How do you flatten your fiber papers?

S

Steve M.

Veteran
Local time
3:50 PM
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
3,378
One could spend the rest of their life reading threads about getting fiber papers flat, and none of them work for me at 11x14 sizes and up. Recently I tried a technique that is normally used for watercolour papers (see photo below), but the photographic papers have way too much curl, and either pop out of the gummed tape during the drying process or I end up with compound curves near the edges. I'd rather deal w/ a simple curl.

PGvADxE.jpg


When the prints dried wavy, I then tried setting them on the counter w/ a big sheet of plywood and lots of books on top for three days. That did nothing but prevent me from reading. How DO you get these things flat? A drymount press isn't going to happen, I just want to be able to glue the prints down to a thick wood panel using archival glue, and I doubt that will hold the way they curl.
 
I hate to say it but a drymount press is probably the best option. I used to press my prints for a minute or two and then window mount them to keep them flat. Or, I would use some mounting tissue on a piece of backing board. I have not made fiber prints in quite a while for this very reason. However, looking on eBay, old presses are around $200. Space might be an issue though.

The only alternative I can think of is weight and time. I have quite a few prints that I never pressed that have sat under the weight of all my other prints for the last decade and they are nice and flat now!
 
I have an huge old German print dryer, Büscher, from the 1950's. It is a big drum (70cm x 60cm) that is heated. It dries the print under a streched canvas. I put the wet print on a chromed metal plate with the picture up and remove the water with a microfiber cloth. Then I put the plate with the print in the Büscher and tension the canvas over it. The Büscher is supplied with power that passes through an external thermostat controller. This keeps the Büscher at exactly 40 degrees C. After exactly 30 minutes the print is dry and fairly flat, but not flat enough to my liking. That is why the print then goes for 1.5 minutes in a Seal Compress 110 stick press (drymount press) enveloped in some high quality drawing paper with a heat of 85 degrees C. After this the print is perfectly flat. The paper I use is Adox MCC 110. This procedure takes only 32 minutes.


Erik.
 
+1 for the dry mount press. Other methods get you close, but the press, and actually heat/dry mounting it to matte board, is the only way to 100% flatten that I've seen.
 
You could try a clothes iron.

Make a sandwich, from bottom to top, clean matt board, clean white paper, your dry print face down, another clean matt board.

Iron the top matt board until it is hot to the touch, then immediately place a heavy weight on the sandwich until it is totally cool.

The paper will still curl, but this process usually helps. Good luck.
 
Colin Corneau said:
+1 for the dry mount press. Other methods get you close, but the press, and actually heat/dry mounting it to matte board, is the only way to 100% flatten that I've seen.
Click to expand...

Yes, but before you can put the print in the drymount press, it must be dry, yes? You can hang the photos on a clothesline to dry, but how do you get them - curled - in the drymount press?

Before you can put them in a drymount press, they must be reasonable flat. A Büscher-type dryer is necessary, also to speed things up.

Erik.
 
Most FB papers will dry fairly flat if they are dried face down on fiberglass window screening (most art schools do this, 'cause it’s cheap) or if they are clipped to a line and lightly weighted on the bottom edge while drying.

In the U.S., those dryers are sometimes called “ferrotyping” dryers.
 
valdas said:
I don’t know how this thing is called in English, it’s basically a dryer with two shiny metal plates. You put a photo on the plate (with the help of special rubber roller), put on the dryer and in ten minutes the photo is dry. It will also put a gloss on the photo (if you roll to the plate the emulsion side). I have two of those - one can handle up to 30x40 cm and another is a bit smaller. I will attache the picture later. Those FSU things are now for free or a few EUR.
Click to expand...


Have you ever tried them?


Erik.
 
This is perhaps the worst thing about wet printing.

Humidity plays a big part in getting prints flat. Here in Vermont I cannot use the dry mount press in the winter as it is far too dry (20% humidity) for prints to come out without wrinkles at the edges. Summertime is equally problematic as it is far too humid (near 90%). AC is not possible in these old houses here other than a window unit or a complete gut and rebuild, and humidifying winter indoor air is nearly impossible. It gets so cold here that humidity is often extremely low for months at a time.

I dry on screens, face up, with a second screen atop the first. After they are "dry" I generally store them stacked with some weight (a book for 810, a sheet of plate glass with more books for larger) for a day or two. This helps, as do big borders on larger prints.

I can't begin to guess how many prints I've ruined by dry-mount press "flattening" in the winter - I had a big exhibit in NY about 15 years ago and had to reprint a LOT of negatives when wrinkles ruined the full bleed 20x24 prints. Finally had to send the prints to NY and let the framer there deal with the flattening as I was unable to control humidity well enough here at my studio or even at the local framers. Extremely frustrating.
 
Thank you very much. Since I'm moving soon, a drymount press isn't an option. So I'm going to try just blotting one off, hang it by a corner to dry, find the archival equivalent of contact cement, and glue one down on a wood panel as a trial. Then put a few hundred pounds of books and tools on top for a few days. Because of the weight of fiber paper, it's not just the curl, it's the way it wants to snap back into that curl that's the problem. There ARE glues and cements that will hold anything to anything, the hard part will be finding something non acidic that won't eat up the paper from the back over time.

This is worth a try: It will never come off w/ this stuff, but I need to call around and see if it's acid free.

https://www.amazon.com/00272-Origin...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CE511A7P4MPYH5D9Q56H
 
The paper I've had the biggest difficulty with is this Ilford FB Cool Tone, which is double weight. I'll also switch back to a single weight paper, which should help.
 
Similar to Bob's description I imagine, I made drying screens from four lengths of wood, some flyscreen and a staple gun. These lie horizontally in an old spare cupboard. I then lie washed prints face down to dry for 24-48 hours.

After this they are reasonably flat, certainly flat enough to put into my dry mount press - or you could just put them in a book, use some release paper to make a sandwich if worried about the book print marking them and put a weight on top.

I don't experience any wrinkling from the press but I only print up to 8x10" and I always put prints in a book for further flattening for a week or two following their 30 seconds in the press.

It's certainly a slightly frustrating step in the process but not as frustrating as the next step - mounting and framing! These are good frustrations to have though, for an amateur like myself at least.
 
I dry FB prints in 2-3 changes of blotters then a dry mount press. It is incredibly dry here in summer on the edge of the Australian desert, <10% RH, like where Bob is but for him the dry time is winter. A hot summer makes drying FB paper worse because the water evapourates FAST. In under 30 min I can have a bone dry, crinkly mess. So, I spray deionised water onto the blotter pages to dampen them first, dry them in a humidified room, then dry mount press them. A heated dryer like Erik uses before the dry mount press makes things worse here, not better.

Marty
 
Just like sepiareverb, I have found that humidity is the most important factor in how the prints dry. In winter with low humidity in NY, the prints dry hard and curly even though they dry face down on screens. They develop nasty edge folds when they are mounted with a dry mount press. In summer, with much higher humidity levels the prints feel moister (to me) and flatten easily under a book and mount perfectly with the dry mount press. I would print all summer, except that with the good weather I would rather be out shooting.
 
Erik van Straten said:
I have an huge old German print dryer, Büscher, from the 1950's. It is a big drum (70cm x 60cm) that is heated. It dries the print under a streched canvas. I put the wet print on a chromed metal plate with the picture up and remove the water with a microfiber cloth. Then I put the plate with the print in the Büscher and tension the canvas over it. The Büscher is supplied with power that passes through an external thermostat controller. This keeps the Büscher at exactly 40 degrees C. After exactly 30 minutes the print is dry and fairly flat, but not flat enough to my liking. That is why the print then goes for 1.5 minutes in a Seal Compress 110 stick press (drymount press) enveloped in some high quality drawing paper with a heat of 85 degrees C. After this the print is perfectly flat. The paper I use is Adox MCC 110. This procedure takes only 32 minutes.


Erik.
Click to expand...


I remember something like this from many years ago (i.e. When I was around nine years old). My recollection is that it was called a "ferrotyper" or "ferrotype press," with a chromed or polished stainless surface, and it was used to make glossy prints. The print was placed emulsion-side-down (facing the metal surface), held in place with the canvas in a frame stretched over it.


Are these still made?


- Murray
 
I use a Premier electric print dryer. The print is forced against a curved metal surface by a tightly stretched canvas. It holds two 11 x 14 prints at a time. It forces the print into a slight curve, which then strengthens it against developing a compound curve. The print is then easily flattened in the dry mount press without developing any wrinkles.

Edit: The emulsion side goes up--not against the hot metal.
 
After final wash, I squeegee, then air-dry fiber prints face-up between two screens (plastic) with about a 2mm gap between the screens. Takes about a day to fully dry. This only leaves a slight curl in the dried print. To flatten, I then wipe the back of the dried print with a damp sponge, then place it between 2 clean sheets of mat board and in a dry mount press for 35 sec at 200F. Prints come out perfectly flat.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom