ACL preservation

[farmerdan]

Yesterday i unearthed a couple of nice late 1930s ACL sodas. The labels were perfect when they came up, but flaked and fell off within hours of exposure to air. Is there any trick to preserving these delicate painted labels - or were these just too far gone?

 

[cyberdigger]

As soon as you dig them up, put them in a bucket of water. Then you need to very gradually reduce the moisture content of the paint.. it will take years of careful humidity control and a lot of money to set up this system. I don't think it's worth all the trouble, personally.. there are others lying around in a nice dry barn or attic somewhere..

 

[farmerdan]

Truthfully, I don't think it would be worth it either. I would have much rather dug IP sodas yesterday, but i seem to come across these pretty often and some of them are pretty cool. oh well []

 

[madman]

HEY FARMERDAN, WELCOME IVE HAD THE SAME PROBLEM WITH DIGGING EARLY ACLS, THE PAINT WAS JUNK TO BEGIN WITH, ITS SAD BUT WHAT CAN YA DO IVE SAVED A FEW KEEP ON DIGGING BRO...........

 

[T D]

yep, embossed sodas are for finding in the ground, acls are for finding in a barn. There are some late 30's acls that I would try to preserve out of the ground, but from everything I've seen, and everything folks here on the forum have said, most areas around the country have soil that will not preserve a painted label bottle for very long. On most I've seen, the acl will rub off pretty easily.

Artist use hair spray to seal a pencil or charcoal drawing, I wonder if it would help on a bottle fresh out of the ground? Hmmm, just wondering...

 

[farmerdan]

Yeah, I thought of the hairspray idea, maybe next time i will try soaking off the dirt and shooting 'em with aqua net while they're still moist. Then (provided it does'nt all flake off when the alcohol evaporates) I will try masking off the label and hitting it with clear spray poly to seal it permanently. Still seems like a lot of trouble to save a $10 bottle, but I don't plan to try and sell 'em anyway. I'll let Y'all know if it works!