Kostiner 4 blade easel, how do you actually use it?

[Oscar Carlsson]

I recently purchased a used Kostiner 4 blade easel, the 40x40cm version. I've successfully made square prints in the middle of the paper (which was the main purpose of buying the easel), but the square isn't centered on the paper, which is weird.

I'm using 18x24cm (7x9 inches) paper, which I guide to the paper guides (the points marked 1 and 2 in the picture below, the shorter side against point 1).



By using these paper guides, the paper is offset from the midpoint of the easel (point 3 in the picture), which was more or less fine while making square prints but when trying to make an even 1 cm border on a ordinary 2x3-print this offset makes it really hard to get an even border.

I'm not really fond of reinventing the wheel, so instead of waste hours of time in the darkroom trying to figure out only this...what is it I'm doing wrong?

[David Brown]

I have both Kostiner and and the more common Saunders easels. With either type, I ignore the scales on the easel. Take a piece of paper the same size as your printing paper, and draw lines with a ruler where you wish the edges of the image to be. Place this paper in the easel and set the blades to the lines on the paper.

As to the "guides" you circled in the photo, you only use one or the other, not both at once. And the edge of the paper sits inside the guide. This allows square alignment without being fussy under very dim (safelight) lighting.

[Paul VanAudenhove]

I've never used a Kostiner easel before, so I may have this wrong, but...
Have you tried using just one paper guide instead of two? I would think that using just one paper guide would give you more options on positioning the paper on the easel.

FWIW, I have a Saunders easel whose paper guides for different sized paper are parallel, and i have not had any trouble obtaining equal borders.

[ath]

I just glue for pieces of graph paper on the corners of reject prints. I place this in the easel and adjust the blades.

[Jim Noel]

I have used a Kostiner easel since he gave me on more than 25 years ago. They are hard to beat. Some of the features were designed by his wife to make the easel easier for a novice.
One of the paper guides is for vertical prints, and the other for horizontal. Use only one at a time. They are slightly longer than the edge of most current papers because they were designed to allow the slightly over-sized papers which one used to encounter. It is necessary to place the edge of the paper in the middle of the slot, not against one edge.
Are you using the white sliders to set the borders? they will guarantee equal borders.

[David Brown]

Hope these help:

[Oscar Carlsson]

Thanks everyone! I thought those paper guides were used to align the paper and not to insert the papers into. Now I only have to find some more time to go printing...