Home Made 16 x 20 Easel

[Kilgallb]

Has anyone ever made a 16 x 20 easel. I thought of mounting a steel plate on a piece of MDF and using metal bars with magnets to hold the paper down.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[jeroldharter]

I haven't made my own, but that would work. You might consider a couple of things:

Perhaps the white surface of a magnetic dry erase board could be used because it is very flat, magnetic, and easy to do a preliminary focus with a blank paper in the easel. You could use a semi-permanent dry erase marker to mark the edges of paper corners for various sizes and superglue a straight edge to the top of the surface to make alighnment consistent and repeatable.

In the end, you are probably better off in terms of quality and money buying a fabricated single size used easel from Ebay.

 

[Reinhold]

Do you want a border? Or must it be borderless?
Only for 16x20 all the time? Or multi-format?
Need a dependable "workhorse", or is occasional use ok?
Absolutly repeatable image size, or is "close enuff" ok?
Fiddle-free?

I've got so many easels I quit counting, some purchased, some home made. Each one suits a particular job; there is no such thing as a "perfect" easel. (Kind of like tripods... you can never have too many).

For borderless prints of any format or size, consider a piece of melamine coated MDF (at your local Home Depot) and a spritz of 3M Spray Mount Artist's Adhesive. It's made for re-positionable graphic layout composition jobs, temporary paste-ups', etc.. Like Jerold says, fix a reference edge along the top and one side using double sided tape. Most borderless easels are not fiddle-free.

For borders, it's hard to beat the Speed-Ez-El, a one trick pony that's a favorite in high production situations. 1/4 inch borders, metal, no-fog yellow color, fast, fiddle-free, & bulletproof. Get one for each paper size. I don't know if they're still being made. Saunders also made a nice border type easel in various sizes.

Have fun.

Reinhold

www.classicBWphoto.com

 

[Jim Jones]

IPerhaps the white surface of a magnetic dry erase board could be used . . .

The white surface can reflect a small amount of light back through the paper base to the emulsion. A nonactinic color is safer.

 

[fschifano]

Has anyone ever made a 16 x 20 easel. I thought of mounting a steel plate on a piece of MDF and using metal bars with magnets to hold the paper down.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

That sounds like a great idea to me. Attaching some sort of straight edge to one side would make it darned near perfect if you are not planning to use it in a high volume environment. You can spray paint the steel plate orange, flat (not glossy) yellow, or red and eliminate the worry of any light bouncing back too. You've given me some ideas. Thanks.

 

[Jerry Thirsty]

The thing that worried me about magnet strips is how do you make sure they are all square and straight?

I made mine out of 1/2" MDF and then cut some long piano hinges to length and screwed one side of each to the top. Flip the free half of each hinge up, stick the sheet of paper in, flip the hinges back down onto the paper and you're good to go. Of course you're stuck with one set of margins unless you make a mask to go on top of the photo paper.

 

[Kilgallb]

Thanks for the suggestions!!


I finally managed to nab a few used 16 x 20 trays and some ILFORD paper, so I really have to get at it now. I will post to this thread to let you know how it went.

 

[dancqu]

Has anyone ever made a 16 x 20 easel.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Search this site for, sticky easel . The 3M ReMount
I mentioned in the last post is 3M 6091. Both methods
will hold paper FLAT. Top with window to border. Dan

 

[wildbill]

I've made a couple and posted pics here earlier. I used mounting tape for a spacer and 1/2" aluminum flat stock stuck to 9 ply birch plywood. Search my posts.
vinny