Advice needed on old dry mounting press

I've bought an old (very antique) dry mounting press, that I'd like to use to flatten my FB papers.

The heat seems to work, but the fabric is damaged. Also when I removed the fabrics there was two sheets (some kind of paper?) behind the fabrics. These sheets were also demaged.

Does anyone know what kind of fabric and sheet that I should use to restore the press?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Benny

This isn’t any help as far as your question is concerned, but it sounds to me like you have a print drier rather than a dry mount press. I have never seen a dry mount press with any fabric anywhere. You did say it was old however, so, who knows.

Jerome

Benny said:

I've bought an old (very antique) dry mounting press, that I'd like to use to flatten my FB papers.

The heat seems to work, but the fabric is damaged. Also when I removed the fabrics there was two sheets (some kind of paper?) behind the fabrics. These sheets were also demaged.

Does anyone know what kind of fabric and sheet that I should use to restore the press?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Benny

Click to expand...

That is in fact a very old Dry Mount Press. Mine is a much newer Seal 360M. On the bottom plate of mine there is a fairly dense black rubber mat about 1” thick with a yellow scrim material on the top of it. This pad allows the top to put pressure on the mount material while allowing some give.

In use, I place two sheets of 4 ply mat board in the press and insert the mount and print between them. I don’t see any reason the pad would need to be anything special as long as it doesn’t melt with the heat of the press and provides a bit of cushion but not too soft. If all you want to do is flatten fiber prints, I would try three or four layers of mat board on the bottom and one layer on top.

Try it with a trash print until you figure it out.

Jerome
PS; I guess I should explain that Benny e-mailed me the attached photo

Thanks a lot, I'll try to use mat boards as suggested.
/Benny