Volume 11, Number 5
Jul 1987

Products & Services

Environmental Monitors

• Cole-Parmer has two mini hygrothermographs, both about 7½" tall, about 3½ lbs, using the usual sensors and running for 7 days as usual, but the chart sizes are only about 3½" x 8½". Cost: $320 and $285. (7425 N. Oak Park, Chicago, IL 60648, 800/323-4340; within area code 312, call 647-7600).
• Hand-held humidity indicators with digital readout are sold by a number of companies, but only one claims to give an instant response to variations in RH. (This is important, because if the instrument takes two or three minutes to adjust to a much higher or lower RH, a walk-through survey of building RH could take all afternoon. Typical ads say that an instrument will take only a certain number of seconds to reach 63% or some other percent of the true reading, but the instrument gives no signal when it has reached 63%, and the company doesn't tell you how long it takes to go the rest of the way.) The "Dickson instant-RH digital humidity indicator" is sold by the Dickson Company, 930 So. Westwood Drive, Addison, IL 60101 (800/323-2448; in IL, 312/ 543-3747), for $295.

Equipment

• Canon has a reader/printer that can read anything in microform and give good quality plain-paper printouts with optional border erasure, two-sided printing and other features: the Canon NP Printer 780. (See local Yellow Pages for Canon dealer.) Just in time. With the nation swinging into high gear for the project of microfilming all brittle books, much research material will be unavailable except in microform, which is not much good for taking home with you, reading at breakfasttime, and making marginal notations on. But if good copies can be made easily from machines like this at most libraries, one of the complaints made against microfilm can be dropped: that it is impossible to get good copies from microfilm.

  (The Editor is not familiar enough with the other reader/printers on the market to say how many others now give good copies, but the Canon reader/printers are probably not the only ones.)

• Mekatronics (85 Channel Dr., Port Washington, NY 11050) makes and sells a combination press called "Polypress" that can be used as a standing press, nipping press, lying press with a plough and a job backer. It is all metal, on casters with brakes like a typing table, weighs 200 lbs., and costs about $2000-$2200. (Telephone: 516/883-6805.)
• Trudi Eberhardt wrote last fall, "We are finally able to find a supplier for the sewing frame for which so many colleagues have envied us: it is the frame on which the spindles are set back on the base plate to give better manouverability and visibility (see illustration). The accessories have to be ordered separately. You can write to the company in English. Here is the address:

  H. -H. Schmedt KG
  Wandalenweg 28
  2000 Hamburg 1
  West Germany."

  

Supplies

• Sponges for removing soot from fire-damaged books have aroused the concern of preservation librarians because it was hard to get information on what was in those sponges, and what it was doing to the books. Now information is coming to light, but it is hard to evaluate it. The CCI analyzed the Smoke-Off sponge sold by Maritime Chemicals and Equipment Ltd. of Dartmouth, N.S. and found that it was mainly a certain kind of rubber, heavily filled with calcium carbonate, with a little bit of oil, silicon, sulfur and zinc. BMS Cat (AN, June 1986 p. 34) uses a blue liquid in sponges for the same or a similar purpose: Lin-Aire Liquid, manufactured by Puma Chemical Co., 1601 109th, Grand Prairie, TX 75050. A material safety data sheet was submitted in response to a request for information on its makeup, but of course this addresses only questions of human health and safety. It says the formula is a mixture of "surfactants, deadsorbents, and deodorizers."
• Johnson Bookbinding Supply Co., Suite 175, Memorial Bldg., 610 N. Main St., Blacksburg, VA 24060 (703/552-0876), is now importing Japanese bookbinding cloth: cotton, man-made fibers, cotton-rayon and silk-rayon mixes, and linen. They have two sample books: Book # 275 has 327 samples in all, and Book #124 (fancy brocades) has 161. They will be sent free on request, as a loan, but if you do not return them, you will be billed $50 for each book. Until August 3, they had a deal whereby you could order the linen cloth by the meter for around $20 per meter. For the rest, you have to order a bolt (not a roll?) at a time, at a significantly lower price per meter. Some or all of then are backed with paper.
• At the MARAC meeting, Don Cumberland recommended using polyethylene foam for cushioning artifacts in storage boxes, and mentioned the name of one supplier, Sentinel Foam Products (130 North St., Hyannis, MA 02601, 800/323-5005, in MA 800/323-5001). They also sell "Sentinel Bubble" constructed of polyethylene-encapsulated air, and other specialized foam products, all of which seem to be made of polyethylene, an inert and safe material.
• Gore-Tex laminate is being offered as a safe (and apparently faultless) material for protection and storage of archive documents, works of art and other artifacts. It is made of expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (like Teflon) and a nonwoven polyester, and its unique quality is that it is a semipermeable membrane, allowing the passage of water, ions and small molecules but not larger molecules--much like the "breathable" fabrics developed recently for outdoor clothing. It is being promoted by the manufacturer, and tried out by conservators, for many different uses, but because of its cost (about �12 per meter, in England; American price not available at the AN office) some conservators are looking at alternative materials, like the Tyvek Housewrap, which is also a semipermeable membrane that keeps out water but lets water vapor through. For more information, see "Waterproof but Breathable," by Vivien Chapman, on p. 36 of UKIC' s Conservation News for November 1986.
• Armor-All, a protectant for polymeric materials like rubber and vinyl, was the subject of a query in Conservation News, July 1986, from Anne Moncrieff. The November issue brought a reply from George Monger of the Museum of East Anglian Life, who wrote to the company and learned that they recommend applying it to material when new and "continuously thereafter." He concludes that it would not be very useful for museum conservation. The protectant may itself be susceptible to degradation by the same agents (ozone, oxygen and [N radiation) that destroy the polymeric material it is designed to protect. An independent investigation was made by the Analytical Research Services of the CCI, which found that it is an aqueous emulsion of poly(dimethylsiloxane), with a little humectant (glycerol) and emulsifier. The sample was too small to tell whether it also contained an antioxidant.
• Paper Source (730 N. Franklin, Ste. 111, Chicago, IL 60610, 312/337-0798) sells many kinds of Japanese paper, six of which are recommended for conservation use:

  Sekishu Kozogami Mare, $5.65
  Sekishu Natural O.S., $17.00 (for a sheet 36" x 73")
  Kaji Natural, $2.27
  Okawara Machinemade, $5.50 (36" x 72")
  Mulberry, $1.35
  Okawara Handmade, $11.00 (36" x 72")

New Address

Paper Technologies has a new location: 25801 Obrero, Suite 4, Mission Viejo, CA 92691 (714/768-7497 & 7498).