RRB Beard Easel - prints not straight

I bought an expensive RRB Beard easel thinking it would be better than my cheap LPL one, but i find that often the prints arent held properly and come out with uneven borders. It seems to happen with 10 x 8 paper but 5 x 7 is fine. this is expensive and irritating. What's the best easel to buy?

Thanks

Ritchie

some papers have a natural curl. Bending the paper carefully against the curl will help flatten it little before placing it in the easel. If you don't do that, the edge will sometimes escape the little overhang on the guides.
I occasionaly have this happen on mine. I don't think its a fault of the easel but more a case of not being careful enough when putting the paper in the easel.

thomsonrc said:

I bought an expensive RRB Beard easel thinking it would be better than my cheap LPL one, but i find that often the prints arent held properly and come out with uneven borders. It seems to happen with 10 x 8 paper but 5 x 7 is fine. this is expensive and irritating. What's the best easel to buy?

Click to expand...

The 2-bladed RRB easels are very good easels. They are among the best. Other than going with a fixed printing frame you won't get one any better. RRBs have very positive paper holding (at the expense of some top and left border adjustability). Are you inserting the paper by pushing it against the top-left corner? Are your blades orthogonal (squared)? Its not uncommon, especially among those purchased from the used market, to have call to adjust them. How are you adjusting the blades? After set-up to paper size you might want to to fix them with a bit of masking tape. If you can't get an RRB masking frame to work then you won't get any adjustable masking frame to work. Most of the 4-blade (with the exception of the old Leitz/Leica) have less reliable paper handling (using either less positive slots or, worse still, often using pins) in exchange for print centering on the frame (the Leica positions the paper like a 2-blade). If you are looking for or demanding absolute border perfection to fractional millimeters you won't find it with an adjustable masking frame or easel but will need to go with a fixed frame. Personally I don't think its necessary in small prints and in larger ones probably want to present using beveled overmats (which too won't likely have fractional millimeter precision). With small prints (sub 5x7") I've tended to go to the other extreme and skip masking but print instead full-frame on a vacuum easel to get "black" image edges.

I have a 4 blade Beard easel and the important thing is not to touch the paper when you close the frame. Open the frame place your paper against the stop blades and close the frame again. make your print - if the borders are uneven it is because you have set the blades wrong. Use the back of an old print to draw the size you want - place this in the easel and then move the blades to match your outline.
Good luck
TEX

I use strip magnets to hold the paper in place whilst I close the easel.

edz said:

If you are looking for or demanding absolute border
perfection to fractional millimeters you won't find it
with an adjustable masking frame or easel but will
need to go with a fixed frame.

Click to expand...

And that single size easel is no guarantee. Paper
sizes also vary some little. Also if cut to size more
error can be introduced. Work to stops and hope
the paper is truly square. Saunder's single size
drop frame easels may help. Dan

I had trouble with my RRB as well. I had to learn how to load the paper and now have no trouble at all.

Run your finger along the two guides that position the paper to ensure that the paper is held under them properly, then make sure that you use the top left corner of the paper to push it into the corect position. Don't touch the paper again and close the frame.

It works for me very time so I hope it can help you a little, before I adopted this routine I often had crooked prints too.

Check your easel measurement markings by printing an 8x10 piece of paper from a laser printer with guide markings where you'd like your image, say 7x9, for instance. Set it in your easel properly and bring your blades to match the guides. Voila!

Check your easel markings once you've done this and you'll sometimes see that they are "off" by as much as 1/8".

I have several of these templates for various sizes of paper and various image areas I have standardized on and they save a lot of time.

Hope this helps...

Hi and thanks for all the suggestions, I'm trying them out.

Cheers

Ritchie