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Silly silly question. Laminating by hand wet.
I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this but is it ok to laminate print, wet by hand?
My old laminator has finally got unusable and tomorrow I’m going to be forking out for a new one but that doesn’t leave me in a good place for the coming weeks/month with a huge amount of work in the job tray.
It’s been going downhill rapidly over that last month, today having messed up a 5m run ive had enough. Off to the skip with ya.
So can I manage with soapy water by doing it by hand? there are no downsides to the finish?
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5 Replies
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I’ve done it before I had a laminator.
Just make sure you don’t wet the backing paper.
I don’t have any reported complaints or comebacks. -
It depends on the laminate. Some have a water based glue on the back and these can become cloudy when wetted. However a solvent based laminate won’t cause any problems at all and I’ve been doing it this way for years. If you have to laminate with a water based glue laminate just wet the print itself and not the laminate then squeegee out the liquid as quickly as possible to minimise any chance of the glue dissolving and clouding the print.
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Thanks chaps 👍
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It crossed my mind…
When I first bought print in, I bought it from UKSG stalwart, Peter Normington, I recall that he would use a liquid laminate on many prints. I wonder if that is still available?
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The liquid laminate from way back then was called frog juice, I think the alternative is called super-frog.
I first found this around 1998 and I would use it occasionally on our Roland PC60 prints, I posted an old demo back then. Normington and some others began using it on their solvent prints, but I had switched to vinyl laminating by 2000.
it’s great for small jobs or short runs, especially if you don’t have a laminator. I think some folk use the roll-on type liquid also.This was way back then, there are plenty new alternatives on the go.
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