Poster Linen Backing and Paper Backing Journey - Just starting
I am John....I am a new member here, so this will essentially be my introduction and why I requested access to this forum. I retired early and to keep myself busy, I started a custom framing business after trying a few other things. While I do run it as a true business, my main goal was to just enjoy every remaining moment in my life. So while I have the framing shop, I have a 2000 sq ft playground at my disposal to just try things either related to framing and/or art or my personal interests. I have a very small collection of vintage posters that I buy and sell, mostly keeping them for now....nothing too crazy in price, my most expensive poster was probably a $500 range. I lean to the 60s and 70s eras mostly.
Being a custom framer, I have a wealth of tooling and supplies which gets me pretty close to related services.
As I look for services that I can offer in the framing business, I usually work to learn for a few months to a year, provision, practice, and get to expert level. I have found I can generally do this with success in most cases and reasonably quickly once I hit the practice phase. I recently picked up canvas stretching and strip lining with Beva 371 and to be honest, the hype on its complexity is greatly overstated. Check that box.
The next thing that is a longer term is paper restoration services (posters, comics, other stuff). The paper restoration is going ok, requiring more practice that usual, but progressing nicely non-the less. The poster restoration is probably going to be a tougher nut for me as my artistic skills are not that great, but i do have access to a growing artist community to help me there.
For now, my current focus is linen backing (with masa) and straight paper backing (with mulberry).
To start off which I have been reading reading reading watching (youtubes) watching watching....probably to the point I think its time to jump in and invest/provision. I know i havent read everything, but I think I have enough to start up.
I picked up all the stuff that I would need although waiting on some paper to get back in stock from Talas, but I would say I have everything (mostly...I think...perhaps). But every time I think of my process, always some new widget or whatnot. For the paper backing, my direction for now is to follow the more japanese methods
I decided I would start with the paper backing on mulberry first, although doing both in parallel. I really like the Sherrif Afifi videos and even though their older, my view is the still and artistry used is timeless. I also think the methods will be more successful for me to start of with but may find I move around after I get started. The man downside is the japanese smoothing, paste and detail paste brush are going to set me back $600. I may just wing it with rollers for starting and build from there.
Jumping back to the linen backing, opted to hold off on buying my 500 yards of Belgium Canvas...my gosh, $$$$. So I just got some 12oz unprimed canvas off Blick to start of which at $6 per yard. Last week I made my canvas strainers for 2 sizes. Playing around today and thinking about this in conjunction of another customer that wants me to make some special acoustic canvas cover panels, I wanted to see if there was an opportunity to innovate. So I came up with a method to stretch the canvas onto the frame without staples. I put some wire nails along the back and cut off the heads, then I put some 1/8" wood strips with holes where the pins are to go over and screw on top of the trim. Then to finish, I put an inside lip to get the canvas to be level with the bottom when upside down. I have no idea if this is cool or wasted time, but I did have a good 4 hours of fun working it out. After its mounted, I just spritz it with some distilled water and then tight as a drum as needed.
So....why am I going through all this? this discussion thread has been pretty much quite for a year and I am going to need some folks to help me on the journey, especially when I do stupid things like below. Time to wake up!
John
Being a custom framer, I have a wealth of tooling and supplies which gets me pretty close to related services.
As I look for services that I can offer in the framing business, I usually work to learn for a few months to a year, provision, practice, and get to expert level. I have found I can generally do this with success in most cases and reasonably quickly once I hit the practice phase. I recently picked up canvas stretching and strip lining with Beva 371 and to be honest, the hype on its complexity is greatly overstated. Check that box.
The next thing that is a longer term is paper restoration services (posters, comics, other stuff). The paper restoration is going ok, requiring more practice that usual, but progressing nicely non-the less. The poster restoration is probably going to be a tougher nut for me as my artistic skills are not that great, but i do have access to a growing artist community to help me there.
For now, my current focus is linen backing (with masa) and straight paper backing (with mulberry).
To start off which I have been reading reading reading watching (youtubes) watching watching....probably to the point I think its time to jump in and invest/provision. I know i havent read everything, but I think I have enough to start up.
I picked up all the stuff that I would need although waiting on some paper to get back in stock from Talas, but I would say I have everything (mostly...I think...perhaps). But every time I think of my process, always some new widget or whatnot. For the paper backing, my direction for now is to follow the more japanese methods
I decided I would start with the paper backing on mulberry first, although doing both in parallel. I really like the Sherrif Afifi videos and even though their older, my view is the still and artistry used is timeless. I also think the methods will be more successful for me to start of with but may find I move around after I get started. The man downside is the japanese smoothing, paste and detail paste brush are going to set me back $600. I may just wing it with rollers for starting and build from there.
Jumping back to the linen backing, opted to hold off on buying my 500 yards of Belgium Canvas...my gosh, $$$$. So I just got some 12oz unprimed canvas off Blick to start of which at $6 per yard. Last week I made my canvas strainers for 2 sizes. Playing around today and thinking about this in conjunction of another customer that wants me to make some special acoustic canvas cover panels, I wanted to see if there was an opportunity to innovate. So I came up with a method to stretch the canvas onto the frame without staples. I put some wire nails along the back and cut off the heads, then I put some 1/8" wood strips with holes where the pins are to go over and screw on top of the trim. Then to finish, I put an inside lip to get the canvas to be level with the bottom when upside down. I have no idea if this is cool or wasted time, but I did have a good 4 hours of fun working it out. After its mounted, I just spritz it with some distilled water and then tight as a drum as needed.
So....why am I going through all this? this discussion thread has been pretty much quite for a year and I am going to need some folks to help me on the journey, especially when I do stupid things like below. Time to wake up!
John
SecondMoonshot.com Custom Picture Framing, Wake Forest/Rolesville, NC
0
Get In Touch
Comments
thoughts?
You don't really need any of that expensive Japance stuff but you already bought it. Just use a high quality purdy brush - ones that the hairs don't fall out. They make an short angle brush that works well. You'll also find that the prep of your wheat paste will also dictate how it spreads. But you do have to check closely for any bristles so get darker brush fibers.
BIG TIP. Make sure everything is already damp so the paper or canvas doesn't suck the moisture out of the wheat paste. I also pasted both sides of what was sticking together. Never had many issues with adhesion.
I never used rollers. For the canvas, I used a window tint tool and used a runnier wheat paste and made sure it got into every part of the canvas. That way when the paste loaded masa went down the two would lock together...
Interesting stretcher system. It will work but it doesn't look fast and if you ever want to do more than one at a time... You'll also find you trim the canvas anyway. Get a pnumatic stapler its fast and more secure. you'll cut the poster out and then you can just rip the the left over and trash it. The staples from a nail gun don't come out and can be left in the frame. You could probably do 50 posters before you need to worry about the stretcher surface (I just used untreated 2x4s)...
Good luck!
i think the main paste brush is black bristle although the detail / fine for edge pasting with the paper backing only is white, but that shouldn’t matter as my method for putting on the drying board will be to just paste the edges and not the back. I saw a video you did that put it all down on hollytex, but not planning to take that route, really want a simpler method of removal…may be wrong on this after real world experience, but if Sheriff can do it…why not me??? I just had recurring visions of me struggling to get the thing off the drying board only to have it f*&k up at the last step…figured I would just attempt to remove that risk altogether.
I total get that i could have gone with some less expensive brushes, and I have no excuse….this stupid little thing was just important to me to bring some form of japanese purity to the process.
Great feedback all around and glad to have you chime in.
John
Maybe I need to make the drain compatible with a garden house so that I can run it directly outside (of course only for appropriate drainage which is non-toxic).
If nothing else, just look at me for its entertainment value…I have a LOT of time on my hands.
So, quick questions on storage.
Looks like I can just store the Saturated Calcium Hydroxide at 70 degrees F in a sealed container, let me know if otherwise.
For the mixed De-acidify/Cleaner, can I store it the same way or should I mix a new batch after X-days? Does my general ingredients look right?
Ill make the wheat paste fresh for each poster or batch of posters within a day or two.
I’ll let this dry then mix the other half of the wheat paste up tomorrow with blender, do the cleaning/deacidify and proceed.
Side note…a customer has already brought me in two 36”x36” plotter print outs to be paper backed as the paper is very thin and they dont want canvas backed. Need to do some tests, but think the ink will be water soluble and dont think wheat paste will be able to be used. From what I am finding, Klucel-G is the appropriate solution for this and have some on hand as well and familiar with its use. Going to do some tests trying to mimic the paper and ink, but a little nervous on this. The print outs are dated October 2001 and are 2 large plotter printouts of a satellite image of the 911 ground zero site…astounding to look at. I told them to give me a couple months to get some experience under my belt but can always back away if I am not comfortable with it.
That looks some dried wheat paste from the masa application managed to get under the poster. Did you apply the masa and poster same day? or masa first (let it dry) and then the poster?
Or like a knot in the canvas maybe... You will need to check for those and then avoid that area or remove the knot with a razor. Your first reaction may be that it would impact the canvas sructurally but I've never seen it. I would just run my (clean) hands over the canvas after stretching to check. Then pick at it with a razor and removed it.
I would store the Calcium Hydroxide in the fridge. I didn't mix surfactant and the deacidification chemicals. Interesting - where did that idea come from? I never used a sufactant. I would worry the hydrogens and carbons might impact the stability of the CaOH... Alone the CaOH is harmless really. BUT surfactants can iritate the skin. Most backers use orvus... I use surfactants for cleaning records and even then my skin gets irritated.
Surfactants
Commonly used surfactants include Orvus WA (anionic, sodium butylsulfate, Procter and Gamble), Aerosol OT (American Cyanamid), Fotoflo (Kodak), Triton X-100 (nonionic alkylaryl polyether alcohol, Rohm and Haas), Igepal CA 630 (nonionic), Tergitol, Merpol SH, and Lissapol. Soaps and detergents also act as surfactants, allowing aqueous solutions to remove oily dirt.
There is concern that some surfactants may remain in the paper and have deleterious effects, such as attracting dust or reducing paper strength (See Strumfels 1989; MacKay and Smith in press.)
Note: See the page on Sustainable Solvent Use for a discussion of the health and and environmental hazards of using Triton X-100.
Many conservators take advantage of the surfactant and soil-suspending properties of cellulose ethers in removing adhesive deposits and ingrained grime (Strumfels 1989). Plain solutions of sodium carboxy methyl cellulose or methyl cellulose can be quite effective. Conservators at the Library of Congress use a mixture called Formula D, made of two different viscosity grades of Methocel F-4 and F-50 (hydxoxypropyl methyl cellulose 4000 cps and 50 cps) in the proportions 40 to 60 of 1% Methocel F-4 and 1% Methocel F-50 (i.e., 100 ml of 1% Formula D is composed of 40 ml 1% F-4 and 60 ml 1% F-50).(SRA)
also just did some testing of a small water soluble sheet on the 52gsm mulberry using klucel-g for paperbacking, the plotter paper is pretty close to 20lb stock, so printed a piece on inkjet. Pretty sure it’s water soluble (I know the inkjet test is). Came out pretty good, but honestly feel the 52gsm mulberry is too heavy so going to check with customer and probably recommend the 26gsm.
Re Mulberry: I only ordered mulberry from talas which caries the 26gsm and that was good stuff for paper backing posters.
https://resources.culturalheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2016/02/anagpic2014_kraus_paper.pdf