Mark, Mike, all,
spurred on by the overwhelming, enthusiastic response from Mike,
here is a quick rundown of what I did.
Bump it out into a separate thread Mike if you don't want it here.
Pic 1: the glue on the left worked beautifully, the glue on the right was
terrible. (It left a webbed, raised lumpiness in the spray pattern).
That showed up through the test prints) In hindsight it says that on
the can. The good one was from Lincraft, $15 scobes a can.
Nice, evenly distributed contact spray.
I sprayed the MDF with an even coat of glue can 1. Let it stand until
tack dry and no 'wetness' appearance at all.
I sprayed the back of the print, being very careful not to let overspray
sneak under the print and on to the picture side.
I was very careful also not to use too much on the print, the print
would start to warp and expand with the initial 'wetness' of the spray.
I did, however do 2 passes over all perimeter parts of the print just
to make sure there was no part of the print without glue to avoid lifting.
I let that sit until tack dry also.
Then I laid the print on the MDF starting from one end and working it down
on to the board with fan out motions with one hand until the print was
totally down and in contact.
I used a roller to press the entire print down
to make all glue contact, working the edges especially.
The print was always slightly oversized compared to the board so I could put
pressure on the print with the roller.
Luckily I have a disk sander so I could cut off the excess print and sand the board afterwards.
I painted the edges of the finished job with water based kids black paint,
very watered down. it almost dried straight away after brushing on.
Sash cord and staples added carefully with an industrial staple gun later
being very careful to use staples less than 10mm depth!
A few pics, note the edges aren't painted in the pics, the finished product
looks way better with black edges.
A tip to save a bit more on printing costs....as you can see, most were
panoramas and so I cut and pasted two separate panos together to
make one massive combination print.
Terrestrial prints worked beautifully, the astro stuff however was a bit of
a disappointment. My moon prints were very dark, even after requesting a re-try by OW.
Blacks tended to show any dust speck trapped under the
print. Dust was an issue, I blew everything down with the air compressor
before the final stick down. It was quite a stressful time too
Now they are all offloaded to the relatives I no longer am worried about
damage to them.
FWIW, very cheap to make...but I did have spare 10mm MDF on hand
and power tools to enable me to size all backing boards.
PS: the handbag is not mine.
Steve
)![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
