Drytac 35" x 47" Hot Press Heated Glass Top Vacuum Press

So, over to the photographic print that has been laminating. It's been in there for about 5 minutes. We're going to switch the machine off, undo the latches. Okay. There's our photographic print that's had the same treatment; so it's just had the surface of the print laminated. You'll notice that we've actually used two different laminating films, the first print...the paper print, we've actually used a product called Satin matte or Matte X heat-seal film and this time we're using Gloss-Lustre or Satin X heat-seal film.

Again, you'll notice that it's got quite a large border all the way around, again for once we've mounted in onto the canvas, the canvas and the heat-seal film will be stretched around the back. So, again, we need to remove the release paper. You'll notice that we're actually working on top of the vacuum press here, there's a good reason for that, because when we're using photographic prints, it's good to try and keep the emulsion warm. It helps stop the emulsion from cracking, so we're working on top of the press. You'll notice that I'm putting the second release paper just back down. By working on top of the press, that keeps the emulsion nice and soft so when we're actually stripping it and when we're taking the emulsion off the backing paper, it's not going to end up cracking.

Across one of the shortest edges; we'll start in one of the corners, we'll bend it over my finger. Then, I'm going to get my fingernail, dig into between the emulsion and the backing paper and we're going to start splitting it so that the actual paper has started to split. Always work with the photograph face up; it always has to be face up so that you're taking the plastic off the backing paper; never work with it face down.

So, we're going to work across one of the shortest edges. As I say, just folding it back on itself. I'm just going to pul it back on itself, just keep working across that shortest edge. Bringing it down a little bit around the length of the print. Okay, so we've got the lead edge, running all the way across started. We're actually going to be using a metal bar or a piece of wooden dowel. We are going to drop that onto the heat-seal film. Roll up the heat-seal film to the edge of the print and then holding the paper down, we're just going to pull the heat-seal film back, taking the emulsion with us. You can see where it's stripping here. Again, roll it up, pull it back, roll it up and pull it towards us a little bit. So, roll it back. Again, roll it up and just keep working it down. You can see once it's started, it gets quite easy. Take the silicone release film away. Again, roll it up and just keep following the same action until you get to the very end and you can see there that the print...you can see the image of the print coming through.

So, the actual print is very thin. This will then want to take on the texture of the canvas coming through from the bottom. So, back over to the table and you'll notice that now we've got this one stripped. We are going to put this to one side and we're going to concentrate on the one that's soaking in the bath of water.

For this, we're going to need something that's flat and shiny. In this case, we're going to be using a piece of acrylic or Perspex; you can see that it's been used many times before for demonstrations, a piece of glass, anything like that is fine. Just lay it onto our work surface. Take the print that's been soaking in the bath of water, just get a little wet; your work surface will get a little bit wet, so have some paper towels on standby. We're going to put this, again face up the same way that we did with the photographic print. You'll notice that this is going to be a little bit easier than it was with the photographic print. Okay, so we've smoothed it out.

Again, let's just start; I'll move it so that we can see it, we'll start in one corner. Again, the idea here; thePerspex is actually going to be keeping the backing paper nice and flat and actually suck down, so the suction is going to keep it down.  You'll notice again that the print is looking very thin and it comes off, slightly easier than it was with the photographic print. So, there we've got a nicely stripped print. We can move that out of our way. Lay that back down on our work surface. Again, just make sure that it's...there's no bits of debris on the back of the print. Now, this...the process now reverts back to the same way. So, the photographic print that you see here, again it's stripped. The paper print is being stripped, so mounting onto the canvas is done in exactly the same way. So, heat-sealing and laminating the surface of the print is done in the same way. The second process, you either wet-strip paper prints, dry strip photographic prints and then we are going to mount it again onto the canvas.
So, we'll move the picture just out of the way slightly. This is our canvas. This is an adhesive-coated canvas which has got a protected release liner on it. This has got a heat-activated glue on here. It's a beige; what we call a traditional canvas, which has got a heat-activated glue on the one surface and protected by a release liner. So what we do is the actual canvas is cut larger than the actual heat-seal film.

We're going to fold back the release liner and put it a crease in it. We'll take our paper print. Okay, so we now need to mount the print onto the canvas. We need to line up the print with the weave on the left of the canvas, so it's running nice and square. So, we just offer it up and make sure that it's in the centre of the canvas. We can then look through the heat-seal film, look at the edge of the print and make sure that it's nicely lined up. Smooth it out. Don't worry about any  creases that are on the actual heat-seal film, that's going to go right on the back of the stretcher bar any way.

Okay, so, again, we can just roll up the print, pull some of the release liner off, expose some more of the adhesive on the canvas. We can then turn it away from ourselves, it's a little bit easier; just rub the print down; taking away our release liner. Again, just rubbing the print as we go; keep on going. It is always good to keep it away from any heat at this stage because if the heat starts to activate the adhesive, it does become quite a strong bond, so. Just smooth it out again don't worry about any of the creases.

Okay, we then need to...you'll notice that the actual canvas is larger than the heat-seal film. If we were to put this into the press now, we need to cover this with foam so that the foam is going to push the print down into the texture of the canvas. The overhang of adhesive from the canvas will stick to the film. So, what we're going to do, we're just going to trim the canvas, so that it's exactly the same size as the heat-seal film. So, we're just going to come in about a centimetre or half an inch from the edge of the heat-seal film, trimming off the excess all the way around. We've still got plenty of canvas there to

stretch around to the back and that's ready now to go back into the press. So, lift the lid of the press up; again, as I said earlier, it's going to go under the foam so we'll just move the film out of the way. Take the print, onto the base of the press, cover it with the film and we're going to switch that on and that's going to take around about 3 to 4 minutes in the press.
Okay, so now that it's been processed in the press, we've taken that out and you can see there that canvas...you can see the canvas effect coming through from the back and also the deco edge that gives it a nice touch.

Okay, we'd now like to show you how to do canvas transfers of paper prints. What we're doing here...this is a regular poster that we've got, you'll see that this is part of the border is still left on. We do need to trim off the border so it makes it look more like an oil painting effect rather than a poster that's been stuck down onto canvas. For a special effect, what we're doing here, we're using one of the motor trim craft cutters just to give it a deco edge going across the edge, which will look nice on the finished, stretched item.

So, we're going to use the big, purple ruler; bring it in a few millimetres from the edge of the print. With this...the idea of the cutter is that it comes with various wheels that will give you different jagged edges. So, we've got it set up. Holding it nice and firm and you can see here, let's cut through that again, it's given us a nice, deco edge.  Okay, so that will show up nicely when we actually stretch it around the wooden stucco frame.

So, the next thing that we need to do is to laminate the surface of the print. You'll notice that we're not mounting it down onto a board. This is just an unmounted print, an unmounted paper print. We've got here; this is our heat-seal film. This is a product called satin matte or Mattetex heat-seal film and you'll notice that we've got about 4 inches, around 10 centimetres larger than the print. The idea for this is this actually, this- the heat-seal film and the canvas will get stretched around the back of the wood stretcher frame and hold everything in place. So, the first thing that we do, we'll flip it over. We'll fold back about 5 inches of the release liner and we'll put a crease in that release liner. So, we'll take our print. Tack cloth- clean the print down. Again, be careful when you're using the tack cloth. Make sure you're using on the right type of images and it's not going to damage the print at all. So, that's nice and clean.

We can then take the heat-seal film, position it. You'll notice that the actual heat-seal film has got the release liner has got a grid on it, so that helps us line up where we need it to be. So, we can smooth out the leading edge of the heat-seal film. Roll up the heat-seal film, give the print another quick wipe down underneath and then if you pull the release paper from underneath; just a smooth action. What we're not looking to do is just to take it all the way off; we just want to stop at the bottom of the print. If you just push...press your finger onto the heat-seal film, you'll notice that the heat from my finger actually bonds the heat-seal film onto the surface of the print.

We can then, flip it back up.  If there is any creases, we can actually...you can remove the release liner away at this stage, I'm sorry the heat-seal liner at this stage and smooth it back out so that it's nice and smooth. The idea for the release paper to stay underneath is because we've got quite a large border of heat-seal film; not so bad now when there is no heat on it at all, but when it comes out of the press, the likelihood is that this heat-seal film will want to fold back in on itself. It's just going to be easier making a little envelope like this. So, this is ready to go into the press.

Just quickly in the press, you'll notice that we've flipped everything over so that the foam is now on the top and the silicone release film is now on the bottom. So, what we'll do is just roll that out of the way. We can take our print, lift that out and pop that onto the silicone release, on the base of the press. The foam can come over and cover everything. We can close the lid down, put the latches on and press the start button.

You'll notice that this time we've got it set on 5 minutes and 20 seconds. Again, the 20 seconds is there to allow for the machine time for it to pull vacuum. The five minutes is the length of time the heat-seal film takes to use. Now this is a satin matte heat-seal film and it's 50 micron thick. Basically the rule of thumb: for every 10 microns of thickness of film, it will be one minute in the press at 90 degrees or 195 degrees Fahrenheit. So, if it's a 50 micron thick film, it will be approximately 5 minutes. Okay, we've now taken the laminated deco edge print out of the vacuum press, You'll notice that the surface has been laminated and all the holes resealed. You will hear in the backround, the vacuum pump still going. I've actually processed in the exactly the same way that we've done with this photo print, but it's a photographic print that's now in the machine. Again, just laminating the surface of the print and we've got a 2 inch border that's going all the way around.

Canvas transfers, which is what we are doing here, paper prints and photographic prints processed at the start in exactly the same way, they are both heat-sealed, but this is where the process slightly changes. So, we've got one heat-sealing in the press. We're going to show you how to do this one first. We're going to start this one off.

So, we turn it over and you'll notice that we need to take off the silicone release liner that's on the back of the print. Okay. Fingernails are obviously quite good in this scenario. Okay, so we just remove the silicone backing of the paper. We can discard that.

Now, while the picture is still face down, what we want to do...the idea here is that this is actually going to go into a bath of water, which is the bath of water that we've got set in front of us. The idea is that the actual water soaks into the print and we're going to do almost like an image transfer. So, we're going to take...we're going to remove the heat-seal film or the heat-set laminate off the surface of the film. That's going to take basically the top surface print away with it.

What we are going to do first is we are going to very lightly pierce the back of the print so that water will migrate and absorb into the fibres of the paper very quickly. Again, using the piercing tool, but very, very lightly; we're not going to put any pressure on this at all. I'm basically going to allow the piercing tool just to go over the surface of the paper; just going to really give it a good piercing over the back there. As long as you're not putting any pressure on there, nothing is going to start showing through to the front.

Okay, so that's nicely pierced; it's got little holes in the back. What we're going to do is put this into the tray and allow it to soak in. Okay, just push that down and you'll notice straight away that the water is flooding into those holes and if you've pierced it well enough, that's probably going to take round about 5 or 10 minutes in the water. Okay, we'll go over on to the photographic print while that's soaking.

Okay, we'd now like to talk about how to dry mount a photographic print down onto a piece of board. Again, we are going to be using the white display board, the 2000-micron card that we're using. This time, we've got a photographic print. Slightly different to paper prints that we used earlier, poster prints, movie posters, etc. With photographic prints, you have a plastic emulsion; basically a plastic surface over the top of the photograph. Helps protect the image underneath but also this actually stops the photograph from being breathable.

So, it's going to take a little bit longer in processing time in the press and it's just going to have to be a little bit more critical or a little bit more cautious on actually working with the print. So, again, let's move the board out of the way, let's take our dry-mounting tissue and cutting the piece again, half inch, approximately half inch or a centimeter all the way around the print. Any excess mounting tissue, never throw away, maybe just roll them up and pop them inside the cardboard. It will come in handy for something at one stage.

So, again, take the board. I'm just going to give this a good wipe down; clean it off. Taking the dry mounting tissue, lay it onto the board and, again, you can see the tissue is smaller than the board. Take the print, back of the photograph, just making sure that the back of the photograph is nice and clean. Again, cleanliness is the most important thing here.

Pop it onto the board all lined up and then back over to the press. So, again going to the press. Fold back, the silicone release form, making sure that everything stays inside the actual rubber banding that goes all the way around the vacuum press. Close the lid down. This time, we are going to use the timer. We've got it set at three minutes. Set at three minutes, 20. So, again the 20 seconds is there to allow the vacuum to pull. The three is roughly around the time it will take to process this work.

So, you are going to treat a photograph pretty much the same that you would be treating foam-centred board and if you are mounting photographs onto foam-centred board, be doubly wary because there is no breathability in either direction, so that would probably need even longer in the press.