Sold 200x Mapes $5 Chips (3 Viewers)

Up for sale is 2 racks of Mapes $5s. These chips have all been flattened, and are probably the best Mapes $5s you are likely to come across for this reason, as most Mapes chips have severe warpage problems (see pics below of before vs after flattening). I also have the 50c fracs and New China Club $1s for sale.

Price is $550 per rack + shipping

Good luck!


Pic AFTER flattening:

Pic BEFORE flattening:

 

[AfterTheFact]

Selling... Why??

 

[pltrgyst]

Drinking the last of the Pappy when you close the sale? :

 

[RainmanTrail]

Drinking the last of the Pappy when you close the sale? :

The last of the Pappy could be negotiated

 

[loul13]

I'm Curious about how you do this flattening process.
How are you doing this ???

 

[leo822]

Is it hard to flatten them? Id hate to mess em up.

 

[RainmanTrail]

Selling... Why??

Because I got an offer I couldn't refuse for part of my Mapes set which allowed me to fill my 2nd rack of Pick Hobson fracs, as well as a couple dozen more of my grail chips After that, I decided to focus on my grail sets, so I'm letting a lot of other stuff go... Here are a couple pics of where my grail chips are at now...

 

[RainmanTrail]

Is it hard to flatten them? Id hate to mess em up.

I can walk you through it. I used a clamp with ceramic blanks between each chip, then heated them 10 chips at a time at 130F for 30 minutes. Here are a couple pics of them clamped:

 

[Split]

I can walk you through it. I used a clamp with ceramic blanks between each chip, then heated them 10 chips at a time at 130F for 30 minutes. Here are a couple pics of them clamped:

View attachment 49277 View attachment 49278

The wood clamp is a nice touch. Metallic clamps may facilitate too much heat transfer into the outermost chips, although adding an extra ceramic chip at each end is suspected (confirmed?) to address this.

 

[leo822]

Wow..well done. I may ship some racks to you if you want to offer this as a service. How hot does an EZ bake oven get? (I'm totally serious...lol)

 

[RainmanTrail]

Wow..well done. I may ship some racks to you if you want to offer this as a service. How hot does an EZ bake oven get? (I'm totally serious...lol)

I'm not sure about how hot the EZ bake ovens get (I think I recall someone saying 175F?). We actually discussed this in another thread. I first set up a hair dryer "oven" that I made out of some aluminum foil and a snowboard boot box with a meat thermometer. It actually worked pretty well, but I had to sit there and hold the hair dryer. I ended up using a suggestion by @bentax1978 to use a few incandescent light bulbs inside my oven to get it up to 130F. Worked perfectly.

Here's the thread: click me

 

[RainmanTrail]

Wow..well done. I may ship some racks to you if you want to offer this as a service. How hot does an EZ bake oven get? (I'm totally serious...lol)

It takes a REALLY long time to do it unless you get multiple clamps. It took me about two months to flatten all my Mapes. I was basically doing 10 chips per day. Because you have to leave them clamped until they cool off, and I didn't want to put them in the fridge as I wanted them to cool slowly. I usually ended up leaving them over night in the clamps after heating them. I know you can do 20 chips at a time side by side in those clamps, but there's just too much variance in thickness for me to want to do it that way. I wanted them as close to perfect as I could get them. I wanted as little 'gamble' as possible with the project, being is that they are Mapes after all (y) :thumbsup:

Plus, getting them all perfectly centered on the ceramic blanks is tricky. 10 chips at a time worked well for me.

 

[loul13]

Thanks for all these détails.

 

[ssanel54]

So in your before/after pictures is that the same rack? Did you gain room enough to fit a spacer? The before pics dont look that bad to me, but I guess it makes a big difference.

 

[AfterTheFact]

I used metal clamps and no spacers. (Mostly because I didn't have any blank ceramics). I used a block of wood on each end and nothing in between the chips.
I did NOT use an artificial heat source. I simply put them outside covered by a towel but in direct sunlight. These were severely warped Paulsons and it worked well. After a couple of hours in the sun I cracked the vise down another crank and left for a few more hours. It's summer and mid 90's every day here.

Now, these were NOT high dollar chips. It worked very well and there was no ghosting. Here are a couple of before and after pics.

 

[H|Q]

Not to derail, but my 5s don't have warping issues. Mapes are always get the most attention from my chipping and non-chipping friends that visit the Panel Palace. GLWS!

 

[RainmanTrail]

So in your before/after pictures is that the same rack? Did you gain room enough to fit a spacer? The before pics dont look that bad to me, but I guess it makes a big difference.

Ya, it's the same rack. I couldn't fit the spacer before. The biggest difference though is in how much wobble was removed from the stacks.

 

[RainmanTrail]

SOLD (y) :thumbsup: