Removing Stamp Mounts

I'm assuming your mounts are well-affixed, so that can't just simply be removed with a little tugging. If your album pages are thin, the tugging may result in some thins in the album page.

I'm no expert, but all the methods I know to remove well-affixed old mounts will result in either locally warped paper after drying/evaporation or paper thins. If it were me, I'd simply slice away the clear flap and affix a new mount directly over the old mount backing. Of course the album page will be thicker there, and if you have several mounts on that page that need to be replace, you will end up adding noticeable weight to the paper.

Hopefully somebody here does have a way to remove the mounts cleanly.

The hobby knife method is best done with two people (or one person with three hands). One hand holds the album page flat, one hand pulls the edge or corner of the mount, and another hand cuts any paper that may be pulled (thereby minimizing any paper thins). I recommend having 3 hands because trying it with only 2 hands often results in either a "stabbed" album page or a major crease in the album page. Of course, if one of the 3 hands gets accidentally stabbed...

Usually if the mount is really really stuck fast in a spot, sometimes it's safer to just cut off the rest of the mount and leave that little dime-sized patch. Once you put the new mount on it, nobody will noticed (except you will remember )

You can try using "Stamp Lift". It will leave you with a slightly wavy spot, but again it will be covered by the mount. You really won't notice until you turn the page over. But if your next page is breath-taking, nobody will notice (except you will remember )

Finally, remember to remove any other stamps from the page first!!!

k

P.S. -- some people like to wet the entire mount backing so that it stays snugly on the page. You WILL have to do that with your replacement mount. On a clean page, others like to wet the top half in case of future removal/replacement. Depending on the mount orientation, I like to affix the mount so that the top and right edges of the mount are wetted.