How To Flatten Old Wrinkled Chair Mat

I bought one of those clear hard plastic office chair mats from staples months ago and have tried repeated times to unroll it.

How to flatten old wrinkled chair mat.

Every time i attempt to unroll it it keeps curling back up. It is difficult to completely eliminate any trace of a wrinkle from a print but a lot can be done to decrease the appearance. That doesn t fix wrinkles in paper it causes them. Gravity will get the mat to behave though.

After the mat has warmed up carefully unroll it and place it on the floor with the bow up studs cleats down adding weight to hold the mat in place if necessary the mat should gradually flatten over a period of a few hours thicker mats could take longer. I can t get it to lay flat long enough to put it up my chair. Unroll the mat and repeat the process across the width to remove the creases and to make sure the mat lays flat in the footwell. 2 3 books mailing tube the poster came in c.

This was a 200 chair mat. This video was made to help my clients flatten their mailed prints without damaging them. I think i m going to call them tomorrow. Flattening photographs is a delicate process to prevent as you so rightly point out cracking the emulsion.

Lay the cardboard out on a piece of plywood or a flat solid wood table with the largest convexity or convexities where the cardboard is warped to bulge outward facing up. The safest way to add moisture to paper or fiber based photographs as compared to modern resin coated photographic papers is to leave it for a few hours in a tightly closed space with a source of humidity. Yes a water bath is a horrible idea. I can t imagine a company buying 100 chair mats and having somebody need to heat each one up with a heatgun just to unroll it.

That can be problematic because the edges then want to stay curled up instead of laying flat. But you can iron the wrinkled paper. Place the mats outside in direct sunlight if you live in a region where temperatures exceed 75 degrees fahrenheit. Leave the mats and allow the heat of the sun to release the tension of the fibers naturally.

I expected a luxury experience. A little heat and patience can go a long way to restoring your favorite work of art. It s a really thick hard plastic with those sharp pointy things underneath that sticks into the carpet. Although there are many different types of plastic mats from exercise mats to floor protectors they likely come packaged or are stored in the same way.