Dry Mount Question

[shwestley]

Hello All,

I am new to the message boards while I have been a peeking non member for many visits, I am now in a pickle so I had to join.

I have a old dry mount press that I bought off of ebay and I bought the necessary adhesive film and silcone release paper.

I have been trying to attach images to 1/4" birch plywood. I set the press to 250 F and press the wood and image for about 4 minutes.

Of all of my practice pieces very few have made it through the cutting process.

Usually there are bubbles in the finished attached image or in the process of trying to cut puzzle pieces individual parts of the image will detach from its piece.

Perhaps there is a better method of image adhesion. Perhaps I haven't found the right dry mount instructions.

I am really at a loss. I thought it would be fun to cut some puzzles for gifts but I can't even get a decent first try.

Any advice would be helpful

Thanks

[wood-n-things]

Aw...First welcome to our family...one of our experts will be by shortly...We have one who uses a dry mount system..Most of us use adhesives and clear coating of one sort or another, vs a dry mount system...

be patient he will be by soon I'm almost certain of it...

[Firedkm]

Welcome to the board. 1st question for you is.....are you sanding the puzzle blank and making sure its clean? if your puzzle blank is not smooth or has debris on it...your image will fall off

2nd question.....250 sounds low....is that what it says on the instruction with the dry mount paper? The dry mount paper should come with instructions on the temp to use and how long to keep it clamped for.

[shwestley]

I have been using a tack rag to wipe the boards down but I wasn't sanding them so that is something I can change.

As for the adhesive paper the recommended temp. it was 190 F and I thought that was too low so I upped it to 250F. It says that 1/4" Masonite board should be pressed for 4 minutes.

I am using Bienfang Color Mount Dry Mounting Adhesive on a Bogen 510 press.

I have also checked photography websites but the don't seem to use wood very often.

The smaller images seem to come out better than the larger images so maybe I need to up the time and temp for larger images?

Thanks for the help
Sarah

[Firedkm]

Sarah, If the recommend 190 try that out also. I do think thats a little low.

[Big_red_S]

Sarah, I bought a dry mount as well and called the manufacturer to find the settings. They recommended 250 degrees, but call them up they'll be glad to help.

By the way, I'm not using it as much because I want to get good at cutting puzzles before using the expensive equipment and materials.

[shwestley]

Thanks for the help.

I think that's the rub because I don't want to buy more adhesive film to keep mounting things that don't work. The expense of the film also makes this frustrating for every piece that doesn't work.

I stopped by a photo shop to see if they would give some advice and one of the things they told me was that the excessive humidity that we've been experiencing in pa is effecting the quality of the adhesion and the fact that I work in a shed is also increasing the problem of humidity. They suggested that I move the press into the house.

They gave me the site drytac.com, which is supposed to have some fabulous tutorials.

Looks like I will spend the rest of the day experimenting.

Thanks
Sarah

[Big_red_S]

Sarah,

Save yourself some time and money and call the manufacturer.
Not only were they glad to help but they also recommended which products to use and sent me free samples.

I called and it took me 2 tries to get the dry mout work to work almost perfectly.

[tarim]

Hi
I am a new member,and a retired picture framer.
I have been cutting jigsaw puzzles for approx. 12 years I use a hard bed dry mount press for fixing prints to 1/4" Birch plywood
I have two types of dry mount adhesive dry mount tissue and dry mount film. With dry mount tissue you will not get a permanent bond on wood.
With dry mount film I always get a pemanent bond. hope this is of interest to you.
regards.Tarim

[wood-n-things]

Tarim,
welcome to the board. Glad you felt comfortable to share your wisdom.
One last thing..where are the pics of your puzzles. We would truly like to see some of your work and share in your knowledge. We are getting quite a few puzzlers here.