Reviews
Part of Getting printmaking workspaces right the first time
Printmaking workspace surfaces: solvent resistance versus flatness
Best work surfaces for a printmaking workspace: comparing bench tops for a print room on solvent resistance, flatness, repairability and cost.
What to take away
- Flatness matters more than hardness. A bench that rocks or dishes will spoil registration on every print.
- Glass is the best inking surface and a poor general bench. Use both, not one.
- Write down which surface is used for chemistry and how it gets cleaned, then keep to it.
- No food, no drink and pencils only near paper. That single rule prevents most avoidable damage.
The candidates compared
Flatness
- Toughened glass
- Excellent
- High pressure laminate
- Good
- Stainless steel
- Good
- Sealed hardwood
- Fair
- Melamine faced board
- Fair
Solvent
- Toughened glass
- Excellent
- High pressure laminate
- Good
- Stainless steel
- Excellent
- Sealed hardwood
- Poor
- Melamine faced board
- Fair
Repairable
- Toughened glass
- Replace only
- High pressure laminate
- Patchable
- Stainless steel
- Weldable
- Sealed hardwood
- Sandable
- Melamine faced board
- No
Cost
- Toughened glass
- Medium
- High pressure laminate
- Low
- Stainless steel
- High
- Sealed hardwood
- Medium
- Melamine faced board
- Very low
Glass wins for inking because you can scrape it flat with a blade and see the ink film against a light background. It loses as a general bench because it chips at the edges and does not take a clamp.
Bench surface comparison
Toughened glass
- Flatness
- Excellent
- Solvent
- Excellent
- Repairable
- Replace only
- Cost
- Medium
High pressure laminate
- Flatness
- Good
- Solvent
- Good
- Repairable
- Patchable
- Cost
- Low
Stainless steel
- Flatness
- Good
- Solvent
- Excellent
- Repairable
- Weldable
- Cost
- High
Laminate is the practical default for the main bench. It tolerates water, resists most cleanup solvents, and a damaged section can be replaced without rebuilding the frame.
Flatness is the specification that matters
Registration depends on the block, the paper and the bench all agreeing about where the plane is. A bench with a two millimeter dish across its width will print unevenly no matter how good the press is.
Check with a straight edge in three directions before you build on top of a frame. Shim the frame rather than the top. A separate flat printing board that you can lift off and store vertically solves the problem in rented rooms where you cannot rebuild anything.
Two surfaces, two jobs
Keep a chemistry surface and a paper surface, and do not let them swap. The chemistry surface takes trays, bottles and anything poured. The paper surface stays dry and gets wiped before every session.
The workplace analog is the written plan that laboratories keep. OSHA's laboratory standard requires a written chemical hygiene plan covering standard operating procedures and work practices for handling hazardous chemicals. A home studio version can be one page: which surface, which cleaner, which gloves, where the waste goes.
Handling rules a clean surface has to support
The National Archives publishes handling guidance for vendors working with records that reads like a checklist for a print bench. No smoking, eating or drinking in the work space. Hands clean and free of anything that could stain, including lotion. Only pencils near the material, never ballpoint or marker. No self-stick notes applied to anything.
Those rules exist because the damage they prevent is invisible until later. A hand cream fingerprint on a sheet of rag paper does not appear until the print is inked.
Our layout plan for a print room sets out where each surface belongs, and the guide to choosing the materials themselves covers what each finish resists.
Test any surface with the cleaner you actually use before committing to it. Manufacturer solvent ratings are written around industrial products, and the citrus-based washes common in printmaking behave differently from the ones those ratings assume.
