Composition - British Letterpress

Dissing, or Distributing Type

Painstaking as the process is to assemble individual characters to form a line of words, the process of putting it all back is only marginally easier. This task can only be avoided if you have the equipment to cast type, so get used to it!

We’ll assume you have the type on the composing stone having finished printing. You’ll need to slacken the quoins; remove the furniture and chase and put these things away. You’re left with a block of type. You’ll need to separate each different face so that you don’t mix the types within each case.

In your left hand (or non-dominant hand) take as much of the type as possible: start with single lines or parts of a line and work up to multiple lines. In your right hand (or dominant hand) take as many letters as you are comfortable with. This amount will grow with practice. Your grip should be just enough to hold the type but not too firm.

Advance each character from the line of type between your folded finger and thumb. It’s best to remember what characters you hold; so you don’t have to look at them and delay the process. Note the character and find the right place in the case for it. Have this ready to drop and hover over the right compartment, release the type to drop from about 1″ — 2″. Any more might damage the type; and you should never throw type back in the case.

If you drop a letter in to the incorrect box then search for that and correct the problem before moving on to the next piece of type. type dropped on the floor or another hard surface might be damaged and so should be inspected before it is returned to the case.

Spaces can be problematic because multiple space widths might have been used. If you can tell space widths from one another then they can be distributed in the same way as letters. If you’re not yet able to distinguish between each space then reserve these on the galley to sort later on. It’s useful to place them side-down on the galley and run your finger over them to ensure they are the same sidth as each other.

September 8, 2011

Early Rollers, Composition Rollers and Rubber Rollers

Printers’ rollers have occupied the greatest printing minds since the early 1800s. While the rotary letterpress machine should have improved production speeds, their potential was held back by the lack of rollers: just how could ink be transferred to the forme with speed and consistency? This article looks at early rollers, composition rollers and rubber rollers.

Early Rollers

Printers' ink ball or dabber — Printers’ ink ball or dabber

When using the original hand presses, printers used ink balls. A wooden handle and sheepskin bag filled with horsehair formed the ink ball, and these were used in pairs. The inker could ‘mill’ the ink between the balls and then apply ink to the forme before printing. This approach was used between in invention of the press and 1790, some 340 years.

With the introduction of the rotary press, printers simply modified their existing technology and built wooden rollers with a sheepskin cover filled with horsehair. While made with some precision, they could not coat the type effectively, and left a mark on the page where the stitching in the sheepskin cover did not transfer ink.

Composition Rollers

In 1818, Robert Harrild developed the first ‘composition roller’, made of glue (from calfskins) and treacle — his development was based on the process used by the Staffordshire Potteries to add patterns to pottery. While this mixture was tacky enough to carry and transfer ink, the ingredients led to an instability of the roller. The glue gives up water in dry atmospheres and shrinks and cracks. In damper conditions, the glue takes up moisture and the roller swells. Thomas de la Rue added glycerol (US: glycerine) to that original mix. Glycerol has a tendency to absorb moisture from the air and this balanced to a degree the effects on glue to produce a more stable roller. Rollers still had to be made to suit the atmospheric conditions and seasons — so rollers were made to different recipes in different parts of the world, and depending on whether it was summer or winter.

Making Composition Rollers

Just as printers were expected to make their own inks, they were also expected to be able to cast their own rollers. Presses (like the Arab) were supplied with roller cores (the central metal bar) and moulds for the composition. Printers would routinely melt down and re-cast composition rollers. A big problem was to prevent air bubbles from sitting on the edges of the roller, and causing small marks that transferred to the inked forme.

Commercial makers of composition rollers used a gatling gun to hold multiple moulds and pour composition mixture into all of them at one time.

Using Composition Rollers

Adana recommended four sets of rollers: two pairs of rollers each for summer and winter; one for colour work (including white) and one for black. Rollers would be used for colour first and then black. Rollers should be carefully cleaned and covered before storage using oil or petroleum jelly. An appropriate mix would be 10% medical paraffin plus ‘suffers grease’ (an engineers’ jelly).

Composition Rollers Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages of Composition Rollers

They are the cheapest rollers to make of the major roller materials
Ingredients can be varied to suit local conditions
They are supplied soft (typically 15 — 20 shore) and this can roll ink to multiple levels within a forme
They are easy to wash up
Composition rollers have a very smooth surface that can deliver a sharp appearance on printed material

Disadvantages of Composition Rollers

They are less stable than other rollers in different temperatures and humidity
Cuts in the roller will spread and widen
They cannot be made to the same accuracy as other rollers
They occasionally swell at the end

September 10, 2009

Further Bits and Pieces

Assuming you find or have found a small press and a few cases of type, what more will you need? Perhaps it’s rather a matter of identifying what else came with it? Type needs to be assembled, together with non-printing spacing material, into rectangles of metal, firmly locked together.

Those spaces resembling the shanks of the type are quads and the square section ones, approximately the same size as the shank of a capital M, are called em quads or muttons, those half that width are en quads or nuts. Thinner ones are used between words, em quads and thicker fill up the ends of short lines. To separate the lines of type, which if set solid might print an over-dense page, one needs sets of leads — strips of thin metal which, like quads are less than type-high — cut to lengths slightly less than the chosen width of a column of type set with an em quad at both ends of each line. Quads and spaces are interchangeable between typefaces of the same point size; nevertheless one needs a surprising amount — the same goes for leads.

To fill out the chase (the metal frame which fits onto the bed of the press) one needs a selection of lengths of wood, plastic or metal called reglet: which is also less than type-high. Large hollow Quads, called clumps,are also useful to fill out the chase. You must, however, leave space for quoins (expanding wedges) along two adjacent edges of the chase, these will, when tightened, lock the forme of type firmly in place.

To set lines of consistent width, one needs a composing or setting stick and it should be accurately square, rigid when locked to length, and light enough to hold with several lines of type assembled in it.

This guide kindly contributed by John R Smith of the Old Forge Press. Originally appeared in the newsletter of the Oxford Guild of Printers

August 24, 2007

Makeready

If it still won’t print evenly you must learn skills requiring more patience than any part of letterpress you’ve so far tackled. In its crudest form, make-ready involves putting more pressure on the bits that are weak or don’t print at all, thus making the low bits type-high.

A line of perhaps rather worn bold type and a few worn letters in a text can-when identified and their feet located on the underside of the forme-be raised by sticking on scraps of precisely cut tissue. In extreme cases a length of masking tape cut to width makes the job very easy, but as ever, start with a little and you can always add more! Beware of type which is ‘off its feet’, however. Areas or lines of type in which letters each print heavy on one side and weak on the other indicate loose setting and need this to be corrected ‘on the stone’ or by being put through the stick again — was your stick properly tight?

More correctly, makeready is the process of ensuring that each part of the forme receives sufficient ink and pressure to satisfy its individual requirement. Bold, solid areas of type or blocks need more ink-and more pressure-than do light, delicate areas. In a letterpress book-printing house a skilled press-man — as opposed to a mere machine-minder — would spend hours building up a carefully adjusted ‘contour map’ of ‘onion-skin’ and an extremely thin tissue paper. In a forme of type this might be on two levels, underlay to build up type starved of ink, overlay on the tympan or cylinder packing to increase pressure on areas sufficiently inked but under-impressed.

With mounted blocks, especially half-tones, in the forme, a third level, known as interlay might be necessary to reinforce dense shadows without filling-in the detail in the high-lights. The metal plate bearing the etched or engraved image was removed from its base or mount and to which it was generally fixed with tacks around the edge-and a pair of callipers used to carefully follow around the weak shadow areas identified at proofing, care being taken to avoid harming the face of the plate whilst scratching guide-lines on the back. With sufficient carefully torn contoured layers of tissue in place, the plate and its mount would be re-assembled and replaced in the forme.

Photographers will recognise a similarity between this process and the selective bleaching or intensifying of negatives, followed by dodging and burning in areas of the print, which differentiate a meaningful photograph from a trade-processed snapshot. Similarly, the skills and judgement involved in make-ready are not learn’t from books, but by patient trial and error-experience. When you marvel at the immense tonal range and sheer sparkle of photographs reproduced as letterpress half-tones with kiss impression on glossy ‘art’ paper in a really well printed book from the 1950s or 60s — or earlier — you’ll now have an idea of how it was achieved.

With patience, it’s quite possible to restore much of the visual quality of a dented, battered block bought from a junk shop, more important, it’s good practice for getting the best performance out of your second-hand type and your Adana or whatever. Give yourself time and have a go!