Do you have a box containing a bunch of those old magnetic albums? They are filled with precious memories… but they are stuck in there! And I mean STUCK!
First, what’s up with this glue anyway? Apparently, these pages were probably designed for short term storage. Acid-free wasn’t a thing back then. That tacky glue is highly acidic, almost eating away at the photos and the longer the albums sat on the shelf, the drier the glue and the more difficult to remove. Combined with the chemicals in the papers and the thick acetate, those albums are a recipe for photo disaster after twenty or thirty years.
Once in a while, you can get lucky and a photo will peel right off… you’re lulled into a false sense of security… then the next one completely refuses. So what’s your next step?
When I first started trying to scan my grandmother’s older photos, I looked for tips on this subject. The first tip was to use dental floss. I’ll amend that suggestion to dental tape because it’s so much easier on the fingers. It’s much easier to cut the individual pages in the album out by the spine and work on the pages separately. Bend the page a little to get to a photo, wedge the dental tape under one corner, wiggle it gently in a seesaw fashion. If you meet resistance, try another corner, eventually one side will clear and you can release the entire photo.
Slow and steady wins the race! All these steps should be taken slowly and carefully. If you move slowly, you can stop before tearing the photo.
Let’s say it’s being stubborn, you can get your blow dryer, set it on low heat and wave it (keeping it moving, NOT stationary) at the spot between the photo and the backing and slowly warm the sticky glue to help release it. You can also heat the front edge of a spatula and use this to help “pry”. This takes a lot longer than you might think so be prepared to wait a while. You’ll have to keep warming the area little by little.
Some comments from photographic conservators are that the heat from hair dryers can be damaging to the dye on fragile photographs or can promote curling of older photo paper. So please be aware of these potential dangers before starting on priceless fragile photographs.
If you’re a paper scrapper, you might already be familiar with a product called Un-Du. Scrappers use it to remove photos and items they’ve attached with adhesive but decide they would like to move. I’ve not tried it personally, but it’s said to be another method of dealing with stuck photos. I’ve also read that it can be used to help remove stickiness from the backs of photos once they have been removed.
Most times, before I get started I remove the plastic from the individual sheet. If your first attempts at loosening corners are unsuccessful, it’s probably best to scan the entire sheet ON the sticky paper just in case a photo(s) is damaged.
Sometimes the photos are held in place by little photo corners. You could be lucky and one or more have already come loose due to age or they can be easily “popped off”. If not, the suggestion is to carefully slit the fold of the photo corner with a thin, flat metal spatula, being careful to hold it flat to avoid gouging the photo. You can cover the photo itself with an index card during the process as a secondary precaution to prevent damage.
If there are notes or descriptions also in the album, taking a photo of the magnetic page before removing the photos will ensure that you have the corresponding information to enter in the metadata fields of your photo management software once the photo is scanned and/or to manually record when you store the photo in its new home.
In that same vein, I have looked through these albums with my father before scanning and those acetate sleeves are perfect for sticking post-it notes with names of older family or events that are “before your time”. This is just another method of gathering little stories that you can save with the photos both in physical and scanned form once they are removed from their sticky home.
With personal experience, I can say that the longer these photos have been in magnetic albums the more difficult it is to remove them as you would expect. The photos that are obviously on thick paper have the best chance of removal. The ones with the deckled edges I have found problematic, they can tear so easily and even if removed the paper is often curled in the process.
An important note that I read from the International Museum of Photography, if the photos have been in their albums for more than 60 years it is wise to leave them as is. The likelihood of their safe removal after that length of time is remote. The damage to those photos has already occurred and them being undamaged during the removal process is unlikely.
Do you have any tips that have worked for you about removing photos from these albums? If you do, I know I would love to hear them and I’m certainly not the only one. Share them with us!
About the Author: Stacia Hall is an accountant by day, and a super scrapper the rest of the time. She describes herself as a storyteller at heart, who wants her children to understand and feel what she was thinking when she created her pages. Her scrapping goal for 2015 is to continue focusing on everyday moments but still finding time to scrap scanned heritage photos.