Heat pressing fibre prints on the cheap (using at-home available materials like clothes irons, preferably)

[f/Alex]

Hi, so, as the title says, I'm looking for a decent-ish solution to heat press fibre prints, I've seen folks on here talk of using things like T-Shirt presses, and I've worked in a darkroom that used an old laminator, but my most recent 'ghetto' heat press has been my laser printer, with a blank page in the queue, which works, about 50% of the time, and mostly doesn't leave printer ink on my paper! (I've also found out that I can directly print text and/or images onto my prints with the laser printer, but that's unrelated). Anyways, I also figured, maybe a clothing iron with an insulating layer between the print and the iron would work? I'm open to suggestions.

 

[koraks]

There's a long thread about this already: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/getting-fiber-based-paper-flat.44984/
The clothes iron approach is discussed in several posts: https://www.photrio.com/forum/search/2077191/?q=iron&t=post&c[thread]=44984&o=date
Overall, it works to an extent, but not as well as some other approaches. You typically end up with wavy edges on FB prints, but it may depend on the paper you use.

 

[f/Alex]

There's a long thread about this already: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/getting-fiber-based-paper-flat.44984/
The clothes iron approach is discussed in several posts: https://www.photrio.com/forum/search/2077191/?q=iron&t=post&c[thread]=44984&o=date
Overall, it works to an extent, but not as well as some other approaches. You typically end up with wavy edges on FB prints, but it may depend on the paper you use.

My bad for doubleposting, thanks for the link, I looked and all I found was something inactive since 2017, I figured I'd make a new post rather than necropost. my bad haha!

 

[koraks]

No worries! There's a lot of stuff on this forum; it's hard to find sometimes. Your thread adds a spin in the sense that it focuses on simple methods specifically. So maybe we'll leave it open at the cost of some redundancy.

 

[Bill Burk]

My go-to for mounting prints on mat board is “Yes” “Stik-Flat” glue.

This is tactile gooey paste that washes off easily with water.

I think it’s just rice starch, someone could correct me here.

In practice you mark out lightly the position boundary on the board and glop a tablespoon of it within the boundary and rub with your fingers until it covers the entire area evenly.

It doesn’t dry in the short time you are working and it doesn’t grab excessively when you begin positioning the print.

Wash and dry your hands regularly as it will find its way into the front of the print or outside the boundary if you are careless.

But this is a “no tool required” way of preparing a few prints for display. I think if I had to do more than ten prints this way I’d get tired of it.

But perfect for one-off flat mounting

 

[snusmumriken]

Overall, it works to an extent, but not as well as some other approaches. You typically end up with wavy edges on FB prints, but it may depend on the paper you use.

In the hope that this is a non-redundant comment, I’ve found that trimming margins before pressing eliminates wavy edges. I am using a big heavy photographic press, but I do believe this is a property of the paper rather than the press.

 

[Bill Burk]

I used to get wavy edges when heat drying fiber base prints on a cheap two-sided drum dryer. Screen drying and following up with cold pressing gets the paper back to what it was like in the package. A little bowed but mostly flat.

 

[MattKing]

Thread title updated and thread locked.
As @koraks mentioned, a more compendious thread can be found here: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/getting-fiber-based-paper-flat.44984/
But don't worry, it doesn't hurt to start threads like this, if your searches don't reveal what is actually buried in other threads.
We may move a couple of the posts above to that longer thread as well.