Dry mounting photographs

In the old days I mounted my (conventional photographs) on heavy mat

board with a Seal dry mount press and they are still in good shape.

My problem today, after moving into the digital age is that my large

prints are outsourced to a company that I am assuming uses ink jet

printing on Kodak paper with a gloss finish and I want to mount them

for display. Do I use a cold mount adhesive, are will this type of

print withstand the heat of dry mounting without damaging the

surface of the print? I need some technical advice from someone with

details who is successfully doing this. Thanks for your help

Sam

I'd be interested in hearing this too.I have some prints printed with MIS Eboni on Photorag 308 that I would like to dry mount.Last time I dry mounted was with Kodak RC paper with a seal press at work, and a household iron at home.

It seems to me that the recent paper remains so flat that you might not need to mount them at all. Why not just hinge them to a mat and carry on from there matting however you like. The nice paper I've seen lately seems to hold a remarkable flatness over time, so why mount them?

I can't answer for your specific type of paper but I am reasonably sure my results will apply.

 

I routinely drymount a wide variety of inkjet papers from Red River, Moab and Epson ... both

matte and glossy ... to 4 and 8 ply mat board> I sue a relatively low heat setting ... 175

degrees if memory serves ... basically the setting required for Color Mount tissue and do use

the Color Mount tissue.

 

no problems

I agree with what Ted wrote above but I use 200 degrees F, for two minutes. I've mounted both color and B&W inkjets of various kinds, Fuji Pictro, regular C prints and RC B&W with Color Mount tissue and gotten perfect results everytime. I've detected no color shifts or other damage beyond what normally happens to older injet materials over time.

I've also successfully dry mounted color and b/w ink jet prints using low temperature dry mounting tissue designed for color prints. Afterwards, I apply a spray designed for the purpose. One of my prints is over 5 years old and still looks fine.

A report I read said that high quality papers, like those from commercial labs using the Fuji process, for example, should be fine to dry mount, but that cheaper papers may be susceptable to dry mount sheets leeching the ink/dye from the paper itself.

 

It is becoming more common place in museums and galleries to use an archival linen tape to secure prints to their mount along the top edge only, and letting the print "hang" from the tape (with the help of mat board compression).

Try PMA (positionable mounting adhesive) if you have any worries about heat and its effect on the image.

My problems are different than the above. I am using fiber base

papers and keeping them flat is a major problem. (I do not have

an electric print dryer here in the US).

 

I can successfully mount the prints with water-based starch, i.e.

home flour, which is the best archival glue, but the whole matt

bends due to swelling/shrinking. (RC papers are flat by this

method).

 

I used 3M "positioning mounting adhesive", roll 16x50ft, but this

is useless.

 

We are talking about 16x20 prints on a 27x32 matts. Dry

mounting tissue would be OK, but I am scared to purchase an

80 lbs press needed. I heard about the cold- press mount but

am not familiar with it.

 

On the other hand hate to pay a commercial framing shop 10$

just for gluing a single photo. Need to mount 80 of them.

A number of years ago I bought a dry mount press and have found it invaluable in by B/W

dark room. The double weight papers after drying on fiber glass screens are very curled and

about 30 seconds in the press make them manageable for storage or mounting. I talked to

another photographer recently who said that he does not dry mount on 4 ply board anymore

but dry mounts full frame, including the masked edge without trimming, on 2 ply board. This

way he can present a multi-print portfolio that is nice and flat with out final mounting. For

framing he then corner mounts on 4 ply mount board and overmats so the corner mounts

don't show.

I always dry mounted my traditional photographs because otherwise they wouldn't lie perfectly flat. But every ink jet paper I've used will lie flat without dry mounting (I use only matte papers, I'm assuming this is true of glossy papers as well but I don't know from experience). So with ink jet paper I use an "archival" (whatever that means) tape from Light Impressions across the top two corners of the paper to hold it onto the mat board and then put an overmat on top. Of course this won't work without the overmat to hide the tape. If you don't use an overmat then I think you can dry mount them just as you did your conventional photographs. When I first started with ink jet paper I dry mounted it before I realized I didn't need to do that and those prints look fine about five years later.

I have not mounted a print since 1992 and am now in the need to do so again. I would appreciate any info for a good reliable source for archival mat board, cutters etc.

Thanks for your help one and all!

Jim

In relation to curling of the mount when wet mounting- if you counter mount the back of the mat with pasted bond paper (under weight) the draw of the photo will be countered by the lining sheet on the back and negate any curl. The only thing to know is that the paper grain of the photo and the back lining sheet has to go in the same diection, and it is even better if the mat grain direction is also the same.

How do you know the grain direction? I'm glad you asked. If you take a sheet of paper, or board, and flex it as if you were going to fold it in half you will find that the paper or board bends easier in one direction than the other. The direction it is easiest is the grain direction.

I wouldn't use PMA for anything bigger than 11x14. I have had several prints bubble up after time mounted on acid free foam board and matt board alike. Also the crescent perfect mount product is a no no. I have had to redo several large scale photographs after using this product. They tend to bubble up on a regular basis after following their recomendations to a tee! I now use a cold roller system with double sided adheasive that works fine.