coating paper maps for outdoor use

I’ll be going on a fairly remote canoe trip this summer, and am putting together some maps. I’ve gotten quite a number of maps printed off on standard paper in color and would like to try to protect them on my trip. I’ve tried spraying previous paper maps with silicon waterproofing material with some success, but I think I’d like to protect them and make them a little more robust. Is there something (cheap, and easily purchased) that I can coat them with; or should I stick with the silicon oil coating? The wife suggested lamination, but I don’t have easy access to a laminating device (of course I haven’t looked very hard). I’ve got ~50 pages of maps, and would like to keep the cost down while still effectively coating them. I do have some epoxy resin, but that doesn’t seem like a reasonable solution either.

Basically, I want them waterproof, and more tear resistant…Any ideas?

Laminate them.

Aquaseal them.

I’ve used the product. It works as advertised.

If you want to go the laminating route, chekc your yellow pages for teacher supply stores. If you have a local Lakeshore franchise, they’ll almost definitely have a laminator that you can use for a nominal charge. Many other teacher supply stores will have the same thing. A copy shop or printer may also be able to do it for you.

I would also recommend laminating them. scotandrsn’s suggestion of a teacher supply store is a good (and cheap) idea.

I just have to ask though…where exactly are you going that you need 50 pages of maps?

I used cold laminating sheets that I buy at the local Paper Clip Depot. They come in boxes of maybe 50. They are heavy plastic sheets with adhesive on one side. You peel the backing then stick them together with your sheet in between. No equipment required. Doing 50 of them would take a little while, but so would any other method. They would also add a sigificant amount of weight but if you’re not backpacking that may not matter.

It’s liquid laminate.

My exactly the maps you need already waterproofed.

s/My/Buy/

Well, I don’t really NEED that many high resolution maps (1inch=~0.25miles); I just like to have them…It’s part of the fun of planning the trip. It’s about 110 miles of canoeing.

I wonder how many pages I can do with 4 oz of aquaseal (at $5 a bottle). Maybe I’ll have to look more closely at lamination.

Used to make flight maps out of all kinds of things. Would take say, many ½" to the mile county road maps, with say a pipeline route laid out on it. Lay them out and splice them all together. Get a roll of clear shelf paper from Wally*World and lay a long strip down the lines. Trim them on the floor with a razor and I could have a 50-60 foot map in one single roll that I could handle in the cockpit with one hand.

Ask any pipeline patrol pilot about roll maps.

Works with any scale. Flexible and does not get out of order nor do individual sheets get lost.

If you have printed them out on a normal 8.5 X 11 stock or whatever, just tape them end to end in the proper order and lay them on the floor and use the clear shelf paper. Will be a nice handy size and will be surprisingly durable.

Do not put the self sticky on both sides as that makes it terrible to roll.

If you figure it will need to more protected, keep it in a zip-loc.

If you want to swim with them, laminate both sides and keep as individual sheets, still under $10 total cost.

YMMV

Check with your local larger print shops about laminating. They often have large laminators that use rolls of film maybe 30 inches wide or more by whatever length the roll is. The film comes in different weights. They can feed any number of documents of different sizes and shapes into the machine. When they come out the other end, they can be cut apart.

The shop I used to work in charged by the foot and the price was quite low compared to the places that laminated one sheet at a time.

In addition to the specific vendor UncleRojelio pointed out, you can talk to just about any outdoor supply shop about purchasing waterproofed maps. The USGS has many of their maps available printed on plastic, and there are companies that produce custom fishing and rafting maps on waterproof/tearproof paper.

Laminators are cheap, by the way. The disadvantage to buying a laminator to do your maps is that the cheap ones can only handle paper 8 or 9 inches wide, it’s very difficult to fold the laminated maps, and a stack of 50 laminated maps would be both bulky and heavy.