The Framers Forum

Hi

Complete novice, so be gentle!
When you receive a print in a tube, whats the best way to get it perfectly flat?
the value of some prints now are so expensive, thought i'd ask rather than make a costly mistake!!

Thanks

I have a plan chest with 10 sheets of mountboard in the 'flattening drawer'

Take the print out of the tube, and put it in between 2 sheets of mountboard, and put some weight on it - sheets of mountboard/plywood/glass etc will all work. Leave it under there until you are ready to frame it, and mostly it will be nice and flat in a few days

For items that are not so valuable a hot-press is a great investment. Low heat, turn the pump on and prints come out flat in next to no time.

A roller blind can also be used by roller the print in the opposite direction, easier to get wrong at the same time though.

As above though I find sticking some weights on the items and leaving them for a few days or weeks works well, providing you have time.

If I don't want to leave it flattening under weights for days, I sometimes reverse-roll prints. I use the largest diameter tube I can find to reverse-roll around - very slowly and carefully - and I only do it if the print is on reasonably thin paper. If the paper is too thick, there's the risk of it "cracking". I'm not sure I'd want to reverse-roll if the print is valuable or irreplaceable though.

I used to have a few sheets of safety glass used for display shelving, a couple of sheets of that on top of a print sandwiched between boards, sorted most stuff out.

Try turning the print over after a day or two as well.

You can buy de-rollers and they work really well for some things - trial and error on your own stuff is what you need but here’s a great video showing you how they’re made, how they work, what they’re not best for etc - watch it then go and buy a cheap roller blind from Dunelm and modify accordingly- it’s what I did and it worked great!



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