Oversize watercolour paper

An artist friend who draws and paints in dry and aqueous media on
watercolour paper wants to begin working on an extremely large
scale. She currently uses an Arches paper that comes in a 52 inch
roll and is looking for suggestions on how to join sheets of this
paper into 8 x 8 foot sheets.  Her working method is to  staple her
papers to the wall of her studio and work very wet, sometimes
wetting the paper and letting it dry many times over the course of
several weeks.  She doesn't mind seeing a seam as long as it:

    Hold together with repeated wetting and drying

    Accepts her wet and dry media about the same way as the rest of
    the sheet (same absorbency, same tooth or surface texture)

    Doesn't react wildly differently from the rest of the sheet in
    terms of planar distortion

    Is relatively easy for her to put together herself in her
    studio.

She wonders:

    What adhesive should she use

    What technique she should use to join the papers (sand edges of
    papers with wide overlap?  Abut edges and join panels with a
    very wide strip behind the paper?  Other ideas?)

Any advice or cautions from someone who've already experimented with
making big sheets like this?  (She can't afford to waste much paper
on experiments gone wrong.)

Also, are there any big papers out there that she hasn't discovered?

Karen Potje
Chef, Service de la conservation/restauration
Centre Canadien d'Architecture


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 21:43
               Distributed: Wednesday, February 13, 2008
                       Message Id: cdl-21-43-021
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