Rubber Stamp Question

[Spideycindy]

Is there a life expectancy for a rubber stamp...the red rubber kind? I have one that dates back to 1983 it was my first purchase...a dogs paw print. The rubber is very hard and dry...Is there any certain special way to take care of stamps? I use water and a stamp scruffy to clean my stamps. I have not used baby wipes...should I be doing that? I use ink and pigment and have used chalk pads. I have staz-on but have not used it as I thought it required special solvent to clean but do not know if that is true...
If anyone would know or have suggestions I would appreciate your reply.
Spideycindy

[StamPoor]

In the September/October issue of The Rubber Stamper, there is a lengthy letter from a stamp manufacturer about the care of rubber stamps. Unfortunately, he doesn't address your "dried stamp" problem, but he does caution against using any petroleum-based products, oils and lanolin (used in some baby wipes) because oil and rubber do not mix. Petroleum jelly (Vaseline) actually attacks rubber and can destroy it over time.

He also mentions not leaving the rubber exposed to direct sunlight or excessive heat or cold.

Apparently, there is also a question as to the use of certain inks with photopolymer stamps although he doesn't elaborate.

I'm not sure this was especially helpful to your particular situaton, but they are probably good guidelines for us all to keep in mind.

[Inky Whiskers]

I addition to the great advice offered by Stampoor, I offer these tidbits I've learned over the years.

Baby wipes are acceptable for cleaning stamps, but they need to be alcohol free (in addition to lanolin free) as alcohol will kill your rubber by drying it outand making it brittle causing it to crack & crumble. For this reason you should NEVER apply alcohol inks to your rubber stamps! Use those inks for backgrounds & the co-ordinating dye inks or a solvent based ink for stamping any images.

Many commercial stamp cleaners contain a "conditioner" that helps to keep the rubber soft, but over time I've found that my oldest stamps can get hard. (especially the stamp wheels) I spray on a conditioning stamp cleaner and let them sit for awhile then gentle scrub them with a soft toothbrush while rinsing under warm water. This not only softens the rubber a bit (it doesn't return the rubber to it original flexibility, but I don't know of anything that will) it can also remove old ink from the negative spaces in the image that don't always get cleaned completely during regular cleaning with a stamp scrubbing pad.

Solvent inks like StazOn can be cleaned of most of the ink if you clean them immediately after stamping with regular stamp cleaning solution & a stamp scrubbing pad . If the ink has sat on the rubber long enough to start drying, you will need a solvent ink cleaner like the one StazOn offers. The solvent cleaner will also remove some of the inks left behind by regular cleaners. "Cleaning" a stamp means getting the ink off both the stamping surface and out of the negative spaces so the image stamps clearly (dried ink in tiny negative spaces of an image can cause the image to loose detail &/or leave lil blobs when stamped), it doesn't mean that your rubber won't have perminent ink stains. Some inks stain by nature (solvent) and even some dye ink colors will perminently stain rubber no matter what cleaner you use. I've heard of folks applying sealers to their wood mounts to limit the staining that is part & parcel with stamping. I figure the more stained the wood, the more I obviously love that stamp! :D

As for the "new" clear polymer stamps...the jury is still out for me. I have some older ones that have turned yellow & lost some flex, but still stamp ok. I have newer ones that don't seem to "hold" dye ink as well as my rubber stamps. (The ink looks like I spritzed it with water when I stamp with these images.) The older stamps were originally wood mounted, so I re-mounted them on loop tape. The newer ones are cling mounts. I think the new polymers are less porous than the older ones or rubber & that keeps them from holding the ink until they've been used enough to wear some "tooth" into the smooth surface. (new rubber sometimes does this too, but rubbing the stamp across some fun foam seems to scuff up the surface enough w/o hurting the image)

Maybe one of the vendors here as more info as to what inks work best with these "new & improved" stamps & how to safely clean them. I would recommend not using solvent inks & cleaners with the polymer stamps until we learn more.

HTH :D

[Inky Whiskers]

Talking about polymer stamps got me wondering, so I did a search to learn more about this type of stamp.

Blockhead Rubber Stamps had great info about how to use, clean & store polymer stamps with many tidbits that I found not only useful but pertinent to our earlier posts.

http://www.blockheadstamps.com/TechniquesPages/clear-stamps.html

There are inks & cleaning methods that are fine for rubber but not polymer & visa versa, so this info is rather important if one has both types of stamps.

:D

[Spideycindy]

Wow good information...I hope to see if I can get that magazine...I do not always get to places where they sell it...I used to laugh and say I live behind the Redwood Curtain but that is not nearly as rural as I am now. I cannot control the temperature of my art space so I just have to live with the reality that stamps get old. I have not apparently been abusing them or using the wrong products on them. That is good to know. Thanks so much for the information sharing!
I really appreciate it!

[CatStamper]

I think I read in a RubberStampMadness article in the past few months to a year (?) that soaking the rubber part of the stamp in a very shallow layer of mineral oil can help recondition it. Anyone else remember that, or I am making this up by mistake??? :confusion:

Kate

[StamPoor]

Jenna, Thanks so much for the link to the information about clear stamps vs. rubber and their care. I printed it out for future reference -- because my brain's memory microchip doesn't work as well as it used to.

[Inky Whiskers]

You are most welcome!

Finding answers to stamping related questions/problems & doing web research are 2 things I really enjoy. :D

Now to see if I can find out more about the mineral oil for stamp reconditioning question. :lol:

[Inky Whiskers]

Alas, either I'm not asking the right question or there just isn't much info on how to recondition rubber stamps out there in webby land. :(

All I could find was a posting on a Stanford U message board from a man wanting to recondition an antique rubber stamp set he'd acquired. This is the advice he was offered:

"The best solution I've found is to apply glycerine heavily to the rubber portion of the stamp & put it in a plastic bag in a warm (not hot) area for a couple of days. Works best with clean stamps, I generally use a toothbrush & dish soap to clean mine up, but you might need a solvent based cleaner if they are gunked up with oil or solvent based inks."

and was signed "Andi".

I edited out some inconsequential info, but this was the bulk of it. As to where to buy plain glycerine? I know it's used to make some soaps, so it may be displayed with the soap making supplies in a craft store & eaily found on line. Come to think of it...it's also an ingredient of Versamark Watermark ink pads (that's the clear ink in the black case from Tsukineko) and now that I think about it, I've used it to lighten inks stains on rubber before and it did seem to leave the rubber looking good & ready to stamp again. I discovered this when using a stamp that had been stamped in permenent black ink, cleaned using regular stamp cleaner that left the rubber stained, then used it with the Versamark pad. My pad got a shadow of the image on it and my stamping had a grayish cast to it from the black ink. I've since done this deliberately on an old V pad, let the ink sit for awhile then scrubbed the rubber under warm water with a tooth brush to get the ink out of the small places. I just hadn't done recently enough to remember without the above reminder. :lol:

I'm still wondering about the mineral oil reconditioning, as Stampoor pointed out the artical that states that many oils can damage rubber. Hopefully somebody out there in RSC land will know more about this and share the info. :D

[cmcveigh]

As to where to buy plain glycerine?

Glycerine is available at any pharmacy and is used in lots of personal care products like hand lotions, etc. It's what I've always heard, too, using it to recondition tired rubber stamps.

I disagree with the author of the rubber stamping article in not using oil on rubber. For a while there was banter on various Yahoo groups about using olive oil on rubber to clean them. I tried it, and it works wonders. I even use olive oil on my new black rubber to get rid of the coating sometimes left in the vulcanizing process. Doing this allowed beautiful first impressions with solid images. It doesn't do anything harmful to the stamps I've tried it on.

[stampin stacy]

Kate, yes there was an article about using mineral oil to rehydrate stamps in RSM, could not find the article though. I also saw it mentioned online a long time ago but that website is gone now. I got the impression however, that it is not something one should do frequently but as a last resort.

I have a stamp set from my childhood that mom had stored in a trunk in the attic. Needless to say when my sister and I found it going through mom's stuff most of the stamps were in pieces literally so I went around asking questions at an Heirloom convention a couple of years ago at the urging of my local stamp store. The first option I was given was the glycerin treatment too but a couple of vendors were emphatic that you should not do this as it would leave a residue and make the stamps tacky. I should add that the vendors that said don't were ones that have been in the business a very long time. Their suggestion was to try a stamp cleaner and conditioner like Judikins first and mineral oil as a last resort.

FYI, I was not able to save my stamps because I found out from Picasso of Stampland that they were manufactured in the 60's and were a combination of rubber and red clay. Clay "baked" in a hot attic cannot be re-softened.

[Inky Whiskers]

Thank you Ladies for helping to clear up the mineral oil question!

So far I haven't had to do more than use good stamp cleaner (conditioning cleaner &/or StazOn) to get my rubber clean. By clean, I mean no ink gunking up the image. Avoiding rubber getting stained from ink is like trying to avoid wrinkles as one ages. You can hide the signs, but you can't stop it from happening completely. :)) Besides, if your rubber isn't getting stained, you're not using your stamps enough! The Versamark cleaning "method" is more by oops than anything & the commercial cleaners are easier to wash off. Stacy is right that glycerine doesn't like to wash off easily. Even Versamark can leave stamps sticky of it isn't thoroghly washed off after each use.

Well I certainly have learned many new important things from this thread! A big THANK YOU to all who joined in!!! :D

[cmcveigh]

The first option I was given was the glycerin treatment too but a couple of vendors were emphatic that you should not do this as it would leave a residue and make the stamps tacky.


Has anyone else heard that glycerin is a major ingredient in all pigment inks -- that's what gives it the open time and sticky to have time to collect the embossing powder. If that's true, then all of us who use pigment ink are "conditioning with glycerin" every time we ink with pigment. If there is a little bit of sticky left after rehydrating an old stamp, then clean it off with Simple Green or some other cleaner.

This reminds me of a bantering back-and-forth on one of the other Yahoo groups a couple years ago. Someone warned stampers to never get your rubber close to GooGone, as it literally would eat the rubber into a mush ball. (And, she implied "immediatey.") Well, I use GooGone all the time, so I was curious to run a test myself. I found a grab-bag stamp in red rubber of no interest to me and took another black rubber stamp and let them both soak in a small bowl of GooGone overnight, and all the next day. NADA!!! Nothing happened to either one.... no wrinkles, no curls, no sticky, gooey mush ball.

So, this lead me to call the mfr. and ask why they warn to "keep away from leather and rubber." The customer-service dept., had no idea other than one of their 46 products had damaged a leather piece once. So, now that warning goes on all bottles regardless of the relativity to the medium. And, there are a dozen versions of GooGone. You have to look for the product number on the back of the container. The one I use is GGP#16 and has never harmed one piece of rubber!!!!!

This all speaks to me of Do Your Own Homework. Nobody knows everything, and with lawsuit crazy USA, everyone just CTA:p

[stampin stacy]

This reminds me of a bantering back-and-forth on one of the other Yahoo groups a couple years ago

Also reminds me of the clean or don't clean your stamps banter (like that way of putting it btw) in general. There are fanatics on both side of that one, lol:noway:

[Inky Whiskers]

I find an old tooth brush, warm water, stamp cleaner and a lil elbow grease is all it usually takes to clean my rubber when I've been using inks that gunk up the image, but I'm less picky about permanent stains than some folks.

I did discover that using a cheap $1 store citrus based cleaner on my stamps was a bad idea. It did the turn-your-rubber-all-gooey thing. Thankfully I was trying to clean some cheap used stamps I wanted to sell rather than beloved favorites. I also learned that same weekend that bleaching an art sponge is a bad idea too. The bleach ate the sponge, changing it from a fluffy dinner roll to a dense hockey puck that felt just icky. Live & learn. :blush:


I wrote the Simple Green people years ago when somebody asked me about using this product to clean stamps and as far as the company knew, Simple Green is perfectly safe for rubber.

P.S. I like the black rubber!!! No dye ink stains to worry about. :lol:

[cmcveigh]

I wrote the Simple Green people years ago when somebody asked me about using this product to clean stamps and as far as the company knew, Simple Green is perfectly safe for rubber.

P.S. I like the black rubber!!! No dye ink stains to worry about. :lol:

I just LOVE "Simple Green" and "GooGone #16" -- they are staples in my art room. These two products are the only thing I use on my stamps. Ironically, I started buying SG for accidents at "that time of the month" in the mid-80s (and it was very HARD to find it everywhere then). Other than hot water and ammonia, I never found anything better!! Recently, I discovered SG also removes red wine stains -- even if the stains are discovered days later. Great stuff. It was developed as a degreaser for the auto-industry/mechanics. Now, they've learned it is a household must-have, too, and they are smart to market it as such. I can spray any stain I have on my clothing with it and throw it in the laundry, and they all come out.

I, too, like the fact that black rubber doesn't stain with MOST inks. However, cobalt blue, and certain deep-greens do, however, leave a bronze-y sheen on the black.... which just goes to show - chemistry is amazing. Wish I knew more about all this stuff.:confusion:

[alsmouse]

I find an old tooth brush, warm water, stamp cleaner and a lil elbow grease is all it usually takes to clean my rubber when I've been using inks that gunk up the image, but I'm less picky about permanent stains than some folks.:

Way back in the dino days, long before I had a LSS available for information, I started cleaning my stamps using a baby's soft toothbrush & baby shampoo. Just a drop, smooth it around & gently scrub under running H2O. It worked well, I still use that method to take off the "big lumps" but use cleaner after & pat dry on stamping towels. I've only had 1 stamp come loose using that treatment but it is my "signature stamp" which gets used a lot.
~C8>

[Inky Whiskers]

I, too, like the fact that black rubber doesn't stain with MOST inks. However, cobalt blue, and certain deep-greens do, however, leave a bronze-y sheen on the black.... which just goes to show - chemistry is amazing. Wish I knew more about all this stuff.:confusion:

I think the effect of those colors sounds really pretty!!! Much better than the red rubber stamp that I used with red craft ink for a workshop project once upon a time. It looked like I had use that poor wood mounted stamp to go on a killing spree!:)) After cleaning it with regular cleaner I got the ink off the rubber, but the wood was still very red, so I carefully applied bleach pen gel to just the stained wood and left it overnight. I then scrubbed the wood with soap & warm water to get all the bleach off so it wouldn't eat the wood. I didn't get all the red stain out, but at least it had faded to pink and was less gruesome to look at.

Will you have a both at the virtual show this weekend? Inquiring minds with credit cards want to know! :D

[cmcveigh]

Sounds like you had some success then with the bleach pen trick. Did the bleach raise the wood grain??

Whenever I have a wood mount that's either already been indexed, or one that I mess up, I just paint it with black gesso, then re-index with my new image using champagne gold acrylic paint. They look cool! (Course, I like black & gold anyway)

And yes, I will have a booth for the convention. That's what I've been working on since last week. So -- break's over, back on my head time.

[Spideycindy]

I had never used goo gone#16 on stamps ever but find this all very interesting...unrelated I have read alot of articles about WD-40 being wonderful for many things and harmless since the main component is fish oil...here again I have always been quick to clean my stamps with mainly water and the stamp scruffy...The sad thing is I work/live in a very hot garage with little hope of changing that environment.. well I don't live in the garage...lol but I spend my creative time out there...ok that is like living out there. For the harder/older rubber stamps I still continue to use...I stamp most items with a firm foam sheet as my base on the table...That seems to offer just enough give and I get a pretty good impression so far...I will, however, invest in some conditioning cleaner and continue to love my stamps and yes the wood on most of my beloved mounts carry stains of many happy stamping memory adventures. My paw print is not cracked as yet and I have to keep it and love the memory of it being one of my first fun stamp investments...Even as we speak I am waiting, waiting, waiting for the mail to arrive with more stamping fun!
Spideycindy

[Inky Whiskers]

Sounds like you had some success then with the bleach pen trick. Did the bleach raise the wood grain??

Whenever I have a wood mount that's either already been indexed, or one that I mess up, I just paint it with black gesso, then re-index with my new image using champagne gold acrylic paint. They look cool! (Course, I like black & gold anyway)

And yes, I will have a booth for the convention. That's what I've been working on since last week. So -- break's over, back on my head time.

Yes it did! The grain came out as a pink/red combo. It was still an improvment over solid red. :lol: I wonder if pre-staining wood blocks black would work? The black stain might help reduce the amount of ink absorbed by the wood and would hide most ink stains that got thru'. Indexing with opaque inks or paints would work as you pointed out & the stamps would indeed look kewl!

Hawt dawg! Me & my visa will stop by for a visit. :D

[alsmouse]

I wonder if pre-staining wood blocks black would work? The black stain might help reduce the amount of ink absorbed by the wood and would hide most ink stains that got thru'. Indexing with opaque inks or paints would work as you pointed out & the stamps would indeed look kewl! :D

To prevent color absorption on the mounted stamps, I have painted them with semi gloss clear varnish. You don't have to worry about the block absorbing ink colors. It cleans up easily & you can still see the original register. I do it as they are added to my collection so it gets done before I even add them to the inventory book. I usually do it while watching TV so it dosen't even slow me down on stamping. Though black would look cool too.
~C8>