Keeping borders square when trimming photos

[Tin Can]

Dahle has very good automatic finger saver

the same saver is very soft on film

I always count my fingers after work

so far so good

Expensive ones are also sometimes used for single sheets of even shim stock. There is a selection. Smaller "Pro" Dahle cutters are indeed superior to rotary cutters for sizing down film. But doing so in the dark, you might need an accessory clipboard for recording your inventory of leftover fingers each time. I improvised a very serious additional finger stop to mine. Reminds me of working with router tables : first finger-proof the device, and even then, never use em if you're already tired and groggy, and not fully alert.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, you and I are both old veterans, and have seen accidents. Once I retired, the shop crew breathed a sigh of relief, because I was one of those giving them hell if I detected any safety lapse. And sure enough, the month later a new hire cut three of his fingers off, and they couldn't be reattached because they'd gotten sucked up into an industrial extraction system and giant mountain of sawdust. They dug through all that, but without success.

[Tin Can]

I was on Fire/Medical not Hazmat as I refused, barrels unmarked...

Lots of blood, many injure themselves for time off and a payoff

Some coworkers freeze up

[Michael R]

Well, you and I are both old veterans, and have seen accidents. Once I retired, the shop crew breathed a sigh of relief, because I was one of those giving them hell if I detected any safety lapse. And sure enough, the month later a new hire cut three of his fingers off, and they couldn't be reattached because they'd gotten sucked up into an industrial extraction system and giant mountain of sawdust. They dug through all that, but without success.

I have a Rotatrim for print trimming and itÂ’s fine, but back when I attended workshops with heavy hitters like John Sexton etc. they were using guillotine cutters.

[Drew Wiley]

What makes you think "heavy hitters" potentially trim things better? Some of the worst mat windows I've ever seen were in a major AA retrospective (not his doing; but you'd think the museum crew or framing service they enlisted would have done things top notch). There's a big 20X24 "Moonrise right in front of you, maybe worth 600K today, with amateurish skewed window corners that would get any real frame shop assistant quickly fired.

EW is said to have trimmed his prints with a pair of scissors. Probably couldn't afford anything better. He was also described as showing his new prints to small gatherings in his home under a bare lightbulb. True or not, it doesn't surprise me. Some of his contact prints I've seen sure didn't look properly squared.

[Michael R]

The people I’m referring to are meticulous about everything including their print finishing. Everything is done in-house and is as good as it gets. I’m simply pointing out superb work can be done with guillotine cutters, which I think you already alluded to.

What makes you think "heavy hitters" potentially trim things better? Some of the worst mat windows I've ever seen were in a major AA retrospective (not his doing; but you'd think the museum crew or framing service they enlisted would have done things top notch). There's a big 20X24 "Moonrise right in front of you, maybe worth 600K today, with amateurish skewed window corners that would get any real frame shop assistant quickly fired.

EW is said to have trimmed his prints with a pair of scissors. Probably couldn't afford anything better. He was also described as showing his new prints to small gatherings in his home under a bare lightbulb. True or not, it doesn't surprise me. Some of his contact prints I've seen sure didn't look properly squared.

[Drew Wiley]

"Meticulous" is not patented, Michael. Some of us call that routine, standard practice. But yes, I do agree that high-quality cutters like Dahle are every bit as good as high-quality linear ones like Rotatrim, though I don't think I'd want to be using a guillotine trimmer for big rolls of paper in the dark!

[Pieter]

What makes you think "heavy hitters" potentially trim things better? Some of the worst mat windows I've ever seen were in a major AA retrospective (not his doing; but you'd think the museum crew or framing service they enlisted would have done things top notch). There's a big 20X24 "Moonrise right in front of you, maybe worth 600K today, with amateurish skewed window corners that would get any real frame shop assistant quickly fired.

EW is said to have trimmed his prints with a pair of scissors. Probably couldn't afford anything better. He was also described as showing his new prints to small gatherings in his home under a bare lightbulb. True or not, it doesn't surprise me. Some of his contact prints I've seen sure didn't look properly squared.

The best-looking EW prints I have seen were those printed by Brett.

[Drew Wiley]

I had the impression Cole was tasked with most of the later printing. I can see why Brett wouldn't be terribly happy doing it because he had such an individualistic style of his own. And as for Cole, he had a bent toward color photography, and was actually one of the better Cibachrome printers in that area. I believe someone else was contracted to do his dye transfer prints and some big chromogenics. But Merg Ross would know the facts. I actually gravitate more towards EW early work rather than his later style, though even that had quite a bit of influence on me. It's really Brett, however, that stood almost in a league of his own as a printmaker. I could pick out even a small print of his clear across a big gallery room from all the others. Just something about them. His mats were professionally cut, with often a tiny secondary cutout window mat in the lower margin of the overmat for his signature. That's fairly easy to do today using expensive computer controlled mat cutting machines, but was quite a skill when only manual linear ones were available.

I got pretty good at double windows with 2-ply museum board, but avoided it on 4-ply. Just basic precise window cutting is fussy enough, especially if one has to do a large quantity in a day. Big window cutouts were re-squared and sized for use with smaller prints. I've got quite a backlog of drymounting to do this fall, but don't over-mat (window mat) any of them unless they're going to be imminently framed.

[Tin Can]

I just buy precut matt openings, a stack of 8X10 from old stock Light Impressions still sealed

and as I NOW often use RC, no mounting, no glass

I am simple Tinker