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Making a Window Mount - part 3 of 1 2 3

by Mike McNamee Published 01/02/2012

The adhesive on the borders is exposed by stripping waxed paper off. Care is now needed as the part-finished assembly is very sticky! It is placed into the corner jig and butted firmly to the correct place. The window mount is offered up to the jig by pushing it into the corners without touching the adhesive surface. Then the centre is pushed down in the middle and the window mount is deftly secured , always from the middle towards the outside.

The complete mounted assembly is the put back on the (clean) cutting matt and any ragged edges are trimmed off, again taking care with the disposal of the sticky remnants.

The print is now ready for signing.

This little lot took us just over an hour (two prints) which is way too long for a studio to spend on the task but that is the penalty for only using the system in an occasional, ad hoc role. It is also possible to carry out the mounting using a manual roller (we used to own a two-handed one, others use a wall-paper hanger's roller, HotPress sell rollers specicifcally for the job); there are also manual machine laminators. Spray mount can also be used but our objection to this is the offensive smell and the tacky 'dust' seems to get everywhere around the working surface. As part of our deliberations we spoke to Aled Oldfield, a man with vast experience of mounting both in the laboratory environment and at his own studio.

Using the JetMounter he can mount a print in about six minutes which is a good benchmark for doing the job properly. While discussing pitfalls he mentioned that while he was mounting the Christmas-rush prints (and it's always when a rush job is on) a spider descended from the ceiling smack onto the middle of a print as it disappeared into the rollers - Tiddles Oldfield has not been seen for a while!

If you want to know more about mounting, Hot Press have a stand at Focus and will be demonstrating both mounting and laminating on an almost non-stop basis. They also provide video DVDs of the various techniques which are an excellent way to learn but not quite as good as going on one of their courses (see the website).

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1st Published 01/02/2012
last update 09/12/2022 15:00:25

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