Paper & Precision

I am starting a couple of new projects. The one is the screen printing one I've chatted about. Unfortunately I can't really discuss this one much as it's for an exhibition, but the planning and preparation is interesting. I will be sticking some BFK Rives onto birch ply. In order to have a deckled edge and a narrow bit of wood showing, I need to ensure that I get the size exactly right and must allow for the paper stretching when damp. I learnt this test in bookbinding.

This is also great for the inside cover lining of a book, especially if the lining can't be trimmed after glueing. If you are working with some of the Nepalese tissue papers this can stretch quite a lot.

1) Draw a perfect 10cm square on board. Measure the diagonals to be sure that you are accurate.

2) Check the grain of the paper you will be working on and draw out a 10cm square on it with an arrow to indicate grain direction. Also draw an arrow on the paper next to the square so that afterwards you can be sure which way it stretched. Check the diagonals and cut out the square.

3) Make your glue. I used half wood glue and half wheat starch glue for glueing thickish paper onto heavy board or wood. If the paper is really thin then your glue will be pure wheatstarch and it could stretch a lot (because its thin, nnot because of the glue. Thinner the paper, thinner the glue!). 

4) Glue the square onto the drawn square on the board and see how much it has stretched.Work it out as a percentage and apply that to the piece of paper you want to glue. If its 10% bigger, obviously you would cut it 10% smaller ...or minuscually thereabouts (Come on pedants, this will be accurate enough!)

Mine stretched .5mm in one direction only i.e. .5%, so it was negligible. But if it stretches 3mm cut your paper 3% smaller to allow for this.

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