Dry mounting & best back board for flat prints

Hi, I currently live in a humid part of the UK where hinge mounting prints generally produces wrinkly/wavy results (they look great for about 4 to 5 days then the wrinkles appear).

To combat this I intent to invest in a dry mounting press to mount Fujicolour Crystal Archive paper. I would appreciate your advice on what is the flattest /smoothest type of back board to dry mount onto (I have heard that unless you mount onto an extremely flat surface, the surface of the crystal archive paper can take on an ‘orange peel’ effect).

Many thanks in advance

The cheap way-

pH neutral foam core board

orange peel

Mike Wilde said:

pH neutral foam core board

Click to expand...

***(I have heard that unless you mount onto an extremely flat surface, the surface of the crystal archive paper can take on an ‘orange peel’ effect).***

I believe the orange peel effect relates more to drymount press temperature.

Hi, thanks for your replies - I really appreciate your advice as I'm pretty new to all this.

You are probably right about the wrong temperature creating the orange peel effect. Is foam core board the flattest/smoothest available material on market (apart from expensive sheets of aluminium which I have read about).

Many thanks.

Mayhaps someone here has done it, but I've never tried mounting on foamcore except non-photo applications with cold adhesive processes. I'm inclined to wonder if foamcore can reliably stand the heat and pressure of a drymount process. It's generally quite flat, but once some vague stress limits are passed can sustain considerable damage. I once made a mess out of some trying to hasten the drying of water-based glue in a barely 200º F oven.

DaveT

I drymout fibre murals to dybond

Aluminum substrate, super flat, basically blows rag, foam mounts out of the water for flatness.

very expensive material though
Keep the humidity up for all mounting applications

Drytac makes an aggressive acid free adhesive for hot mounting fibre prints.

Hi Few1,
Welcome to Apug!
I suggest you try and get some samples from different companies and try them.
Some names: Gatorfoam, Coda, and others like them. Try some cold pressure sensitive sheets too, in my experience, the "orange peel" affect is not a problem with these, unless you are printing onto super-smooth polyester "paper." The affect is more related to the type of adhesive used. Most all surfaces will be flat/smooth enough for FCA. Try some luster, or pearl paper too.
Good luck,
DT

Thankyou for all your helpfull replies - I'm going to investigate what materials I can get my hands on locally and then experiment from there. Being in the UK, standard foam core board shouldn't be too hard to get hold of, but sourcing other materials may be a bit more difficult.

Thanks again.

Silverprint have a decent stock of dry mount product. You can find them at:

http://www.silverprint.co.uk/

Look under Finishing Supplies for dry mount material and obviously under Mounting for mount boards

Lee, many thanks for the link. Cheers

Local color lab mounts polypropylene ultra glossy prints on plexiglass with pressure sensitive adhesive.

I have read a bunch of stuff about mounting substrate surface tension and orange peel effect and I think it is all a load of krap. Once your eye is attuned to seeing it, it'll drive you nuts. I tried mounting photos on plexiglass with a couple different drymount tissue adhesives and they still had orange peel. So I think it's hype being pushed by the mounting tissue companies. I think it's in the adhesive....or worse yet, if it's an artifact of constraining the photo substrate, maybe dry mounting has an inherent 'look', better than soe things, worse than others..

One potential problem with foamcore is mounting on one side leaves the other side free to bow. There are procedures around for mounting plain paper on the opposite side to counter this, but the trouble you might as well use a (more rigid) board. For large things that aren't going to be framed, we use Gatorfoam because it doesn't bow, but on photos I don't hink it looks any better.

We've been mounting on matboard with Colormount as the most practical compromise and I don't like the appearance of anything other than the pressure-sensitive adhesive. So I personally stay away from the mouting so I don't get bent out of shape over it, the employees handle it, customers don't complain, but I swear I see orange peel when I look (no, it's not my glasses).

Maybe it really is the attunement thing - we have a designer who will not use TruView Conservation Clear glass because she can see the UV filter coating (I can see it in the right light if I look for it).

We have a huge expensive dry mount press that ain't broke, so my wife is't interested in switching to the 3M pressure mount stuff for equipment reasons. Not sure if it could replace our press in terms of capacity (44"x68"), and I imagine there is another class of challenges with pressure mounting (dust, debris).

Humidity comment from Bob C - some mounting materials advise pre-drying (in a press before repeating with the mounting materials), but I think that refers to the non-vacuum type press (looks more like a clothes press). The manual for our vacuum press says pre-drying needn't be done and doesn't mention humidity.