Most documents are priceless and irreplaceable, and it makes sense to recover as much as we can in the event of a water accident or disaster.
It can be a legal document, like your passport or marriage certificate. It can be something sentimental, like that love letter your husband wrote you when you were in labor, or the last surviving copy of an out of print classic. It may be a business contract. Or worse, that screenplay that took you five years to write.
Knowing a few things about document drying can help arm us in the events of water accidents and disasters. While not guaranteed to fully restore a book—we need to consider the amount of damage and the materials involved— document drying can help salvage as much of our damaged printed materials as we can.
How should you go about document drying? The following are some tips.
Recover the document as soon as you can. The key to document drying is to act quickly. The longer a printed material is soaked in water, the more damaged it will likely be. Remember that water would tend to smear the ink and render the document unreadable. Also, the longer a document is soaked, the more opportunities there are for microorganisms to eat at the paper. Document drying is more difficult when the paper becomes too fragile to even handle.
Visually inspect the document for growth of molds and fungus. If you do find their presence, gently remove with a soft brush and rinse the document with water.
Remove as much water as you manually can by letting it drip. Do not shake the document or squeeze a book. For non-bound documents, try to gently separate it by page if paper is strong enough for you to do. You can test this by separating a corner. If you can remove a book’s binding and separate its pages, you may do so. Specialty shops offer rebinding services that can help you reconstruct your book. Separating pages can prevent it from drying stuck to each other.
The document drying process itself can proceed in different ways. Some air out the wet pages using your regular clothes’ line and clothes’ pins. Make sure you to this in a well ventilated place, preferably where there is sun. Others dry their documents by blow drying it or fanning. You can rest your document on a flat surface as you blow dry and fan.
If the damage is considerable and cannot be attended to immediately, freeze the document to arrest the movement of the water in the paper. When you do so, let the paper rest flatly. If the strength of the paper allows it, try to separate the pages before freezing. Freezing promotes document drying as it arrests the movement of the water on the paper.
Once all the water in your documents is frozen, options are available to sublimate the water. You may need to consult document recovery specialist for this as this may require specific techniques and equipment.
