The Framers Forum

Ive got a customer that's asking me to drymount a print onto ragboard. He seems to think the archival qualities of the board in some way help with the conservation of his work!!!!!!
This ones got me stumped!
when I use the pressure adhiesive PSA66 theres noway this is gonna be reversable. I know for sure there are numerous framers out there that sell the properties of rag boards as an archival substrate but hey, I use to be able to buy single fags from the sweetshop near my old school when I was a kid.

What sort of paper is the art done on? 100% rag? I doubt it.....To my mind it's a bit pointless mounting onto a board with superior qualities to the actual art. OK, it's not going to go manky and ruin the print. But I would have thought a good quality alpha woodpulp board would be more than adequate. More rigid as well. There are reversable dry mount tissues/films. In my experince they have an unfortunate habit of spontaneously reversing themselves when you don't want them to. Then you still have to expose the entire print to adhesive of unknown long-term effects.

People get strange ideas and a little learning is a dangerous thing. He has obviously read something somewhere and got a bee in his bonnet. Rag board is not an active preservation element. I's a bit like people who think the more low-calorie food they eat, the thinner they will get. Or people who go to the doctor and insist that they have an X-ray because Mrs Woman down the street had one and it did her good.


Another point. You would need a reasonably thick ragboard. Some of the thicker boards are made by sticking a lot of thin boards together. These can delaminate if you heat them or wet them.

If he is really concerned about preservation I would suggest to him that he leaves it in your hands to do what is needed.

Hi mate
thanks for your time, not using heat tissue just the pressure type. the other problem with using mount boards as the substrate is that they're S**T! the surface isnt hard enough
to give a good surface for the print, foamex has a great surface, similarly Ali or dibond but somewhere someone has got it in their haed that ragboard is the one.
A little knowlege is a dangerous thing .......and annoying to boot!

Questions:
Is the print valuable?
Does it need to be mounted?
Why is he asking for it to be mounted onto rag board?
Why pressure adhesive mounting?

There doesn't seem to be much point in using pressure type 'dry mounting' onto rag board. Might as well use standard foamboard or any other substrate. I suppose you have explained all this to the customer???

Sounds like this customer has heard about this method from some other lunatic, who knows nothing, and has taken it as factual information and he has assumed that he and the friend he heard this from knows more than you do.

A lot of these loonies inhabit ladies x-stitch classes.

i would try suggesting to your client a couple of other options

either diabond, or foamalux, very stiff and light both of them

the fact that your adding adhesive between the print and the brag board defeats the purpose of of using the rag board

i do a lot of this kind of mounting, and generally use either foamalux or diabond

be careful cutting the diabond, a lot of the sheet cutters roll the edge of diabond which dont give the best edge finish

thanks stcstc
My mounting guys cut the diabond on the sagetech I must admit I prefer foamex for the rigidity diabonds good for our acrylic reverses and the ali too I have posted some reading matter to my customer trying to enlighten him to the pointlessness of it all