coating with rollers, vellum, Fabriano Artistico

I have been trying to coat paper with silver gelatin emulsion using
roller method. The goal is to make the coating as even as possible and
as smooth as possible. Rather constant coating weight is also
important.

I've found two general strategies work reasonably. One is to coat with
soaked roller with very gentle pressure. This gives me a lot of
emulsion in the area where I stop the roller, but the surface is
smooth. Another is to use tightly squeezed roller with strong
pressure. This gives me even coating but the surface tends to be
textured, even with the roller that claims to give very smooth
surface. Is there a better technique than these?

Following the discussion here some time ago that vellum gives very
sharp prints, I gave it a try. What a disappointment. The paper gets
reticulated a moment after coating, even if I coat very fast. If I
coat slowly, it'll reticulate while coating. Is this just the
particular paper I bought? The paper is 70 g/m^2 and it was the
heaviest vellum I found in my local store. Also, it was almost
impossible to coat with enough coating weight to achieve satisfactory
contrast and Dmax. I wonder if users of other processes can get by
with much thinner coating than mine... The paper itself was strong
enough in processing solution and washing water.

I am also trying Fabriano Artistico pure white "soft press" 300 g/m^2.
I asked for hot press but they said they don't have it and gave me
soft press as the closest surface. It didnt look very smooth surface
but I tried it anyway. I coated this paper with emulsion without any
additional sizing, but the paper seems to dry much flatter than other
papers I've tried (mostly Rives BFK and Magnani Pescia, both
300g/m^2). (I didn't print/process this batch of paper because it was
time to coat my teeth with Sangiovese...)

--
Ryuji Suzuki
"You have to realize that junk is not the problem in and of itself.
Junk is the symptom, not the problem."
(Bob Dylan 1971; source: No Direction Home by Robert Shelton)