Digital BW, The Print

> When you say salon borders I assume you simply mean the 
> unprinted part of the print sheet.  
	
	Yes - "salon" indicating wide borders.

I thought the issue with RC paper was that it was thin and hence was best
affixed to a 
> thicker backing for framing so that it would not buckle over 
> time.  Wouldn¹t a print on RC paper be to wobbly to simply 
> affix to museum board at the four corners?  

	RC lies pretty flat, especially held by an over-matte.  I was just
printing some family snapshots on Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss and it looks
as if it would lie flat -- of course, it's only letter size.  It may depend
on how large you're printing.  Incidentally, it is pretty common for
photographs to be mounted to the backing board with mounting corners, since
there is a lot of thought on the part of conservators that dry-mounting
compromises the archival qualities of the print.  I don't get that many
calls from museums for my prints (g), so I just mount them the way I think
they look best.

>Given all the affects of dry mounting are hidden (apart from subsequent 
> weakening rigidity effects that may be noticed in a non-dry 
> mounted image) I am not sure what aesthetic benefits you feel 
> are obtained by dry mounting.

	With dry-mounting, you trim the borders off the print so that only
the image area remains to be dry mounted on the matt board.  This is done by
"tacking" the mount tissue onto the back of the print, then trimming the
borders and underlying tissue off.  The print/tissue is then "tacked" onto
the mounting board (with a hot iron between the print corners and underlying
tissue) before going into the press.  In addition to the print being
perfectly flat, the area around the print, showing through the window matt,
is the same type board as the window matt.  It is a nice and neat
presentation.  There is another school of thought.  That is that it is the
photo paper margins that should show through the window matt, the thought
being that the eye will make a transition from the white over-matt to the
paper base to the image itself.

	Incidentally, you might check the Light Impressions catalog.  I see
there are some cold-mount processes available, but I don't know anything
about them.  Dry mounting as described above is tedious and must be done
with great care -- I imagine a framer would charge a lot for it.