Are "acid-free" backing boards truly acid-free? Time to pH test & find out! 13 13

[FFB]

I just jumped in here late to the game and since I'm not a chemist what is the above picture showing me?

 

That the core of the Gerber board is slightly alkaline, which is in keeping with the fact that it is lignin free and buffered at 3% calcium carbonate throughout, and that the BCW boards are highly acidic underneath the thin coating of calcium carbonate sitting on top of the board.

[mschmidt]

Excellent summary :thumbsup:

[FFB]

Thanks, but all credit goes to you for doing the heavy lifting in this thread. (thumbs u

[FFB]

I just jumped in here late to the game and since I'm not a chemist what is the above picture showing me?

 

That the core of the Gerber board is slightly alkaline, which is in keeping with the fact that it is lignin free and buffered at 3% calcium carbonate throughout, and that the BCW boards are highly acidic underneath the thin coating of calcium carbonate sitting on top of the board.

 

One more thing I left out - it also means that the 30-year pulp and paper dude who supposedly said that the interior of the BCW board is less acidic than the Gerber board doesn't know what he's talking about.

[toro]

I just jumped in here late to the game and since I'm not a chemist what is the above picture showing me?

 

That the core of the Gerber board is slightly alkaline, which is in keeping with the fact that it is lignin free and buffered at 3% calcium carbonate throughout, and that the BCW boards are highly acidic underneath the thin coating of calcium carbonate sitting on top of the board.

 

One more thing I left out - it also means that the 30-year pulp and paper dude who supposedly said that the interior of the BCW board is less acidic than the Gerber board doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

Thanks for the Cliff note version I appreciate it. (thumbs u

[sckao]

 

This is a fascinating thread. (thumbs u

[lizards2]

Like I said, I didn't expect anyone to take my word for it, so the boards are on the way to the lab. However, it has already been shown that, regardless of the test results that I present, they will just be discarded as propaganda. However, everyone here appears to trust Mike. I'm sure that he still has that pH pencil and an E. Gerber Half-Back lying around. Mike, how about peeling the white coating from an E. Gerber Half-Back, marking the gray core, and posting that picture?

 

You have been the best salesman E Gerber ever had around here :thumbsup:

[BCW Supplies]

Nicely done, Mike. You have proven beyond any doubt that the E. Gerber board is indeed buffered throughout.

 

This morning I received a call from George Kues of E. Gerber as we have a good working relationship. George asked that I make a correction regarding our conversation last week. When I called to ask about the Half-Backs and Full-Backs I asked specifically about whether or not they were made from "Archival Mat Board" and George indicated that they were. However, George did not use the word "Archival" and I believe he misunderstood me because E. Gerber Half-Backs and Full-Backs are not made from "Mat" board. They are, in fact, made from "VAT" board. As you can clearly see, it would be easy to confuse the word "Mat" and "VAT" since they sound very similar. And, since George did not correct me when I used the word "Archival" I believed that he was offering "Archival" Mat Board which is why I stated that E. Gerber Half-Backs and Full-Backs are made from Archival Mat Board. It should also be noted that some companies do offer Archival Mat Board, most of which is inert. However, a small percentage of Archival Mat Board is buffered and will absorb some residual acid.

 

It would seem that there is quite a double standard here. It was obvious to me from the beginning that Mike's study was just a just a poorly veiled attack on our company and our products. Although other SBS boards were included to make it a little less obvious, there is no doubt about the agenda. One need only take note of our dubious award to understand the purpose of Mike's post. While it is true that I should have refrained from making comments about our competitors products, few seem to have taken issue with the fact that others have made similar comments about our products. Further, it has been suggested that my company has intentionally mislead it's customers. The singular purpose being to defame BCW for financial gain.

 

Given that the sole purpose is to discredit BCW it is no surprise that claims have been made that the data that has been presented from the testing of our products is fraudulent. The conclusion of Mike's study is preconceived, and the hypothesis and data has been crafted to support it. However, the scientific method dictates that these steps are to be done in the opposite order. It is interesting to note that a Biochemist has been presented as an expert to refute the information that a 3% buffer is a 3% buffer with examples that are not applicable to the subject at hand, and that a lawyer has been presented to threaten a potential lawsuit on behalf of a 3rd party whom I am reasonably certain he does not represent.

 

I have stated that I am having the products tested that were represented in Mike's study and provide the results here on the forum which I will do because I am a man of my word, regardless of what some here may think. And, I will refrain from posting anything further until I receive the data from the lab. However, I will leave you all with a few thoughts to ponder in the meantime;

 

The National Information Standards Organization's definition of "acid-free" does not preclude paper or board from containing residual acid from the manufacturing process provided that the paper or board is adequately buffered. Therefore, E. Gerber's Half-Backs and Full-Backs, Bill Cole's Thin-X-Tenders, and BCW's Comic Backing Boards can contain acid from the manufacturing process and still be considered "acid-free".

 

Any board made using the sulfate process (i.e. bleached) is going to have some residual acid in it. Only board manufactured using the sulfite process will be entirely alkaline. And, board manufactured using the sulfite process does not require an alkaline reserve. Mike's original question was Are "acid-free" backing boards truly acid-free? The answer is no, regardless of whether they are being manufactured by BCW, Bill Cole, or E. Gerber.

 

And finally, whether or not a buffered comic backing board will ever become acidic depends greatly on how much acid is in the comic book with which the board is stored. If there is more acid in the comic book than the buffer can absorb, the comic backing board will eventually become acidic.

[George K-migration]

Thanks to Ken for clarifying our conversation.

[faster friends]

Thanks to Ken for clarifying our conversation.

 

Welcome to the boards!!

[OldGuy]

Like I said, I didn't expect anyone to take my word for it, so the boards are on the way to the lab. However, it has already been shown that, regardless of the test results that I present, they will just be discarded as propaganda. However, everyone here appears to trust Mike. I'm sure that he still has that pH pencil and an E. Gerber Half-Back lying around. Mike, how about peeling the white coating from an E. Gerber Half-Back, marking the gray core, and posting that picture?

 

You have been the best salesman E Gerber ever had around here :thumbsup:

 

No kidding.

 

Salesman fail.

[FFB]

Given that the sole purpose is to discredit BCW it is no surprise that claims have been made that the data that has been presented from the testing of our products is fraudulent. The conclusion of Mike's study is preconceived, and the hypothesis and data has been crafted to support it. However, the scientific method dictates that these steps are to be done in the opposite order. It is interesting to note that a Biochemist has been presented as an expert to refute the information that a 3% buffer is a 3% buffer with examples that are not applicable to the subject at hand, and that a lawyer has been presented to threaten a potential lawsuit on behalf of a 3rd party whom I am reasonably certain he does not represent.

 

I didn't threaten anything. I simply pointed out that you were disparaging Gerber's products and that there could be legal consequences if they wanted to pursue you. Not that I think they will. They are probably more interested in getting you to sell more of their products and in making sure you aren't passing along bad info.

 

As for the biochemist's contributions to the thread, I'll take Bob's expertise over yours any day. After all, he knows what he's talking about. It's clear from your comments that you didn't understand what he was saying.

[mschmidt]

Nicely done, Mike. You have proven beyond any doubt that the E. Gerber board is indeed buffered throughout.

 

This morning I received a call from George Kues of E. Gerber as we have a good working relationship. George asked that I make a correction regarding our conversation last week. When I called to ask about the Half-Backs and Full-Backs I asked specifically about whether or not they were made from "Archival Mat Board" and George indicated that they were. However, George did not use the word "Archival" and I believe he misunderstood me because E. Gerber Half-Backs and Full-Backs are not made from "Mat" board. They are, in fact, made from "VAT" board. As you can clearly see, it would be easy to confuse the word "Mat" and "VAT" since they sound very similar. And, since George did not correct me when I used the word "Archival" I believed that he was offering "Archival" Mat Board which is why I stated that E. Gerber Half-Backs and Full-Backs are made from Archival Mat Board. It should also be noted that some companies do offer Archival Mat Board, most of which is inert. However, a small percentage of Archival Mat Board is buffered and will absorb some residual acid.

 

It would seem that there is quite a double standard here. It was obvious to me from the beginning that Mike's study was just a just a poorly veiled attack on our company and our products. Although other SBS boards were included to make it a little less obvious, there is no doubt about the agenda. One need only take note of our dubious award to understand the purpose of Mike's post. While it is true that I should have refrained from making comments about our competitors products, few seem to have taken issue with the fact that others have made similar comments about our products. Further, it has been suggested that my company has intentionally mislead it's customers. The singular purpose being to defame BCW for financial gain.

 

Given that the sole purpose is to discredit BCW it is no surprise that claims have been made that the data that has been presented from the testing of our products is fraudulent. The conclusion of Mike's study is preconceived, and the hypothesis and data has been crafted to support it. However, the scientific method dictates that these steps are to be done in the opposite order. It is interesting to note that a Biochemist has been presented as an expert to refute the information that a 3% buffer is a 3% buffer with examples that are not applicable to the subject at hand, and that a lawyer has been presented to threaten a potential lawsuit on behalf of a 3rd party whom I am reasonably certain he does not represent.

 

I have stated that I am having the products tested that were represented in Mike's study and provide the results here on the forum which I will do because I am a man of my word, regardless of what some here may think. And, I will refrain from posting anything further until I receive the data from the lab. However, I will leave you all with a few thoughts to ponder in the meantime;

 

The National Information Standards Organization's definition of "acid-free" does not preclude paper or board from containing residual acid from the manufacturing process provided that the paper or board is adequately buffered. Therefore, E. Gerber's Half-Backs and Full-Backs, Bill Cole's Thin-X-Tenders, and BCW's Comic Backing Boards can contain acid from the manufacturing process and still be considered "acid-free".

 

Any board made using the sulfate process (i.e. bleached) is going to have some residual acid in it. Only board manufactured using the sulfite process will be entirely alkaline. And, board manufactured using the sulfite process does not require an alkaline reserve. Mike's original question was Are "acid-free" backing boards truly acid-free? The answer is no, regardless of whether they are being manufactured by BCW, Bill Cole, or E. Gerber.

 

And finally, whether or not a buffered comic backing board will ever become acidic depends greatly on how much acid is in the comic book with which the board is stored. If there is more acid in the comic book than the buffer can absorb, the comic backing board will eventually become acidic.

 

My (hopefully) final thoughts on this matter ...

 

Ken's claim that I'm trying to "defame BCW for financial gain" is ridiculous. I have no stake in anything presented in this thread - I do not sell backing boards, I do not work for a backing board manufacturer, I'm merely a comic book collector with an interest in conservation/preservation matters.

 

The main purpose of this test was to illustrate that any backing board manufacturer who claims that their "coated-on-one-side" boards are acid-free or archival-safe is misleading their customers. That's it. Nowhere in the backing board test did I single out BCW - that wouldn't have made any sense considering the BCW board really isn't any different than the one manufactured by Comic Vision, Ultra Pro or Miller Hobby.

 

(The one place where I did target BCW, however, was in regards to their Comic Book Extenders. The BCW Comic Book Extender is no more than a thinner version of the regular BCW backing board, with an alkaline coating on both sides (instead of just on one side) - it won't become acidic as fast as the BCW backing board (due to the double-sided coating), but it's still not archival-safe, nor suitable for long-term use, and claiming that "you can't do any better to preserve your valuable collection" as is written on BCW website is insane. It is a bad product, being marketed as a conservation grade storage solution, and deserves the "pants on fire" rating I bestowed upon it previously.)

 

In regards to the results of this test, well, the quick executive summary is this:

 

1) The BCW/Ultra Pro/Miller Hobby/Comic Vision "regular" backing boards tested in this thread are all SBS boards with a thin alkaline coating on just one side - this ensures that one side of the board is close to pH neutral (at least at the time of manufacture) and one side is heavily acidic. The core of the board - as illustrated by the test above - is also acidic.

 

As such, I'm still puzzled about the "independent lab results" presented by Ken several times in this thread. How can a hot extraction test show a pH of 8.0 when the vast majority of the board itself is heavily acidic?

 

What's not up for discussion, however, is that over time, due to the lack of an alkaline buffer throughout, the entire SBS board will become acidic. Contrary to claims made in this thread, the primary reason for this is not the alkaline coating being sated by the acids generated by the comic book, but rather the alkaline coating being forced to work overtime to try to neutralize the acidity of the board itself.

 

I do not claim to know how long it will take before the alkaline coating on the SBS board is entirely sated & the board is fully acidic - it would be silly to say it happens overnight - but, on the other hand, once it does happen, your precious comic book is suddenly sitting right next to a "paper time-bomb" that is effectively speeding up the decay of the book.

 

2) The E Gerber/Bill Cole boards (with the exception of the Bill Cole Life-X-Tender which, honestly, almost deserves an entire thread of its own) are lignin-free VAT boards. They have no coating, but are rather buffered throughout with a 3% calcium carbonate reserve which ensures that the entire board maintains a neutral pH.

 

Neither Gerber nor Bill Cole make any claims as to the acid absorption or neutralization properties of their boards, but, as Bob pointed our earlier, they don't really have to; the fact that this 3% calcium carbonate buffer exists throughout the entire board is enough to ensure that not only can these boards be classified as being "truly acid-free", they will also provide some help towards absorbing the acidic off-gassing that occurs when paper ages.

[Mr.Pid-migration]

It would seem that there is quite a double standard here. It was obvious to me from the beginning that Mike's study was just a just a poorly veiled attack on our company and our products. Although other SBS boards were included to make it a little less obvious, there is no doubt about the agenda.

 

Given that the sole purpose is to discredit BCW...

 

And the BS keeps flying. This thread grew organically out of other threads where people would come on and say "which side touches the comic, the glossy or the flat side?" Instead of mixed messages and misinformation, Mike decided to test the boards so we'd all gain a little knowledge in a centralized thread. Now that we know how you and your products are, all you can do is attack Mike personally as a man with an agenda? His only agenda was to help us all store our comics properly! Maybe he told others not to purchase your products (I don't really remember if he did or not) once he found out how inferior they are compared to the others, but that's not really a surprise. He would have done the same to Gerber or Cole if their product turned out to be as mislabeled and misrepresented as yours.

[CKB]

Thanks to Ken for clarifying our conversation.

 

Welcome to the boards!!

 

Agreed, nice to see you make a post, George!

 

[lizards2]

Like I said, I didn't expect anyone to take my word for it, so the boards are on the way to the lab. However, it has already been shown that, regardless of the test results that I present, they will just be discarded as propaganda. However, everyone here appears to trust Mike. I'm sure that he still has that pH pencil and an E. Gerber Half-Back lying around. Mike, how about peeling the white coating from an E. Gerber Half-Back, marking the gray core, and posting that picture?

 

You have been the best salesman E Gerber ever had around here :thumbsup:

 

No kidding.

 

Salesman fail.

 

But to be fair, the BC thin-extenders and life-extenders appear to be on equal terms with the E Gerber products. Which does make me happy, because I've purchased about 6-7K of the thin-extenders in the past.

 

What is a shame is that this supposed salesman has called into question all of the BC products, and basically tainted his employer's reputation on these boards, through his ridiculous and transparent attempts to deflect and mis-inform.

[mschmidt]

Like I said, I didn't expect anyone to take my word for it, so the boards are on the way to the lab. However, it has already been shown that, regardless of the test results that I present, they will just be discarded as propaganda. However, everyone here appears to trust Mike. I'm sure that he still has that pH pencil and an E. Gerber Half-Back lying around. Mike, how about peeling the white coating from an E. Gerber Half-Back, marking the gray core, and posting that picture?

 

You have been the best salesman E Gerber ever had around here :thumbsup:

 

No kidding.

 

Salesman fail.

 

But to be fair, the BC thin-extenders and life-extenders appear to be on equal terms with the E Gerber products. Which does make me happy, because I've purchased about 6-7K of the thin-extenders in the past.

 

What is a shame is that this supposed salesman has called into question all of the BC products, and basically tainted his employer's reputation on these boards, through his ridiculous and transparent attempts to deflect and mis-inform.

 

You're confusing Bill Cole Enterprises (which you refer to as BC - they're usually known as BCE) with BCW Supplies (Ken's company).

 

Bill Cole makes archival-safe & acid-free products just like E Gerber - including the Thin-X-Tender (identical to the Gerber Half-back) and the Time-X-Tender (identical to the Gerber Full-back). Their Life-X-Tender is probably the nicest backing board on the market - it has a layer of activated charcoal sandwiched between two sheets of archival-safe backing boards. I'd use it for my all books if it wasn't so darn expensive.

[lizards2]

I did not know this until now - I can retract my post if you will?

[Aman619]

wait... BCW is NOT Bill Cole? seriously, thats a piece of info that ought to have been more clear

[Aman619]

who the heck is BCW?