Drymounting or selfadhesive board

[Nicole]

Great advicw evveryone and I love reading all the asides and extra info around the subject. I decided to go down the drymount path purely for the size of this photograph. However I have bought some self adhesive board and will use this next time.

[prospero]

When it comes to bumps in paper caused by expansion the problem is that the area of the bump is greater than
the area that it has to be pushed back into. Theses bumps don't contract when the paper dries because the fibres
have been stretched. If you try to flatten them you get a sharp crease. You would have to humidify the whole board
and let it relax on a flat surface. Of course if the rest of the print is stuck down this is impossible.

If you apply pressure with a hand roller then the pressure will be uneven. There will be weak spots and that's where the bumps
will erupt. Of course many folks will say that they've done this and not had any issues. All I can say is: You've been damn lucky.

[Not your average framer]

Modern prints on thin coated paper are a particularly difficult paper to remove wrinkes and bubbles from. I'm not aware of the technical reasons for this, the thicker better quality papers are certainly a bit more forgiving. I have my suspiciions that this sort of paper tends to expand more when it cockles, or bubbles.

I'm not sure why this is, but I do get a reasonable number of customers coming to me, who have heard that I know how to fix problems like this. I'm not bad at fixing some things, usually when it comes to sorting out simple cosmetic type stuff. A common thing is rolled prints, or paintings on paper that were bought on holiday and got squashed into a suitcase for the flight home. Usually it's no big deal and as long as it looks presentable customers are happy.

Items printed on coated paper often show white lines were a crease has openned the surface of the paper and after flattening the crease a white line still remains. Quite often these lines can be desguised by fair means, or foul and then heat sealed with a matt film to hide differences of gloss, or mattness where the defect is hidden. It is a lot more difficult to get most things to stick to coated paper, due to considerably less absorbency in the paper.