A Cockled Print

[strokebloke]

12 months ago my wife bought a large print of a landing staging looking out over Ullswater, by Mel Allen.
From Homebase of all places
Apparently, it was going cheap. (it wasn't difficult to see why)
It is 32'' x 24'' in a flimsy black flat thin frame with an MDF backboard. Close framed and not hinged to the backboard.
I think the reason it was going cheap was that the picture was wrinkled along the top and down the RH edge.
When she bought it I knew absolutely nothing about framing and suggested that the wrinkles may come out, if it was hung in the dining room in a warmer atmosphere than it it had probably been kept in at Homebase.
Twelve months down the line the (what I now know to be ) cockles are still there.
This morning I took it out of the frame. (it actually looks much better out of the frame )
The problem is not atmospheric - it is that the print is too large for the frame. The MDF has a 2mm gap.
The print is 2mm oversize.
The print is on gloss paper, I would imagine at least 200g/M thickness. I can easily trim it.

Q: If I lie it flat on my bench, in a domestic atmosphere, will the cockles come out of it?
If not, is there any way to encourage the cockles to disappear?

I'm confident someone will have the answer, so thanks in advance.

[Jonny2morsos]

Sounds like it needs dry mounting. Tawnycraft offer this service and if you have one of their latest price lists it is on the back page priced per m2 I believe.

[strokebloke]

Thank you John.
I'll speak to Clive or Karl next week.
Incidentally, what is Dry Mounting?

[Jonny2morsos]

Sticking something down that does not involve using a wet medium.

Tissue is placed between the artwork and the substrate and activated by means of heat or pressure.

If you look at the Hotpress website http://www.hotpress.co.uk/ there is lots of information on their product range and despite their name they do both hot and cold systems.

[prospero]

Once a piece of paper cockles, no way will it go back flat of it's own accord. Dry mounting is often the best option. You can press them flat again using a vacuum press - same process as dry-mounting, but no glue.
Sometimes if the surface has bumps rather than waves you can't even press it flat without risking a sharp halfmoon crease. The whole thing would have to be dampened first. Not a job for the faint-hearted. (Or the brave either. Unless you are an experienced restorer).

If the print is of no 'value' and is still available, it's often cheaper to by a new one. (but not from Homebase if possible. )

[strokebloke]

Thank you John.
What Steve Goodall does and what his Co offer has so far been something of a mystery to me.
Now I've had a look at his site and viewed and b'km'ked perhaps half-dozen pages I'm beginning to understand.
I'll see if I can get onto a training day at some point.

If the print is of no 'value' and is still available, it's often cheaper to by a new one. (but not from Homebase if possible.)

I don't think this print is of any significant value.
I'll research what it will cost to replace it.
Most of the visible cockling is confined to the very wide white border.
Paper size is 32'' x 24'' ~ image size is 25'' x 18''
Although now that it is on a flat surface, out of the frame, there is some slight waviness to the image too.

What I have considered (tell me if you think that this is a balmy suggestion) :-
is cutting off 95% of the white border.
Tee-hinge it onto mountboard. Put a setback foamboard rim behind the window mount to provide a 'relief'
Use the glass, but re-frame it in a decent section profile.
Would that be significantly more expensive than getting it dry-mounted? Given that I have everything in stock

[Jonny2morsos]

If it is this one:

lg7563[1].jpg (13.72 KiB) Viewed 7678 times

It is widely available online at around £20 but it would still probably need dry mounting as the paper tends to be fairly light weight and by the time they have been rolled up in a tube to small there will be some waves in it.

Yesterday I had an old customer in with a print he bought from allposters.co.uk and it was in such a small diameter tube it had creases in when we got it out. Crazy thing is I had the same print in one of my browsers nice and flat because that is the way it was delivered to me and I saw him looking through the browser last time he was in. So he has paid postage and for me to dry mount it

[Jonny2morsos]

I have reframed a few of these prints and from memory the image is not central in the paper it is printed on. So I would dry mount it cut a new window mount in some nice complimentary colour(s) with a border in proportion (bit extra at the bottom if thats your taste) and find a decent bit of moulding to put it in.

There you go that's the wifes next birthday present sorted!!

[strokebloke]

John, you're obviously psychic. That's the one
Either that or this print is hanging in virtually everyone's dining room.

You are right about it not being central. It has a narrow head band & the bottom band is 1/8'' wider than the sides. Odd !!

There you go that's the wifes next birthday present sorted!!

Brilliant. I hadn't thought of that

The irony is that Val is, at this moment, sitting in the dining room working on her laptop, facing a 3ft x 2ft frame with nothing in it except the uniform brown of the MDF & she hasn't noticed that the picture is no longer there. Perhaps I'll just leave it like that.

[prospero]

As well as dry-mounting there is wet-mounting.

Heat presses are expensive and you need a fair amount of work for them to justify buying one. But you can stick prints down using PVA glue. Basically you need two big sheets of strong board (3/4" chipboard or MDF is as good as anything). How big depends on how big is the stuff you want to mount. A 8ft sheet slashed in half is a s good as anything. All you need to buy in terms of 'equipment' is a 13mm thick foam blanket and a roll of Silicone release paper. One piece of silicone paper face up on one board. Then lay the mounting board face up on this and apply the PVA. A roller is good for this as you need and even coating and you need to work quite fast. Don't forget to wash the roller afterwards....
Then flop the print on the board, cover with another piece of silicone paper (shiny side down) and cover that with the foam blanket. put the other board on top and pile as much weight on it as you can. Empty the bookshelves, back the car on it - whatever. The foam blanket will even out the pressure and make a good bond. Leave it to dry. Several hours or overnight is fav.

It's a bit long winded compared with a heat press, but just as good for most jobs. And the boards do come in handy for other things. You have to be careful to avoid getting wet glue on the front of a print and it does take up a lot of space.

I do this mainly to mount canvases where you can't use a heat activated adhesive.

You can buy sticky boards for cold-mounting. Peel off the top paper to reveal a sticky surface - smooth down the print and go over it with a roller. I wouldn't recommend this method for anything larger than a 12x10" though. The thing that makes a good bond this way is pressure. Hard work with a hand roller on a big area. You can get a Jetmounter, (which is basically a big mangle) for doing bigger stuff but then you are back to buying expensive kit.

[GeoSpectrum]

...the uniform brown of the MDF

Just say it's an Ad Reinhardt from his 'brown phase'.

Here is one for reference.

re0a_Reinhardt_Painting_54.jpg (24.47 KiB) Viewed 7665 times

[Gesso&Bole]

Jack

You may find, if the severe cockling is on the white border, that the easiest and cheapest thin to do, is to trim all but 10mm of the border off, and then cut a window mount to replace what you have cut off. If the middle is not too wavy, this may solve the problem.

If you dont have dry mounting facilities, and it's still wavy, you could get a sheet of self adhesive board from Tawnycraft.

[strokebloke]

This seems to be the way to go Jim.

What you call wet mount with PVA, Prospero is what we used to do 40 years ago with large (A0 Extended) engineering drawings for site.
Dyeline onto thick paper roll, then past onto 8'-0'' x 4'-0'' x 1/2'' blockboard, using wallpaper paste. (they used to do an advert of a steam train wallpapered using the stuff - we believed it too: bought it by the barrow load ) It never shifted in the site managers cabin.
Always hot in there - no matter how cold it was outside.

I'll mount it and re-frame it.
Then Val will say that she only bought it for the Homebase frame

[strokebloke]

Here is one for reference

I bet he devoted some time to that one Alan. Suppose it's worth a mint now?

[Jonny2morsos]

Strange thing about that image is it does not conform to any of the rules of composition (rule of thirds, position on horizontals etc.) yet it has sold in its millions. Must have made the photographer a few bob. Come to think of it I probably owe him something now I have copied it on to this forum.

[strokebloke]

Not only does it not conform, it positively contradicts all of the standard composition rules. Ansell Adams would turn over
All it has going for it, is the water edge/bank line is level.
There are one or two on the photo forum I belong to who would go apoplectic if confronted with it.
I shouldn't worry about the royalties - we won't tell Mr Allen

Seriously, it is a much nicer print to look at outside of the frame and close up, than it is in it. There is a lot of subtle detail in it.

[strokebloke]

... and then cut a window mount .......

As you suggested John & Jim. It even went back into the original frame.
There was just enough in the rebate to tab it. Taped, which the original didn't have.
Val is pleased with it.
It does look much better ..... I'm warming to it not much, but it's a step in the right direction