How can paper be bleached of its text?

February 26, 2008 8:51 PM

How can paper be bleached of its text?

I had a great idea for notebooks, if only i knew how to perform a necessary step.

That is--i found that the paper in many old books i have is quite æsthetically pleasing, but sometimes the meaning of the text is not :)

So then, i thought, why pay for fancy moleskines, if only the text could vanish from these pages!

But traditional paper recycling cannot be done, for that would require unbinding all of the pages, and turning that into pulp.. and so on. Pointless if i wanted to keep the paper and binding as it is.

The only method i came up with (but have yet to try) for doing this is to soak the pages in a photo emulsion and expose it to white light. Would that work? And then if it does, would the process of purchasing the necessary materials exceed that of just buying some moleskines?

posted by fjardt to media & arts (10 answers total)

Google "Check Washing." Should take you where you want to go.
posted by SlyBevel at 9:10 PM on February 26, 2008

And: How to wash checks.
posted by SlyBevel at 9:11 PM on February 26, 2008

Check washing is a scam used to clean ink off of checks, allowing them to be re-written in greater amounts and/or to different payees. This website has a demonstration of the technique (using several different chemicals), which may actually have a legitimate purpose with your project.
posted by katemonster at 9:11 PM on February 26, 2008

Uh...yeah. Guess I should have been a little more specific as to why I was talking about check fraud.

Thanks, KateMonster. And awesome nick.
posted by SlyBevel at 9:30 PM on February 26, 2008

It would depend greatly on the type of paper and the type of ink. It's impossible to answer in any greater detail.

I believe photographic emulsion turns black when exposed to light.
posted by gjc at 9:32 PM on February 26, 2008

Check washing is probably not going to do you much good, as that is an attack on dye based inks. Books are printed with pigmented inks, so you need something that attacks the agent that binds the ink to the paper, without attacking the paper itself.

Your best bet is to find one of the less expensive moleskine alternatives.
posted by b1tr0t at 9:36 PM on February 26, 2008

Check washing is probably not going to do you much good, as that is an attack on dye based inks.

Aren't you writing your checks with the same ball point that you use to write in your notebook? The big caveat is not to use gel pens. Everything I've ever seen on check washing says that they don't wash.
posted by SlyBevel at 10:25 PM on February 26, 2008

SlyBevel, fjardt is trying to erase the printed pigmented inks from BOOKS in order to turn the books into notebooks. He is not trying to erase hand-written ink from notebooks to reuse them as notebooks.
posted by lizzicide at 11:23 PM on February 26, 2008

He is not trying to erase hand-written ink from notebooks to reuse them as notebooks.

Then I completely misunderstood what's going on here. Very sorry. Washing probably won't work.
posted by SlyBevel at 11:45 PM on February 26, 2008

There's a couple things I'd try: bleach, hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, maybe even mineral spirits (though the paper probably wouldn't last long in that stuff, depending).

Not knowing anything about the chemistry of printed ink, I'm assuming the stuff is at least partially soluble in a non-polar solvent.

A solution of laundry stain remover might also work.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 10:23 AM on February 27, 2008