1. An extensive bibliography 01 suction table design, treatment and science articles provided to the participants in the Conservation Analytical Laboratory Refresher Course, May 13–17, 1985 entitled ‘Techniques, Uses, Differences and Operating Parameters of Current Paper Suction Tables’. Copies may be obtained by contacting the author
2. The author designed and built his first fritted glass bead suction disk while a Conservation fellow at the Winterthur Museum. working with Anne Clapp and Dr Peter Sparks, in the summer of 1975 Further modifications and application of a specific pump were made at the Intermuseum Conservation Association, Oberlin OH, in 1979 The system presently used by the author consists of dual Gast 1022-series pumps, remotely located It was designed and built in 1983 at CAL Several Gast pumps have been tried, the 0765, 1065 and 3040-series The present 1022-series, oil lubricated. Pumps have proved very satisfactory over the past four years
3. High vacuum and high flow pumps are made, but are extremely expensive A Roots VJ Water-Sealed Whispair 616 vacuum pump (blower) will operate at 24″Hg with a flow of 1075 CFM using a 100 BHP motor, configured to operate at 2125 RPM. The cost for the system is approximately US $17,000
4. Composite Porosity is a term made up to indicate that a porous material can be thought of as a non-porous film with one hole that is equivalent to all the pores in the paper added together. One problem with this conceptualisation is that after a certain pore size, well above 20μ m. the flow of gas in a capillary is laminar rather than turbulent and thus has different characteristics. For this discussion, Composite Porosity will be approximately equal to the total flow of air through all pores being measured