wet baseboard instead of an easel: what I am doing wrong?

[finnagainn]

I don't have an easel (yet) so I just make the baseboard wet and stick paper on it. I don't even have to soak the paper, the residual water on the board does the job. The sheets stick on very nice and flat and I can move them around for fine positioning.
I am thinking to draw corner marks for different formats with a permanent marker.

So what benefits will an easel bring to me, can anyone help? Faster workflow? Easier to handle large formats (I only printed up to 11x14 so far)?

Just trying to justify the 200++ bucks I need to dish out. I suppose not much sense buying two blade version if it's a 16x20 size, right?

Thanks

[Jim Jones]

I prefer the old Speed-Ez-El. One can get one for the largest paper and use magnetic strips to hold down smaller paper. If the strips are slightly beveled, they hold paper down without intruding noticably into the image area. They may be scarce in Hong Kong, though. I've even improvised a similar easel from mat board.

[John Kasaian]

So where did the residual water come from?
Electricity + water = shocking developments

[John Kasaian]

I prefer the old Speed-Ez-El. One can get one for the largest paper and use magnetic strips to hold down smaller paper. If the strips are slightly beveled, they hold paper down without intruding noticably into the image area. They may be scarce in Hong Kong, though. I've even improvised a similar easel from mat board.

The big Speed-Ez-Els ain't cheap unless you come across a used one. They also don't accept some thick papers. For a low bucks easel a flat piece of steel and magnets work fine though.

[jp]

I've got the various speed-ezles for up to 11x14. I got most of them used for very little $ when people sell off their darkroom. Most of the used ones I get have nicer paint than my own since they were owned by more casual darkroom users and didn't get much use. When in high school metal shop class 20 years ago, I even built a speed ezle of my own.

I haven't had trouble with paper fitting in them, except when you cut your own paper from bigger sheets or a roll and don't have the means to accurately do so.

For 16x20, if the paper doesn't lay flat, I just tape it down with blue masking tape, but I think the magnet idea would be good too.

I have used a permanent marker to put corner marks on one enlarger's baseboard; it's the area illuminated by the bulb/lens/empty carrier when I do contact print pages. I just slap the paper down inside the marked area, put the printfile page on top, lay a piece of glass (with tape on the edges for safety and to protect from chipping), and make the print. It's a lot faster than a frame for the purpose of contact printing. I don't use this method for display contact prints; I have a frame for that, and take the neg out of the page.

[ROL]

I don't have an easel (yet) so I just make the baseboard wet and stick paper on it.

[Drew Wiley]

A baked melamine coating on MDF makes an excellent poor man's squeegee board for
prints because it has a little bit of absorbent tooth. And properly countermounted with
urethane or expoxy marine glue you can build these up to remain relatively dimensionally stable. I don't like wet fingers handling paper because it becomes easy
to pick up contaminants which will leave fingerprint impressions on the paper. The
electrical thing is a different issue; have you ever watched the movie, "Green Mile"?

[Jay DeFehr]

I think it's a very creative and, apparently, effective solution to your problem, and I think the electrical issue is something of a red herring. I wipe my baseboard down with a damp sponge occasionally with no ill effects, and I don't imagine it takes more than a similar wetness to stick your paper down. My outlets are all GFI in my darkroom, and that's a reasonable precaution, to my mind. Your paper might lay flatter than it would in even a better quality easel. I also don't think the wet fingers are a real problem; it's just water, not developer or fixer, and it's pretty easy to wipe your fingers on a dry cloth/pant leg before reaching into the paper safe. A sticky baseboard might be a very good alternative to an easel. I say spend your easel money on more film/paper and keep working.

[Gem Singer]

A drawback to not using an easel is the inability to create a border around the print.

A blank border makes it easier to handle a finished print without getting fingerprints on the image area.

[jeroldharter]

I assume you have never tried making 100 copies of the same print. I am guessing that you use some sort of markers/constraints to position test strips in relation to the prints but an easel makes life much easier.

I assume that you have not exposed a number of copies of prints with complex dodge/burn sequences, put each in a paper safe, and then batch process the paper. Plopping a bunch of wet paper in a papersafe would not work well.

If you have a white baseboard, you could get some fogging from light transmitted through the paper, reflected off the baseboard, and then hitting the emulsion from the back side. The effects could be subtle and variable depending on the negative.

On a more obscure note, some prints can take awhile to expose. If you use masks and have to change out the negative, your wet paper could dry and the corners lift or move and ruin the print.

On the one hand, you found a clever way to get work done with minimalist gear. But I would definitely buy an easel if possible. I doubt a single sized, borderless easel would be a huge step up from your current methods. But a good Saunders 4 blade easel would be a great improvement.