Easels

Hi folks,

I'm going to be getting a new 11x14 inch easel soon and was wondering if any of you had any thoughts on "bordered" easels vs. "borderless" easels. I would like to get a borderless one but thopught I would grab some thoughts from the community at large first.

Thanks in advance.

Chuck

What have you printed with in the past? My preference is a four bladed easel. I don't really care for borderless unless there is agood reason for it. I use a small borderless for postcards.

I have both, and I rarely use the borderless version.

g'day Chuck
i use a home made job
square piece of 6mm mdf, quad moulding on 2 corners
for white borders print through black card with a cutout
yeh i know it shouldn't work, re what holds paper flat, but really most papers sit flat, and dof will cover any slight lift
cost me a couple of bucks and i have two, an a4 and a 12x16

Chuck, I myself use two home made easels.

18mm MDF with moulding on two sides, 12x16" & 8x10" with all paper sizes outlined in a black pen.

Very accurate and fast if using RC paper as RC paper mainly sits very flat. Sometimes (rarely) I have a bend I have to reverse bend out.

The very best easel I've used was a home made vacuum one which held paper absolutely flat.

My experience in commercial darkrooms, is that for 12x16" and above sizes, four bladed easels make border accuracy very easy, once set up, if you wish to make borders that is.

Currently in my own city, there are some rather cheap brand new four bladed 12x16" easels I'm thinking of.

One consideration is your baseboard size. Once you get a largish easel, your enlarger baseboard can be a limiting factor, especially if you do a vertical print that is a section of a negative.

Mick.

I like the convenience (but not the price) of a Speed-Ez-El for the few sizes I print. For a borderless easel one can use magnetic strips on sheet iron.

I have a slim-track 11x14. It's great. I don't think that making borderless prints is a good idea. With RC paper, for example, the front and the back are protected from chemical penetration, but the edges aren't. That's also why you should keep wet-time to an absolute minimum with RC papers. Otherwise, you risk edge de-lamination. Printing with a border keeps these problems from the image area.