I have "successfully" separated stuck layers in
the freezer. Once as an experiment with two cels
from the same sequence stuck back to back, and
once because the layers of a cel I liked a lot
were stuck horribly misaligned (I bought it that
way), and it was only worth a lot to me if that
were fixed.
I put the word "successfully" in quotes since
there was damage to the paint in BOTH cases, even
though in the second case the damage was so
minimal you'd have to know what you were looking
for to be able to point and say "that's it". In
the first case, the damage was more severe, even
with reminants of a stuck sketch on the back of
the top layer helping things along. In the second
case, the cel wasn't stuck very strongly yet, to
the point that it started to come apart on it's
own with a tiny tug.
Note that the damage seemed more from the process
of separating them, than from the freezing, as
far as I can tell. . . But I don't know what the
results would have been if the cels hadn't come
unstuck, because I did have to dry condensation
off them.
So bottom line is: No. If cel layers are stuck,
then just leave them -- anything you do to try to
separate them again will damage them!! But if you
absolutely HAVE TO separate stuck layers, then
it's an option to consider and is potentially
*less* (note the term "LESS") damaging than other
methods. But the cels have to be only VERY lightly
stuck or have something else helping you separate
them, like the reminants of the sketch paper on
the first one I tried.
Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac
|