[Sca-cooks] Book Questions...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach lilinah at earthlink.net:
>Additionally, I had no idea that the previous owner, an SCA 
>acquaintance, smoked until i got The Chronology and both volumes of 
>_Take a Thousand Eggs or More_ which i also bought from her, home (i 
>picked them up at an event and didn't crack them open there). They 
>smell like much-used ashtrays. Anyone know of a way to get rid of 
>the nasty tobacco smoke odor? It's giving me a stuffed nose and 
>itchy eyes.

I inherited (literally) an entire set of the Time-Life Cookbook and 
pamphlet series from a lady who had owned them and infused their 
outer surfaces with tobacco smoke since they were published. They 
presumably would give you the same  reaction, or worse.

What I've done was to note that these books appear to have been 
shelved most of the time, so most of the creosote in them (which is 
probably much of what you're smelling) is concentrated in the spines, 
covers and page edges. If the book was used daily, that may not be 
the case.

In my usual "I don't know what the h311 I'm doing but I'll try 
anything once," mode, I've managed to clean these spines and edges 
with a weak ammonia solution on a ever-so-slightly dampened soft 
cloth towel. Or maybe it was rubbing alcohol and water, with the 
towel wrapped around my fingertip as a sort of swab. I held the book 
tightly closed with one hand, and cleaned the edges with the other. 
It helped a lot; whether this was sheer luck on my part I can't say.

Here's a web page on cleaning books in general, with instructions on 
smoky books all the way down at the bottom:

http://www.litterascripta.com/bibliomania/clean.shtml

HTH,

Adamantius

-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04