Erasing! Hardly a topic that rivets our attention, but surely all booksellers have, at one time or another, attempted this repair. Hardly a day goes by when I'm not faced with the decision to remove (or not) a price, an owner's name, underlining, crayon scribbling, or any of a number of markings on the dust jacket, covers or pages of a book.
This repair, as most of us know from painful experience, is accomplished with varying degrees of difficulty. Sometimes it's the work of a moment, using a conventional eraser on the end of a pencil; sometimes it involves more exotic erasers and/or solvents; sometimes, no matter what you try, you come up short.
In general, you're likely to have more success with marks made by graphite or other products that tend to remain at or near the surface, than with inks, which penetrate deeper. Mark a pulpy page with the wet tip of a permanent marker, and penetration can become complete, removal nearly impossible. From here, complications only multiply, and these are only a few of the variables: absorbency of the paper, resistance of a medium (such as crayon) to solvents, and the age of the medium itself, that is, how long it's been impregnated in the fibers.
As with other activities that involve the interaction of numerous and radically different products, erasing is necessarily reduced to an art form, one that requires constant experimentation and improves only with experience. Even then, nothing is guaranteed. The experiments I've conducted have resulted in some successes, not to mention the inevitable disasters, but I'm all too aware that I could never hope to come close to mastering the art. Still, I believe if you bring control and patience to this task, success is often possible.
Control-the ability to confine your activity to a localized area and do so without harming the book either by over abrading (or tearing), smearing or working the ink or graphite further into the fibers, or permanently discoloring the surface worked on-is crucial. Patience is also necessary because sometimes removal involves dozens of reapplications of a solvent or seemingly endless erasing, blotting and other manipulation.
Basically, there are three mechanisms for removing the offending marks: abrasion; lifting; and dissolving/blotting. Sometimes one method will work, sometimes another, and there are other times when only a combination of methods will get the job done.
If abrading (or erasing) is attempted, there are dozens of erasers and miscellaneous abrasives to choose from: rubber based, plastic, hard erasers and soft, some impregnated with erasing fluid, others with grit, some that degrade to powder and absorb the media being erased, some with sharp edges, some rounded, and some which can be kneaded and shaped in your hands. Each has its uses, some more specialized than others. For our purposes, three for four different kinds will be sufficient to remove most marks most of the time. These will be discussed in detail in the next article.
There is also a growing class of lifting products, which will also be covered. The one most of us are familiar with is Bostik's Blu-Tack, which was originally developed as a removable glue to mount posters on walls, etc., but has emerged as a wonderfully useful product for removing surface graphite, ink, dirt and other impurities from numerous surfaces, including paper. Often it reduces the original mark to a ghost of its former self, making its complete removal not only easier but also virtually eliminating the possibility of further contaminating the surrounding area.
Finally, for dissolving, there is an endless variety of solvents, some of which work well only in limited cases, others that have more general applications.
Because this is such a broad area, I'll discuss some of these solvents in the next article, specifically, those that apply to the removal of interior markings. I'll also go over the remaining products in a future article dealing with exterior stain and label removal.
Craig Stark is a full-time online bookseller and former Editor of The Bookologist, a newsletter from the publisher of AuctionBytes.
You may quote up to 50
words of any article on the condition that you attribute the article to
EcommerceBytes.com and either link to the original article or to
www.EcommerceBytes.com. All other use is prohibited.
You can read past newsletters going back to 1999 - click on a year and you'll be taken to all 24 issues from that year, which you can read in full-text!
Have a question about buying or selling online? Want to get marketing or technical advice? AuctionBytes Discussion Forums are the place to come to get answers to your questions and get advice! Great tips - a refreshing change!
