To dry mount or not to dry mount

[Drew Wiley]

I have reason to believe that some of the older drymount tissues were fairly effective
acid barriers in their own right. I've had some fairly detailed conversations with paper
conservators about this, but there's a bit of disagreement about what actually went in
some of these tissues. Similarly today, polyester print bases like one encounters with
Cibachrome and Fuji Supergloss are very effective barriers themselves. However, I
always play it safe and mount silver prints only on linen ragboard. This is not the best
substrate for every kind of print. Things like albumen prints and dye transfer prints
should not be mounted on an alkaline (buffered) substrate. For these you get the
unbuffered equivalent.

[Ken Lee]

Is there a way to keep larger prints flat, without dry mounting ?

How about a few strips of archival tape, in the shape of an X, behind the print ?

Will heavier paper stay flatter as a matter of principal ?

I like glossy inkjet paper. Is there a heavy glossy inkjet paper that people can recommend ?

[John Jarosz]

The reason the paper curls is because the gelatin emulsion absorbs humidity and changes dimension. It also changes dimension as temperature changes. The paper and gelatin expand & contract at different rates, so there is really no way to prevent curling long term.

I have thought about dry mounting another sheet of fixed out white silver paper to the back of the print so all the forces are symmetrical (Both emulsions face out.) Then the sandwich would probably stay flat. I think the "X" idea whould should up in the viewing side of the print after some time has passed.

John

[csant]

Yes, and dry mounted to acid board.

Would it get less if it was not dry mounted?

[Drew Wiley]

Yes, there are other ways to keep prints flat - like wet mounting, which is often used
for very large prints, but ideally requires a vacuum press and is trickier than dry mounting. You can use spray adhesives, which are effective at shortening your own life as well as that of the image. Back-to-back mounting? That's like putting the print
on a super thin mount board. I will still warp, especially on display. I've mentioned acrylic foil adhesives earlier, which are generally used for big color display prints -
require special equipment and are absolutely unforgiving of even the slightest mistake.
Expensive too. Tape applied to the sides or one edge? - the print will buckle in the
middle unless it's quite small. All these things have been tried over and over again.
Some things work, some things don't. That is why drymounting has been popular for
decades.

[tgtaylor]

Interesting thread.

Yesterday, while researching mounting methods on the forum, I was referred to Ross Alan's website where he states:

"I quit dry mounting prints sometime in the mid 1980’s, or at least I stopped mounting them in the conventional fashion. I print with a minimum of a 1″ margin between the image and the edge of the paper. Prints 11×14 and smaller I don’t mount at all. I flatten the air-dried prints in a mount press and then put them in a presentation/handling mat. A properly sized bevel overmat is hinged to a backing board, and the print is then positioned in the window and then corner-mounted to the backing. 16×20 and 20×24 prints are mounted onto a sheet of 2-ply museum board to stiffen the print and make it flatter, but they are corner-mounted in a handling mat in much the same manner as the smaller prints."

The above, however - pasted from his website this evening - is not in the exact language that I was referred to yesterday in which he states that, unless specifically requested by the client, he corner mats all prints sized 20x24 and below to a 2-ply board the same size as the paper and then mounts that inside a 4-ply matt. For those prints greater than 20x24 he dry mounts. What would be the benefit of that as compared to corner mounting the print to the 4 ply board and maybe putting foam board in the back?

[NER]

I always dry mount, and I don't agree that the process is irreversible. You can remove a mounted print by heating it in a press for a period sufficient to drive the adhesive into the mount. (This follows from the fact that when tissue adheres to print but not the mount, the temperature is too low, and that when tissue adheres to the mount but not the print, the temperature is too high.)

N. Riley
http://normanrileyphotography.com