Floating advice

[dan_kitty]

Hi guys, haven’t been on here for a while, hope all is good!

I have had some returns from a job of float mounts. Basically, the art has buckled (risen at the edges between hinges) Before I rehinge them I thought it could be good to get any advice on my technique as obviously it has failed.

So the artwork is A1 on thickish watercolour paper, I used the method of a window cut behind, with pendant hinges going through onto the drop out (is this called the hedgehog method?) Obviously my pendant hinges were not long enough, will just lengthening them sort my woes? or perhaps I used too many? I used 4 on the longer sides and three on the shorter, with one tight on the top corner.

On another note, the customer is a young student artist and seemed confused why the artwork was not completely stuck down…we’ve tried to explain the reasons of reversibility etc but she seems concerned that it should be stuck “that’s how I’ve had them done before, why would anyone want to open up the frame?”…
I don’t want to go down that road as they are for an exhibition/quite valuable. If she really does insist on this in the end would spray mount be fine?, we don’t have dry mounting equipment

Thank kindly in advance

[prospero]

First of all, DON'T use spraymount. It is not reliable and will fail in localised places and then you'll have a bumpy
painting which is nigh-on impossible to fix.

If the artist wants them drymounting, by all means do so but without a press its academic anyway.

Float mounting is a bit of a fad and doesn't contain the work in the same way as a proper window mount. Paper is
funny stuff and with the best will in the world it's likely to go wavy when floated. No matter what precautions you
take when hinging. You can make the waves less noticeable by raising the paper so the edges are away from the backer,
but other than that you're stuck with it.

[Not your average framer]

I note that this painting is on thickish water colour paper and experience has shown me that the force exerted by thicker paper when it cockles is likely to be greater that it would generable be, if the paper was thinner. Cockling of paper is quite often something which can be almost impossible to control, without rendering the artwork to be in it's original condition and this means that any intentions of retaining the artwork in a reversible condition have just gone out window. Considering that the artwork is on an A4 sized piece of paper, there is plenty of potential for such a large piece of paper to make any cockling effects with such a large piece of paper, particularly noticable to almost anyone at all.

There may be quite some difficulty involved in controlling and reducing the effects of this degree of cockling and there may be a lot of trial and error to determine the best course of action, to solve this problem. It would not surprise me to hear that you may have been expecting someone to tell you the easy way to fix this in a jiffy, well sorry but life often does not work like that, even for framers with years of experience. Your customers reaction, to this problem is not very reasonable, or sensible either, even though it is not difficult to understand and there are not very many options to quickly fix this problem in a proper and professional manner.

I personally would not want to dry mount this artwork, as it is not a remotely professional solution. Is there any evidence, that the cockling of the artwork is distorting the mountboard behind it? If so, then you might consider using a thicker mountboard and adding further reinforcement, behind the backing board. Please be aware that even thicker mount board is limited in it's ability to resist a cockling artwork and that any reinforcement behind the mount board, needs to be made of something with a lot more structural strength to be effective. I'm only guessing, but I would not rule out attaching a piece of 12mm plywood very securely to the back of the mount board.

We are of course assuming that it may be feasible to float mount this artwork, but what do you do if it is not?

[prospero]

One thing I should mention and something that artists don't generally bother about....

Watercolour paper really should be prepared prior to working on by soaking it and taping it down to a heavy board with
water-activated gummed tape. A it dries (can take 24hrs+) it will try to shrink, but the tape restrains it evenly.
In this form it will take watercolour washes and not cockle. It also means the that when framed it has less of a tendency
to go wavy as it's already stretched to the utmost. And A1 sheet will grow by about 1/2" when saturated.
I'll stress that this has to be done before the painting is executed.

But artists generally don't want to bother with all that. Grab a sheet of paper and dive straight in.
Then take it to a framer and expect magic.

I read a very wise adage in a framing book once: "Time will not honour that in which it has not taken place".

[Not your average framer]

I have also heard and read the same things as Prosperro has just said from more than one source and I don't think that various different and well respected people would be saying that if there was not something to it. it is not beyond the bounds of possibility for people who are expert enough to moisten the reverse side of the artwork and let the artwork stretch as it dries, but it's not a risk worth taking for most framers and I would not be suggesting it at all. Why make somebody elses problem, your problem and potentially your responsibility. I think, leave that well alone!

I still have customers, who always stretch the paper, before painting on it and these customers paintings always seem to stay flat. One of them always leaves a bit of brown gummed paper tape still on the edge of the paper. He just cuts through the gummed paper tape to release the painting from the plywood that it was stuck down to and leaves it like that. I also can not call to mind any occasion when older watercolours have ever shown any signs of cockling either.

[prospero]

I would like to point out that the above procedure should never be done on a finished painting.

If artists don't know the 'craft' of their art then they must put up with the consequences of skipping the boring bits.

As framers, we take what is provided and mount/frame it to the best of our abilities.

Most of us will learn a few tricks but we aren't magicians.

[dan_kitty]

Thanks for taking the time for your advice guys

all really helps, and basically confirms my thinking as well, im not going to even attempt a dry mounting soloution and advise she water stretches paper stock prior in the future.

Also i now know to stress various things of this nature to future customers before taking on the work

Thanks again!