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Hi everyone,

I just started a deep cleaning of a VV-VI that I had lying around for awhile. 329111, so built around 1917.

Take a look at the paper "decals" (I don't know what else to call them). Filthy.

Is there anyway to safely clean them? If so, what chemicals/cleaner would I use? I was thinking of carefully removing and letting sit in distilled water, but don't know.

Thanks

It's basically oil soaked. You could try putting some alcohol on a small corner, (as a test), let it sit for a while, then try dabbing with a paper towel. Hard to say what it will do to the glue however.

blotting paper and a warm iron will take oil out of paper , you may need several goes to get it a lot better as it looks pretty soaked , if any one has grubby paper white bread rolled over it works a treat , just don't eat it afterwards

Trying to remove them would just destroy them... they are paper labels. If someone could provide a high res picture of a good, clear copy, you could reprint them and remove the old ones. Glue the new ones on and coat them with amber shellac and they would look authentic...

Curt A wrote:Trying to remove them would just destroy them... they are paper labels. If someone could provide a high res picture of a good, clear copy, you could reprint them and remove the old ones.

Thanks, I was wondering if people did that for their own machines. I recently made a water slide decal for a bandsaw I restored, so makes sense.

I would probably put the image into inkscape and get the resolution good. Finding the right type of paper would be the hard part.

I'm actually using this as a "training piece" for a more detailed cleaning, so making a decal would be good practice

I have made these labels before and if you know graphics programs, you won't have any trouble. As far as paper, I have used plain laser or standard printer paper. After printing them, i spray them with clear shellac to give them strength and durability as well as sealing the printed image... Artists UV spray will also work. After they dry, I coat them with Bullseye Amber (orange) shellac and it ages them perfectly... so, no need for special paper. Glue them on and you are done... Experiment with this method and I think you will be pleased.

Sounds like fun! Thanks! Now I just need to see if anyone would be willing to provide images. Any leads?

soundgen wrote:blotting paper and a warm iron will take oil out of paper , you may need several goes to get it a lot better as it looks pretty soaked , if any one has grubby paper white bread rolled over it works a treat , just don't eat it afterwards

Bread? That's pretty smart!

Actually, I have made them without having good images by re-doing the entire layout using fonts that are similar to the originals. You can lay them out in a Word or Pages document, but you need to be able to read the original wording to do this. You lay it out line by line and compare the original spacing (kerning), bold or normal lettering and similar font sizing.
It takes some time to do it this way, but you also get a new document without any background defects.

The attached REGINA label was made this way. This label was on eBay and did not have a great image to use, but the wording was complete. So this label is made completely in a word processor using similar fonts totally from scratch... The REGINA logo was copied and cleaned up, then resized for use on this label. This label appears more orange than it actually is because of scanning it, but shows how the amber shellac ages the image, as this was printed on plain white paper in a laser printer.

Also, the wording on this label was altered to use on an upright Regina, so "lower" or "raise" the holder arm is specific to this machine.

Hope this helps and gives you some ideas...

Just out of pure curiosity, I tried to see if I could use the original image and create a touched up PNG. Not perfect, but editing an original could come in handy in some situations
(full size https://i.ibb.co/vZwMfSj/imageedit-335-8597044559-1.png)




Martin