denote leaf casting or does it say something like pieces added?

 

 

Hey Bill, I don't think CGC cares if a cover was leaf casted, or filled manually with japan paper and glue. It just makes note of whatever is added by way of "pieces added", or "spine reinforced" etc.

 

Although leaf casting might help raise the overall grade vs other manual methods because it is so fluid in nature. Extensively leaf casted covers are typically seamless compared to what can quickly become a patchwork of added japan paper and glue.

 

And is among the main reasons I used this Thrilling comic as an example to send Scott. When I think of trying to repair this comic by hand, it gives me a headache.

 

While possible, it's a logistical nightmare of loose, tattered paper. And even after countless hours of labor the results would not be anywhere near what leaf casting can provide. Although leaf casting a cover has it's own set of obstacles, mainly being you are working with a cover while it is wet, which makes it more fragile. The results far outweigh whatever roadblocks there are.

 

Which is why most major conservation labs leaf cast their artifacts.

 

And why someday we might see more comics have this done. Without feeling it necessary to recreate the art that might be missing. Because this is not cost effective on all but most major keys. But leaf casting in itself offers an alternative to having your semi precious comic lying in pieces in a mylar.

 

 

I think I said leaf casting a few too many times.

 

 

 

 

Some good points here about the benifits of leaf casting over traditional repairs. One this I like to add, while tradition piece repair can look good on the outside of the cover due to color touch I believe the inside is far more presentable with the leaf casted paper.

 

Truth be told, Scott pushed leaf casting on us. And I am glad he did.

 

YESSSSS!!! At last, the truth is known. All credit goes to EffEffBee!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indeed you deserve credit Scott for pushing me to do leaf casting as well, I don't know how restorers could have done well in the past without it.

 

After seeing what Vince Scipior (board member who used to post quite a bit) did with it on an old GA book and a silver age X-Men 1 that was in tatters, I couldn't figure out why other professional restoration artists weren't doing it. His results were uncanny for an untrained college student who built his own leaf casting table with his dad and wanted to try his hand at restoring some of his books.

 

I'd seen a lot of extensively restored GA and silver age books in the past and the structural work didn't look as good or as solid as Vince's results. That shocked me. Then there was the time difference between the relatively short amount of time Vince needed to leaf cast a cover with large areas of loss, compared to what I knew to be an enormous amount of time needed by restoration professionals using the manual piece fill method to fill a similarly shabby cover.

 

After seeing Vince's results and chatting with him about his experiments a bit, I figured that if a restoration professional added leaf casting to their work, the structural repair on extensively restored books would improve dramatically. I figured that for some cool but beat-up books that were deemed impossible or just not worth the effort to restore from a cost-standpoint, this technique might make structural repair more accessible for a larger set of books. Only the big GA keys used to be worth the money to restore if they were beat to hell.

 

Kenny and I are friends from the earlier days of this forum. We had been talking when he first got into comic book restoration as a profession, when he began working for Matt at Classics Inc. The story of how he got the gig is a great one, but one that I will leave to Kenny to share if he wants to.

 

For those of you newer forum members who don't know the history, Kenny was a gifted stained glass artist for years before he decided to try his hand at comic book restoration. He had shared some pictures of his stained glass work in one of those "What do you do for a living" threads and it was stunning. Anyway, a few years later, Kenny decided to try his hand at comic book restoration and was tutoring under Matt. I had always been interested in restoration and we would chat about some of the results he was able to get early on in his training (which were really good). One day after seeing what Vince Scipior had done, I started pestering Kenny to try leaf casting just so that I could see if the results by a professional would look even better than Vince's already extremely impressive results.

 

I still remember when Kenny first started leaf casting. The initial results were impressive. He has really mastered the technique over the years, both by trial and error and also by consulting with conservators at a local paper conservation lab. In the comic book field, I have seen leaf casting results of work done by the three people I know of who are doing it right now as a regular part of their restoration work. In my opinion, Kenny's is by far the best in terms of realistically creating missing paper in a way that is indistinguishable from the original areas. Kenny has spent a lot of time, effort, and thought perfecting his approach and the results show. His ability to recreate the original look and feel of Golden Age comic cover stock is incredible. I like to joke with him that he is probably the best in the world at leaf casting comic covers, except that I am not really joking. Comic cover stock is much different than other kinds of paper. Traditional paper conservators at conservation labs with access to a $15,000+ leaf casting table don't tend to spend a lot of time restoring comic books. He probably really is the best in the world at it, bar none.

 

The addition of leaf casting at Classics Inc., along with their art recreation (somewhat inaccurately called "color touch" on the CGC label), has raised Classics Inc.'s extensive work to a level above everyone else's in the business right now. I suspect that anyone who has seen a shredded GA book restored by all of the major restoration professionals today would agree without hesitation. I have seen results from books that other well known restoration artists turned down as "unfixable" that Classics was able to beautify to an apparent VF- or better. With CGC judging restoration so harshly on extensively restored books, those are incredible results.

 

So at its core, as I've often said, we really owe it all to Vince Scipior!

[Ze-man]

I still remember when Kenny first started leaf casting. The initial results were impressive.

 

I don't think the word impressive means what you think it means!

 

One of my early full casting attempts.

 

My paper pulp ratio vs missing material was too thin, the bonding didn't take. The extraction from the caster was flawed. An epic mess.

 

When I look back at this photo it reminds me of just how close I was to scrapping the entire process. While I knew it could work in theory, it was a classic case of 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

 

Then I had a moment of clarity, and not soon after this cover was casted I had some seriously decent results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[etanick]

His ability to recreate the original look and feel of Golden Age comic cover stock is incredible. I like to joke with him that he is probably the best in the world at leaf casting comic covers, except that I am not really joking. Comic cover stock is much different than other kinds of paper. Traditional paper conservators at conservation labs with access to a $15,000+ leaf casting table don't tend to spend a lot of time restoring comic books. He probably really is the best in the world at it, bar none.

 

can't wait to examine this in person

[greggy]

I still remember when Kenny first started leaf casting. The initial results were impressive.

 

I don't think the word impressive means what you think it means!

 

One of my early full casting attempts.

 

My paper pulp ratio vs missing material was too thin, the bonding didn't take. The extraction from the caster was flawed. An epic mess.

 

When I look back at this photo it reminds me of just how close I was to scrapping the entire process. While I knew it could work in theory, it was a classic case of 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

 

Then I had a moment of clarity, and not soon after this cover was casted I had some seriously decent results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, you sucked.