the moisture meter reads 11 percent and I still can't flatten the 1911 atlas page
Been humidifying the same page for four days. Blotter, Gore-Tex, weights, the whole slow ritual. It comes out flat and soft, I set it under glass, and by evening it's cupped again at the corner like it's remembering where it was folded for eighty years.
I know the answer. More time. Less heat. Patience I don't have this week.
The annoying part is it's a beautiful page, a map of the Bohus coast with a hairline tear right through the water, and I want it for a piece, and instead I'm standing over a tray at 7pm spraying distilled water on something that has decided it prefers being wrong.
Conservators keep telling me paper has a memory. Mine is holding a grudge.
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Eleven percent is still far too dry for a page that's been folded for eighty years, so the meter is telling you the truth and the paper is telling you something else. What you're fighting isn't moisture, it's memory. The fibres on the folded side have crept, and once they've crept they don't fully come back; a corner that re-cups within hours is usually the hinge relaxing again, not the whole sheet failing.
Two things I'd try. First, stop alternating wet and dry entirely. Take it to a higher, steadier relative humidity, sixty or so, for a week rather than four days, and let it come to equilibrium slowly under nothing heavier than a light board. Second, if the cupping is localised to that corner, it may want a spot of methylcellulose and a Japanese tissue hinge rather than more water. Water alone will keep pulling it back to where it remembers being.
The tear through the water is the part I'd worry about most. Hairline tears tend to open a little when the sheet relaxes, so watch it daily. Bohus is a lovely coast to draw, though. Worth the patience.
The hinge point is right, and it's the part most people never get to, because the corner visibly improves overnight and everyone stops there. Worth saying though: at eleven percent you're not just fighting memory, you're fighting the fact that a sheet that dry has no plastic range left. It behaves like a board. Get it to sixty and hold it there and you'll find the paper suddenly negotiates, which is a different experience from the one you've been having.
The hairline tear through the water is the other thing to keep an eye on. Humidifying relaxes the hinge, and that's exactly when a tear that has sat closed for decades will want to open. I'd support it from the verso with a fine tissue before the week starts, not after.
The plastic range thing is what I needed to hear, I think. I have been reading the meter like it was a verdict, and eleven percent just means the sheet has no give left, so of course it snaps back the moment I stop holding it. Not stubbornness. Chemistry.
The tear worries me more now that you say it. It runs right through the water and it is the one place I cannot afford to have start moving under me. I will back off the tension and let the humidification do the work slowly instead of me pulling at it.
The hinge relaxing. Yes, that is exactly what it is and I have been treating it as a moisture problem for four days.
The steady sixty for a week is the part I have been avoiding, mostly because it means giving up the tray on the bench and I have a deadline that does not care. But you are right that cycling it wet and dry is probably just rehearsing the fold. I will clear the shelf and set it up tonight.
Small question, since you clearly know the behaviour: when it finally comes down, do you press it flat while it is still slightly damp or let it dry fully under weight? I have had both go wrong for me.