"It started life as am old pad of drawing paper that was folded, tediously brushed with steel wool dissolved in vinegar, and even more tediously stitched together. My only regret is I should have weathered the edges of the pages a lot more."
I've run across mentions of the steel wool and vinegar technique being used to age solid wood, but I never considered using it for paper. In hindsight it makes perfect sense. It's just wood of another sort, after all.
Nice to see I made the cut again. :)
ReplyDeleteTo be more specific about my technique, I laid each page out on a sheet of plexiglas then painted the solution on with a cheap sponge brush, making sure the paper was thoroughly coated and leaving plenty of streaks, and letting it air dry between sides. You get some interesting grain textures and sweeps of color this way.
I did find though that the color was a bit TOO dark, plus it left a thin layer of rust powder to deal with. So I went back a few days later and rinced each page lightly in a tub of water, wiped them down carefully with a kitchen sponge to get rid of the excess rust, then left them lay out to dry. This muted the color from brownish orange to yellow, but retained the slight texturing on each page.
But yes, the wool/vinegar solution is amazing stuff for aging/tinting wood, paper, and even adding a rust wash to metal parts.
Keep in mind that this kind of oxidation and degradation of paper occurs most commonly with post 1860s high acid paper. The higher the acid content, i.e. cheap paper, the more quickly the paper yellows and becomes brittle. That’s why old pulps magazines and newspapers yellow and crumble in a short time. High quality linen paper won’t have the same problems, so you can have a 300 year old book with perfect white pages quite commonly. Parchment lasts even better, but that’s another story.
ReplyDeleteWhich is a good point CCF. I suppose I can cover my butt by calling it a turn of the century reproduction of a much older work created by some crazed old backwoods cult. And since most mythos stories take place between the late 1800's and the 30's, this should fit the acid paper period well enough.
ReplyDelete(1) By letting the solution sit a while and then running it through a filter cloth, you can eliminate the bigger particles.
ReplyDelete(2) You can create lighter solutions by adding more straight vinegar to them. (Keep an assortment.)
(3) If you haven't removed the original "Vinegar" label from the bottle, here is an excellent place to use the "Poison" label from the earlier prop labels set -- so this isn't accidentally used for cooking.
Props, this remark puzzles me:
ReplyDelete"I've run across mentions of the steel wool and vinegar technique being used to age solid wood, but I never considered using it for paper. In hindsight it makes perfect sense. It's just wood of another sort, after all."
But back in February 2010 you showed just this technique used (by Cephalopod) on paper, in Aged Newspaper Clippings Tutorial, and then remarked:
"I had never tried using iron buff before one of Cephalopod's earlier articles, but now I'm a convert. It's a fantastically useful technique that can produce almost any degree of aging in paper and wood."
Had this technique (for paper) dropped out of your toolbox during the year-and-a-half intervening?