Thursday, June 26, 2014

Relaxing and Rehumidifying an Old Poster - Part 4

This is the fourth and final post in a series about my experiences with rehumidifying and flattening oversize documents and photographs based on Denise Levenick's, "Photo Tutorial: How to Relax and Rehumidity Old Rolled Photographs and Documents."

The last item I flattened is an old panorama poster circa 1920s-1930s. So like the previous photographs I flattened, it's long but this poster is on heavy paper.

This item is a little longer than the photograph from Part 3. Since my experience with the bathtub didn't work so well, I decided to stick with the "humidifying chamber" and drape the partially unrolled poster over the edges of the rack, like I did with the second picture in Part 3. This was a bit nerve wracking because the poster was just long enough that it might droop into the water at the bottom of the chamber. I decided to try it anyway.

The short version is that after only a short time, I discovered one edge in the water! Panic! I removed the poster and quickly got it between the sheets of blotting paper and weight it down. I prayed the poster wasn't ruined. It didn't look like it was when I pulled it out. As you can see, everything is OK. If you look closely, you can see a slight water line along the right hand side of the poster.

I hope you've enjoyed this series and are encouraged to attempt to unroll some of your oversize documents and pictures. Just take heed of the mistakes and lessons I learned the hard way! As Denise said in her post, "For your first project, select a photo or document that is NOT a priceless heirloom."

Other posts in this series:
Relaxing and Rehumidifying an Old Document - Part 1
Relaxing and Rehumidifying an Old Document - Part 2
Relaxing and Rehumidifying Photographs - Part 3

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2014/06/relaxing-and-rehumidifying-old-poster.html

© 2014, copyright Michelle Goodrum

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