What Happened to Dry Mounting Prints?

[Paul Ron]

materials in general have gotten very expensive but framing prices hit the roof. i make my own frames these days. plastic also got expensive, i went back to using single weight glass.

[Jim Jones]

A mystery. Wonder if some of your Colormount itself had deteriorated due to being stored too long under hot conditions before you bought it? The old version was on glassine tissue, I believe.

I lived in a hundred-year-old farmhouse in Missouri without air conditioning until recently. Humidity could also be a problem. Two small Edward Weston photographs printed by Cole Weston and bought at the same time remain in perfect condition. The larger Cole Weston was probably not printed and mounted by Cole.

[Sal Santamaura]

Given how much we don't know about the fiber base gelatin silver papers available to print on today, such as how well their base* will hold up, how long the optical brightening agents (in the base and/or emulsion) will last, etc., worrying about mount board's potential effect seems a waste of effort.



* Note that I wrote "base," i.e. singular. All black and white fiber base paper on the market now is coated upon the same Schoeller base:

https://www.photrio.com/forum/thread...2#post-1426034

[Willie]

https://www.designsinkart.com/librar...ting200410.htm

https://www.framedestination.com/fra...s-paschke.html

https://www.designsinkart.com/


The links above will give you more information than you probably want. Chris Paschke is excellent on dry mounting and one to check out. She is up to date with standards and methods. An accepted authority whose writing is worth checking out.

[Tin Can]

Great links

Read some and will study further

Thank you

[gnd2]

I recently made the leap to fiber prints. I've researched and tried various methods for dealing with the curling that didn't involve investing in a dry mount press but wasn't satisfied with anything I've tried. So I finally gave in and found a 210M locally through Craig's List.

I've adopted a method similar to that mentioned in the second post of this thread - dry mount to a 2-ply board the same size as the print, then hinge-mount that to a backing board and window mat. I'm thrilled with the results, nice and flat, no ripples or waves.

What I've gathered from B&H is that colormount is no longer produced and has been replaced by RagMount (archival and permanent) which is what I purchased. The few attempts I've made so far have been perfect, very easy.

[Bernice Loui]

Thanks Drew for the reply. Getting to the roll core of what remains of Seal Colormount and need more. Wanted some feed back and real world experience of what current dry mount tissue is ok and proven to work.

Firm believe problem with dry mounted prints are due to poor quality materials used coupled with technique and tools. It does take some print wrecking early on to learn how to do dry mounting properly. Once these skills have been learned, using the best materials available with the proper tools in good condition, long term stability of dry mounted prints should not be an issue.


Bernice

DK was just a marketing company which took over Colormount etc from Bienfang, but subcontracted it to Chinese mfg, which caused me some trepidation at first, though it turned out to be the same product in terms of performance. Drytac, on the other hand, makes a giant selection of mounting supplies plus machinery targeted at numerous trades - outdoor advertising, signage, large-scale laminations and art presentation, plus good ole humble drymounting applications. B&H has switched to them, and apparently the rest of major suppliers; so there must be a reason. Nothing new aobut what Michael Smith once posted. For a long time alkaline-buffering has just been a way to market substandard board as "archival". You really need to understand what you're getting and why. I like Rising Museum Board for it's high quality. It's processed in water that comes through limestone, so is naturally buffered a bit. But alkalinity can be a detriment to certain media, such as albumen, dye transfer (which is based on acid mordants) and certain other kinds of prints, as well as artworks on wool and silk. I have albumen prints well over a hundred years old beautiful preserved, glued to distinctly acidic cardboard stock all along. You simply can't take a blanket term like "archival" and make the same shoe fit everything. That's more marketing nonsense than anything else. Most of us, including myself, mostly drymount for sake of silver gelatin prints, where the protocol is well understood.

[Drew Wiley]

I'll order a quantity of 16X20 Trimount next, but will not have opportunity to test it for awhile. Damp weather is not a good time for drymounting because predrying sheets of paper and esp ragboard under such conditions runs up the utility bill wattage unnecessarily, and is frustrating overall. This is good weather for b&w printing instead, and rainy day walks. I still have a 20 inch roll of Colormount, but would prefer to reserve that for 20x24 prints.

[Bernice Loui]

What most do not consider before dry mounting is to dry both print AND board before mounting. The stuff holds moisture. Once dry mounted, that moisture could be a problem. Common for folks doing dry mount to put the print in the press for about a minute or so to flatten and dry, putting the board to be use in to press to dry is often not done.


Bernice

[Drew Wiley]

Ragboard is just like a sponge for atmospheric humidity. If I were to do it today, even my standardized 22x26 boards (for 16x20 prints) would shrink about an eighth inch each dimension with a just minute of preheating (I do them about 30 seconds each side). Of course, I don't store bulk museum board unwrapped like that in a damp area; but for use, it sure doesn't take long for them to wick up ambient humidity. If I just wanted to do a print or two for sale, no problem keeping things dry in that kind of brief work cycle; but not for what I really need to do, which is to mount another hundred prints. But a side benefit is that a big press makes one darn good workspace heater, and the next utility bill will prove it!