We have a new toy! It’s a ‘Hot Press’.. ok not brand new, but a pre-owned, one careful lady owner from new kind of thing. It is simply the best modern incarnation in a whole history of presses, having a large bed for artwork, a built in heater to activate adhesives, and a vacuum pump to provide enough pressure to squeeze most things we might want to squeeze. Owning one of these babies opens up lots of new opportunities for us, our work and our customers.

Our new hot press can flatten artwork

Our new hot press can flatten artwork…

I won’t go into huge detail, partly because it’s technical and boring, and to be honest we are only just beginning to discover what we can do with it. One immediately useful thing is our new ability to dry mount; to stick artwork or photographs to a board, to flatten and stiffen them for display or preservation. Our new press can also effectively ‘steam iron’ creases out.

Dry mounting and heat sealing an old map

Dry mounting the old map

Another hugely satisfying thing it does is to ‘heat seal’ artwork; another hot squeezy type of process which bonds a clear layer of plastic over it, doing a similar job to a laminator. This means we can protect large posters and other things without glazing with glass. This means the finished piece is light, unbreakable, and actually doesn’t need an frame round it at all.

The finished map

The finished map…

We did a couple of jobs with the Hot Press this week; a large old French school geography map need dry mounting to mend decades of use, and then we heat sealed the front instead of conventional glazing. The other was an Alice in Wonderland poster which we bonded to a stiff board and laminated, with the addition of spacers behind, so she floats off the wall in an interesting way. Great for kitchens with its wipe clean surface.

Alice floating

Alice floating…

You will see more results from our Hot Press as we learn more about what we can do with it..

Tim