From rh@craycos.com Mon Feb  3 00:55:47 1992
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Date: Sun, 2 Feb 92 22:55:57 MST
From: rh@craycos.com (Robert Herndon)
Message-Id: <9202030555.AA20134@copper.craycos.com>
To: balloon@gawain.cif.rochester.edu
Subject: Freezing balloons to preserve them
Status: ORr

Larry Moss asks:

> Does freezing the balloons really preserve them?  I've had problems with
> balloons that I've had in coat pockets in cold weather.  Admittedly
> they're not in sealed packages anymore at that point.

  It seems to have worked well for my balloons.  As I implicitly
mentioned in my last post, mine are > 5 years old, kept for almost
all of that time in a freezer.  They seem just fine.  I do not thaw
and refreeze them much though -- that may make a lot of difference.
They are also 260Es (double dipped) rather than 260As (single dipped),
which might make a lot of difference, too.

  A coat pocket seems likely to flex them a lot while they are cold.
This is definitely bad for them.

Does anyone have a catalog of "standard balloon sculptures"?  Such
a thing organized by category (e.g., single balloon 260s, multiple
balloon 245s, etc.) might be nice, even if we had to resort to p-mail.
A "balloon animals" notation would also seem to be very easy to
develop -- there are only a few standard twists, and almost all
one balloon sculptures are constructed in a very linear fashion.

+rh