I've never experienced this before but recently when mounting some prints some of them after cooling ,under weight of course, exhibited large area's in the central portion that ..bubble up!!... It almost looks like trapped gas or something. Has anyone seen this? I've tried reheating but the mount tiussue underneath will no longer stick again. Is my press too hot? Tissue too old?
I just disected one of these and it seems that the tissue is activating fine at the edges of the print, about 2 inches in, but isn't sticking in the middle. The odd thing is that it is stuck to the mount board like it is supposed to but refuses to stick to the print in a large central area. This has happened with but Kodak and Seal tissue, Ilford paper and forte paper, same press that I have always used, the olny thing i can imagine is that my dry mount tissue is old.....I'm talking maybe 5-8 yrs.
I ran into similar problems a few years ago and posted a question at this forum which reaped many good suggestions. The best (from Michael A Smith) was to reduce the temperature of the mounting press. It worked and I have not a problem since then. Lots of luck !
Are you using a tacking iron to initially adhere the dry mount tissue to the print?
You might also check the evenness of the pressure applied across the entire area of the plate. An easy thing to try is to slip a few pieces of cardboard under the foam mat in the center of the area, so that there is slightly more pressure on the center than on the edges.
You also need to pre-dry the board in the press before mounting, since trapped moisture can also cause this.
Temperature is also important. An easy way to monitor that is with a cooking thermometer.
I've had this problem a few times in the past, and indeed the solution every time was to lower the temp on the press. Too hot and you just run into problems.
Thanks for all the advice, I did some carefull testing and found the temp was actually too low and my time was too short!
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