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Conservation Tech Sheet

A six-panel conservation record that folds down to card size and rides inside the toploader with the card.

Think of it as the honest cousin of a Beckett altered label: it doesn't hide what was done, it documents it — condition at intake, every process step, the disclosure tier, and a grade estimate. The card and its history travel together.

🖨️ Print It

Open in your browser and print. The live version — this is the one to use.

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📄 PDF

5 pages, ready to hand out. Preview or print if you'd rather not use the browser version.

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One self-contained HTML file. No build step, no dependencies. Fork it for your shop.

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Tip: Use the HTML version if you can. The PDF is fixed output; the HTML is the working document. Duplex registration varies by printer and is a one-value fix in the HTML (see Duplex calibration below) — you can't correct it in the PDF.

Why This Exists

Most restoration work is documented nowhere. A card changes hands and the next owner has no idea whether it was pressed, cleaned, rebacked, or left alone. That vacuum is where disputes start, and it's why disclosure has a bad reputation it doesn't deserve.

This sheet closes that gap. It gives the tech a structured intake record, gives the client proof of what was and wasn't done, and gives the next owner a document that travels with the card.

Map the card before you touch it. The intake map is the only proof of what was already there.

What's in the File

Page	What it is
1	Side 1 — two fold-out strips: tech sheet · front map · back map
2	Side 2 — reverse: notes · process log · legend
3	Bench tech sheet — one full page at ~2.85×, for bench work and the client file
4	Bench condition map — diagrams print exactly life size, so you can lay the card straight onto the page
5	How to mark a card — a worked example with eight defects. Print once and pin it up.

Each panel is 2.45 × 3.45 in (62 × 88 mm) — deliberately a hair under a real card, so the folded strip seats in a 3×4 toploader behind the card without catching.

Panel layout

SIDE 1   [ TECH SHEET ] [ FRONT MAP ] [ BACK MAP ]
SIDE 2   [ NOTES      ] [ PROCESS LOG ] [ LEGEND ]

Side 2 is printed in that order on purpose. A long-edge duplex flip mirrors left-to-right, so the legend lands behind the tech sheet. Folded up, the strip reads tech sheet on the front and the full legend on the back — you can decode any mark without unfolding it.

Printing

Scale = 100%. Not "Fit to page". Margins None or Minimum. This matters — at 97% the folded strip no longer fits a toploader properly.
Pages 1 & 2 two-sided, flip on long edge.
Check the ruler at the bottom of page 1 against a real ruler before you cut anything. It must measure exactly 2.45 in / 62 mm.
Cut the strips apart on the solid lines. Fold on the two dashed lines — accordion / Z-fold, so the tech sheet ends up on top.

Paper weight:

24 lb plain if the strip rides in the toploader with the card. Three folded layers plus a card is close to the limit of a 35 pt toploader — thin matters.
32 lb+ if it lives in the binder, box, or shipping sleeve.

Black-and-white printing is fine. The whole thing is monochrome by design.

Duplex calibration

Almost no printer registers the two sides of a sheet perfectly, and the error is specific to the machine. The back sheet (page 2) is shifted up by 3 mm to compensate. One value controls it, at the top of the HTML:

--duplex-y: 3mm;   /* shifts the BACK sheet UP by this much */

To tune it: print one double-sided sheet, hold it to a strong light, and look at how the panel borders line up.

Back panels sitting too low → increase the value
Back panels sitting too high → decrease it (negative is fine — -2mm pushes the back down)
Printer registers true → set it to 0

Caution: The default 3 mm is tuned for one specific printer on long-edge flip. It is not a universal correction, and it's the first thing to zero out if you're setting this up somewhere else. Because the back sheet is no longer vertically centred, it only registers under long-edge flip — short-edge flip needs the sign inverted. Horizontal position is untouched either way.

The Marking System

Two mark classes. Linear damage gets traced along its actual path — so length and direction are recorded, not just "there's a crease". Point damage gets circled where it sits.

Linear — trace along the defect

Mark	Means	Why it matters
`———` solid	CREASE	Fibres are broken. Permanent. No press will undo it.
`- - -` dashed	BEND	No fibre break. This is the one a cold press actually fixes.
`· · ·` dotted	SCRATCH	Surface only.
`∿∿∿` wavy	WRINKLE	Rippled — evidence of prior moisture exposure.
`═══` double	PRINT LINE	Factory, not handling. Doesn't count against the owner.

WARNING: The solid/dashed split is the load-bearing one — it's the difference between "pressable" and "that card is what it is." Getting it right at intake is what stops arguments later. See Crease Removal for how the two behave under treatment.

Point — circle it, letter it

I Indent	D Ding	N Nick / chip	W Whitening
S Stain	G Gloss loss	F Foil / silvering	L Delamination / lift
A Adhesive	M Mark / ink	P Paper loss	R Print defect (factory)

Modifiers

1 / 2 / 3 — severity: light, moderate, heavy. Put one on every mark.
* — the defect reads through to the other side.
hatching — the defect covers an area, not a point. Hatch the zone and letter it.

Grid coordinates

Each diagram is divided A B C across and 1 2 3 down, so a defect can be written in plain text. G2 at B2 = moderate gloss loss in the centre square.

Use it on the notes panel, in eBay listings, and in messages to clients — anyone can find the defect without holding the sheet.

Disclosure Tiers

The part that makes this a conservation document rather than a repair receipt.

Tier	Meaning
I — CONSERVATION	Non-additive, nothing removed. Grader-safe.
II — RESTORATION	Possibly detectable under loupe or UV. Disclose on sale.
III — ALTERATION	Material added or removed. High rejection risk.

Every checkbox in Work Performed marked ▲ puts the card in tier III by definition — delamination repair, rosin press, rebacking, scratch fill, UV gloss, corner rebuild, recolor, trim/recut. They sit together at the bottom of each column, so the tier III block is one glance rather than a hunt.

The tier is about disclosure, not permission.
Tier III work isn't fraud. Selling tier III work as untouched is.

See Altered Flags for how PSA's N5 / N8 codes treat these, and the Restoration Service Agreement Template for putting the disclosure obligation in writing.

Customising It for Your Shop

One self-contained HTML file — no build step, no dependencies, no fonts to install. Grab the source, open it in any editor.

The five <template> blocks (tplTech, tplMap, tplLegend, tplLog, tplNotes) are the single source for every copy. Edit once, all copies update.
The legend lives in the LINES / POINTS / MODS arrays in the script — edit those and both the panel and the bench copy update together.
Swap the wordmark in the .hdr block for your own shop name. Keep the attribution line in the footer — that's the licence condition.
Sizes live in :root: --face-w, --face-h, --big.

Caution:

 Two rules if you change the layout.

1. Every repeated row carries an explicit height on purpose, so a substituted fallback font can't grow a panel past 3.45 in. Panels are overflow:hidden, so anything that doesn't fit silently disappears rather than pushing the strip oversize. If you add rows, re-check the fit.

2. Never centre a print block with transform: translate(-50%, -50%). Chrome paginates using the untransformed box, so a translated block gets fragmented across the page break and the bottom row spills off the sheet. Everything here is centred with calc() offsets instead.

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Copy it, sell it, fork it. But every fork stays open.

Being straight about what this does and doesn't do:

It does:

Force anyone who distributes a modified version to release it under CC BY-SA 4.0 too — they cannot fold this into a closed, proprietary "our method" document.
Require attribution to cardconservation.com on every copy and every derivative.
Give a public, dated, verifiable record that this system originated here — which makes "we invented this" trivially disprovable.

It does not:

Stop someone charging money for access. Selling copies is explicitly allowed, and share-alike doesn't change that.
Trigger on private internal use. A group can use it behind a paywall without redistributing anything, and no licence term is breached. Share-alike bites on distribution, not on use.

The practical effect: someone can charge people to see it, but the moment they hand out a modified version, that version is legally required to be open under the same terms and credited here. The strongest protection isn't the licence text — it's that this is published, dated, and public.

Changes from v1

Format: single card → 1×3 fold-out. The condition maps went from 0.88 × 1.23 in to 1.87 × 2.62 in — a bit over 4× the marking area, which was the whole point.
New panels: process log (13 dated session rows), notes, and a full-size legend.
Licence: CC BY 4.0 → CC BY-SA 4.0, so forks must stay open.
Work checklist rebuilt around actual press methods:

v1	v2
Dry press	Cold Press
Humidity + press	Humidor and Humidity Stack (split)
Spot press	Tool Work
De-warp / flatten	dropped — covered by Cold Press
Edge clean	dropped
Adhesive removal	Scratch reduction
—	Heat Press, Rosin Press, UV Glossed (new)

HR → TIME in the press log. HOLD → RAW in the submit row. Centring fields now read FRONT / BACK instead of bare F/B.