The Framers Forum

Hi, ......so, you know sometimes on mounts, you see what looks like a hand drawn line a cm-ish around the aperture - it that just hand drawn on with a ruler and a pen or is there a special tool that does that?? And what is it called? (the line, not the tool, unless there is one).

If my mad computer skillz haven't let me down, there should be a picture of what I mean attached...

Thanks in advance for your help - google was no use at all!

Hi Emma, i know these as wash lines which are drawn onto the mount using a ruling or mapping pen as per link below. Very skilled and requires practice. You can also get a corner gauge from lion to mark your corners then draw between the lines.
There are some very skilled members on the forum who will no doubt be able to tell you more about this skill, a lot more than I know. But hope this helps you as a start.

http://www.lionpic.co.uk/hardware-suppl ... tools.aspx

The tool for lining mounts is a mapping pen which looks like this:



Basically two blades which have a threaded bolt though them to adjust the width. You load the ink/paint/whatever using a brush and stroking the side until you have a blob suspended between the blades. Important not to overfill. As well as this you need a good straight-edge.

And as Kevlar says - a lot of practice.

There are artists pens that you can get which sort-of do the same job. Rotring and such..... They are expensive and you need one pen per width of line and you can't vary the colours. Some colours are not lightfast. It's worth learning with a proper pen as you can achieve much more subtle effects.

I wouldn't call that a mapping pen, I'd call that a ruling pen.

I also wouldn't call that line a washline - I'd call it .................... a line! Washlines are panels of colour, so I suppose a better name would be 'washbands' but when I think of a 'washline mount' (or a 'French mat' across the pond) I think of a series of lines plus a panel of 'wash' - lke-a-this.

Yup, Gold line more than likely drawn with a fine tipped pilot pen, using the mount cutter as a ruler..............draw a faint pencil line first then draw the gold line..........if you use your mountcutter, then the lines will exactly match the apeture. Doddle

Roboframer wrote:I wouldn't call that a mapping pen, I'd call that a ruling pen.

Come to think of it..... so would I.

Anyroadup.....

No need to buy a fancy corner-marking gauge. Cut some corner chevrons out of offcuts and use them to practice on. Save the good ones as samples. Eventually you will build a nice library of useful patterns which you can show to customers. If you lay the sample on each corner of a mount and poke though where the lines meet at the corners (lightly) with a sharp implement (I use one leg of a pair of compasses from the tech drawing set I had at skool) .

Mount board mfgs just love these, as it can waste a lot of boards, unless you are skilled.
Have you ever tried to re-start a line without blobbing?
So use waste boards when practising.

Page 56 of Lions Cat says....
"A very good quality ruling , or "mapping " pen is essential when drawing decorative lines..... so both Prospero and Robo are correct.

Watch The Bingster (aka Pete Bingham) on Lions stand at NEC - king of wash lines and mount decoration.

I have a little tool I use for applying decoration to mounts , Valiani cmc, might be cheating a bit though.
Silver line done with Faber castle artist pen, they are light fast too.

I don't have the pen head, but I use the embossing head to (ever so lightly) plot all the lines - they're so hard to see that I still mark the corners with a tiny pencil dot so it''s not actually much quicker than a corner gauge of some sort, just 100% accurate.

I don't like using pin holes - liquid can get in to them and make a blob or seep under the surface paper.

.......... and mapping pens look like this - don't care what anyone sez.....

Do you get much use out of the emboss head? I was contemplating buying one.

I was also thinking of setting up a little ftp folder on my computer for sharing cut files or is this a stupid idea?

i use the emboss head on my gunnar all the time

making boxes, embossing text,

I have corner samples with this sort of design and sell them a lot - the main block of lines are only 1mm apart. The way the light catches it, it looks like a deep bevel. (The bit inside the black mount aperture is a deep bevel)
I did a similar arrangement, but with wavy lines, around an underwater scene once - and it clinched the sale of the print!

That looks great robo, I think I'll stick one on my next Simons order.