[mizuchaud]

I tried the cold weight trick... for a few months.

(Still slightly wobbly.)


Less than before, but still not a happy stack.

Right now, I have the bad stacks holding up a third of my collection in racks. Merely turned the wobbly rack in its white paper boxes on their sides and then stacked up everyone else on their normal flat box sides.
(teaches them manners)

It's frigging heavy. (nine racks is pretty heavy)

I check once in a while and the stacks aren't there yet.

[Vince]

I can say the weight trick works.
After taking the chips out of my little self made pressing machine, I didn'T really notice any difference, they were still wobbling a bit. But after I compared them to an original stack I can say it took of at least 70-80% of the wobbling. And I only let them in there for about 26 hours.

[Felix]

I can imagine that the "cold-unwarp" won't take away more wobble than tose 80-90%. I think for making them totally flat, you will have to give them some heat. Perhaps fanning them while they are under pressure may be enough.

[Vince]

Well, since we're talking about hotstamped BCCs, also the hotstamps might cause parts of the wobbling.
But the fan is a pretty good idea.

[Felix]

You can try to locate the single suspicious chips and see if their hotstamps are coming over the recess. If that is the case, you may have to scrape them. If you try to find single edged razor blades here in germany, just go to a 1€ store or a supermarket where they have those cleaners for ceran-plates. They work with those single edged razor blades and come with some extra blades. I have searched my a$$ off to find those blades. Then i found those in the 1€ shelf in a supermarket. I just bought 2 of them.
Bonus: My hotplates are looking minty fresh now

[clmayfield]

Update on the method of clamping the chips, heating at 175 deg F for 45 minutes, and letting them cool. I used two ceramics on either end and put wax paper in between each Paulson to prevent color transfer.

Maybe I clamped too hard or maybe 175 is too hot or 45 minutes is too long, but I ended up getting slight bulges where the hat & canes were on adjacent chips. Basically, the clay from one chip got compressed into the hat & cane of another chip. These bulges were very slight and really just look like smoothed over cross-hatching, but in fact, the smoothed over portion was vaguely in the shape of a hat and cane, which is how I figured it out.

Also, in the heated chips, the cross-hatching as well as the hat & canes themselves seem a little less defined. I seem to be more anal about this than everyone else is on the board, but it is one of the ways that I assess wear in a chip and has an obvious impact in the way that chips grab each other.

All that said, I would rather have a chip that is "damaged" this way than a warped chip, though if there is a better method out there (the cold method, maybe), it would be worth trying because this damage was irreversible.

I think that the important thing to minimize the damage is to sort through to find the chips that are actually warped versus flat chips. The way that I did this was by holding together a stack of 20 chips and looking for where there are gaps between the chips. I would see if applying pressure would close those gaps, if so, I would take the chips on either side of the gap and set them aside. In this way, I was able to identify 30 chips in a rack for treating as opposed to the full 100 chips.

-Carter Mayfield

[JHickle]

Originally Posted by clmayfield

Update on the method of clamping the chips, heating at 175 deg F for 45 minutes, and letting them cool. I used two ceramics on either end and put wax paper in between each Paulson to prevent color transfer.

Maybe I clamped too hard or maybe 175 is too hot or 45 minutes is too long, but I ended up getting slight bulges where the hat & canes were on adjacent chips. Basically, the clay from one chip got compressed into the hat & cane of another chip. These bulges were very slight and really just look like smoothed over cross-hatching, but in fact, the smoothed over portion was vaguely in the shape of a hat and cane, which is how I figured it out.

Also, in the heated chips, the cross-hatching as well as the hat & canes themselves seem a little less defined. I seem to be more anal about this than everyone else is on the board, but it is one of the ways that I assess wear in a chip and has an obvious impact in the way that chips grab each other.

All that said, I would rather have a chip that is "damaged" this way than a warped chip, though if there is a better method out there (the cold method, maybe), it would be worth trying because this damage was irreversible.

I think that the important thing to minimize the damage is to sort through to find the chips that are actually warped versus flat chips. The way that I did this was by holding together a stack of 20 chips and looking for where there are gaps between the chips. I would see if applying pressure would close those gaps, if so, I would take the chips on either side of the gap and set them aside. In this way, I was able to identify 30 chips in a rack for treating as opposed to the full 100 chips.

-Carter Mayfield

You needed a ceramic blank between each chip, not just on the ends. I'm surprised that you didn't do more damage to the chip with the wax paper.

[clmayfield]

Originally Posted by JHickle

You needed a ceramic blank between each chip, not just on the ends. I'm surprised that you didn't do more damage to the chip with the wax paper.

How is the wax paper going to damage the chip? The main reason cited for putting ceramic blanks between each chip was to prevent color transfer. Wax paper or parchment paper serves that purpose. A flat ceramic will reduce the transfer of the TH&C impressions from chip to chip, but logically, it will not reduce the fading of the cross-hatching and TH&C impressions....

-Carter Mayfield

[Mango]

thread is a little old but how would clamoing go combined with hot water?

Hot water warps chips, how about clamping and then putting them in a tub of hot tap water (not boiling)?


The reason I thought of this is because I dont have an oven to unwarp my paulsons

EDIT - Just talking about paulsons, not BCC/ASM