John Kasaian
17-Aug-2007, 23:52
In the middle of trying to get free of duplicate stuff that is cluttering up my life I fell off the wagon and picked up another Seal press, a 150 Jumbo for $10 (plus $30 in shipping.) I already have a 200 Commercial but the prospect of something a little lighter and a little smaller seemed to cloud my judgement (along with the price) It hasn't arrived yet so I don't know what condition it will be in other than it needs a pad, but I can cut down good area of the old pad I replaced on the 200 (the old pad is in my canibal box) I wouldn't be surprised if it needed a blast of easy off or bon ami to clean the platen since it is coming from a high school photography lab thats gone digi, but that will be easier to clean than the 200 was (which apparently did t-shirt transfer duty and the platen looks like a lunar landscape!) Anyway I was wondering if anyone else here uses a 150 Jumbo and if they found the 18-1/2" platen too limiting? I'm guessing that mounting a 16x20 enlargement on a 20x 24 mat would be a piece of cake for this machine as would my 5x7, 8x10 and 12x20 contacts. Is the 150 Jumbo a good deal (if in good condition?) Should I have 'gotten more serious' and sprung for a new press? They seem prohibitively expensive, but no one around here is doing dry mounting anymore----its all on foam core these days. Thats not a bad thing but I like to flatten my fiber prints in a press anyway and now this is something I can't "farm out" any more (which is what led to the purchase of the Seal 200 in the first place.) Should I ever have the very rare need to mount a 20" wide print I suppose I'll have to keep the 200 Commercial around, but could I do just as well with the smaller 150 press for everything else? What do you think?