Collectors craft work

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2 December 2013

A week ago I got a bunch of used mailers delivered from a friend collector. He almost never sells so he doesn’t need all the mailers he gets from purchases. I was thankful and just finished a job that needed cutters, judgments and lots of used mailers. And photo camera and laptop to report it all.

STEP 1:

Sort your mailers based on several criteria (1, 2 and 3).

Criterium 1
Is it the cardbox bent? Or banana shaped?

Completely bent mailer

1. Yes means trow it away in it’s entirety
2. No means you have to look at the two following other criteria (2 & 3)

Criterium 2
Does the biggest area have piercingholes?

Piercinghole

1. Yes means not to use them anymore also but can be recycled to stiffeners for either 12 inches mailers and 7 inches mailers
2. No you can get lucky to save some dollars by reusing them if the last criteria (3) is positive

Criterium 3Are the corners still sharp, not dinged and not bent?

Left dent corner and right still sharp corner

1. Yes turn them inside out, to get unwritten, unstamped and unstickered new looking cardboard mailers.
2. No means that the record-box is going to be recycled to stiffeners.

STEP 2:

Making the stiffeners from recycling the LP mailers

The case where you got sharp corners but a small or some smaller piercing holes.

Remove all tape and fold open the mailer. So that you can just lay an extra LP sleeve (that can be handled and eventually get small damage or just a spare you got somewhere) on the flat side and draw lines along the LP sleeve seams to get the measurement of the becoming stiffener. You can also expand those measurement with 2 millimeters. So that the stiffener will become wider on all sides. And so creating a bumper zone.
When you completed that can start cutting out the stiffener with a cutter knife.

LP jacket or already made stiffener

Black lines are drawn, you have the size of the needed stiffener now

Start cutting it out with a metallic ruler or just something straight and long enough

You are done! And can now use then to stiffen your LP parcels and provide extra corner strength, fill up negative space and protect the LP’s from being cut when the receiver of the parcel opens it. Also if there something sharp sticking against or into the parcel, the stiffeners will take the hits and not the record.

In the second case, that is the opposite case. Mailers with no sharp corners. They won’t longer protect the LP-sleeve corners because they lost their strength by already being dent or bent

These mailers will become stiffeners for 7 inches. Because when you draw the form of a 7 inch sleeve on a side of the 12 inch mailer you will get 7 inch stiffeners with sharp corners but you do loose cardboard.

12×12 inch cardboard damaged so can’t be used as LP stiffener but you can make single stiffeners out of that piece

Place enough for 7 inch drawing and cutting out

And after a few hours of work you’ll have a awesome result and be able to make the strongest parcel. And the person who traded with you and or bought records from you will get records still in perfect shape!