Combination soils – Many of the flags in storage now have a combination of small particulate and sooty soils. The wool flags in particular exhibit this type of soiling. We have found that a two-step process works best to clean these flags, after testing to be sure dye loss will not occur. First, the flag is cleaned with a solvent to loosen and begin to remove the sooty (oily) soils. Second, the flag is cleaned with a surfactant (detergent) in water to remove the loosened and water-soluble soils using a suction table.