British Letterpress

Tag: Guide

  • Taking an Arab Apart

    Taking an Arab Apart

    This is an account of dis­man­tling a Crown Folio Arab Plat­en. The machine is ear­ly (Ser­i­al Num­ber 1086 c. 1892) but has had a num­ber of safe­ty fea­tures fit­ted. The guide below shows the major steps and will be added to. There’s a spe­cial sec­tion at the foot of this page about the brak­ing sys­tem.

    The main body of the Machine

    The start­ing point: a com­plete Arab

    Arab: com­plete machine with spare ​“Arab Wheel” shown

    Ink­ing Disk Removed (remem­ber to replace the bolt under­neath).

    Arab: Ink­ing Disc Removed

    Feed board removed

    Arab: feed boards removed

    One of the ink­ing arms removed. Remem­ber that they are under the pres­sure of a spring so you have to keep hold of the arm as you release. In prepa­ra­tion for this you should have removed the rollers and stocks; and also removed the met­al bar which links left and right roller arms: keep this safe!

    Arab: ink­ing arms removed

    Over-arch­ing guard removed by unbolt­ing one site of the guard bars (not pic­tured)

    There are two strong springs which force the front plat­en towards to back plat­en. These need to be un-hooked while the front plat­en is almost ver­ti­cal. The two col­lars and hooks on the plat­en site need to be loos­ened so that the bar can be slid out lat­er on.

    Arab: Plat­en Springs Removed (look­ing from front to back under the machine)

    The two bolts on the left of the front plat­en must be removed so that the front plat­en is held only on the sup­port­ing bar. Remove the sup­port­ing bar and lift the front plat­en out. This is fair­ly del­i­cate as it will still con­tain the frisket motion.

    Arab: front plat­en removed

    The Arab wheel can now be slid from left to right and removed from the machine

    Arab wheel removed

    The ​‘rock horse’ is now removed. This is the U‑shaped met­al cast­ing which forces the front plat­en upwards. This rests in two slots is the frame cov­ered by two semi-cir­cu­lar cast­ings bolt­ed down.

    Arab: rock horse removed

    The back plat­en is now removed as a sin­gle large unit: includ­ing the plat­en and the sup­port­ing cast­ing. This is very heavy but will save trou­ble because the back plat­en will not have to be re-adjust­ed. The eccen­tric is also removed: this is the rod which holds the impres­sion lever.

    Arab: back plat­en removed

    The braking system

    Side view of the brak­ing sys­tem

    Arab: brak­ing sys­tem from side

    Top view of the brak­ing sys­tem

    Arab: top of brak­ing sys­tem
  • After Printing

    After Printing

    You’ve fin­ished your glo­ri­ous work at the print­ing press; sure­ly it’s time for tea, buns and a rest?  I’m sor­ry to say there’s more work to do.  We’ll look here at the major steps that will assure you a tidy and clean print shop and an eas­i­er life.  Remem­ber that the soon­er you clean after print­ing fin­ish­es, the quick­er the job is!  This guide cov­ers hand-pow­ered press­es only: more indus­tri­al press­es have almost-auto­mat­ic clean­ing mech­a­nisms.

    Printed Sheets

    You first need to make sure your print­ed sheets are safe.  You need to be away from the press (so as not to suf­fer acci­den­tal spills from clean­ing); free from dis­tur­bance (so as not to cause set-off on the backs of sheets); and per­haps some­where that is not cold so that dry­ing is not inhib­it­ed.

    Cleaning Equipment

    At the least you’ll need a sol­vent and rags.  While there might still be spe­cial­ist clean­ing prod­ucts, I’ve been using white spir­it or lighter flu­id.  Lighter flu­id is espe­cial­ly use­ful for small­er press­es where the noz­zle can be used to good effect.  Fol­low any safe­ty instruc­tions that come with the prod­uct.  I know some print­ers use veg­etable oil to act as a vehi­cle for ink, mak­ing it eas­i­er to clean a press.  My expe­ri­ence is lim­it­ed in this area but I found it left a dif­fi­cult residue on rollers.

    On rags, cot­ton is real­ly the most use­ful mate­r­i­al as it is absorbent.  Be sure to buy rags that have all but­tons, zips etc. removed and that have been washed a num­ber of times so lint has been removed.

    Also use­ful would be brush­es of var­i­ous sizes: from tooth­brush size to shoe brush size but take care to make sure the bris­tles aren’t so stiff that they might dam­age the type.

    Cleaning the Forme

    You need to first clean the forme.  Remove the chase from the press and set it down on a sol­id sur­face.  Using a sol­vent damp­en a rag and wipe it over the sur­face of the type tak­ing as much ink as pos­si­ble away.  Use a clean, dry cloth to wipe away any excess.  If you splash the sol­vent around and then wipe, the inky sol­vent has a ten­den­cy to get between fur­ni­ture and type and lead to dirt and so inac­cu­ra­cy.

    For dried-on ink, apply the sol­vent to a brush and then brush light­ly on the type.  Allow this to sink in and wipe away with a cloth.  Repeat this process as need­ed until the ink is cleared.

    Once clean you need to decide on the next step: fur­ther print­ing of the same forme will demand that you store the whole thing on a chase rack, or even back on the clean press.  You might keep that job by remov­ing the fur­ni­ture and chase and stor­ing the type on a gal­ley.  Oth­er­wise you’ll have to take the type out and dis­trib­ute it back in the case.

    Cleaning the Press

    Known also as wash­ing-up, this process is cru­cial to the qual­i­ty of your next print run.  It’s espe­cial­ly impor­tant when chang­ing colours or work­ing in white or metal­lic inks.  Very high qual­i­ty print­ers demand that the press is cleaned, worked in white ink, and cleaned again when chang­ing from a dark to a light colour.

    Use as dirty a rag as pos­si­ble and damp­en it with the sol­vent, mak­ing the rag wet but not so much that sol­vent is drip­ping from it.  With the rollers clear of the ink disk or drum, wipe this up first: fold­ing and re-fold­ing the rag and also advanc­ing the disk or drum so that all areas are cov­ered.

    Turn­ing your atten­tion to the rollers, advance the press until the first roller touch­es the ink­ing disk or drum.  Re-fold­ing the rag rub this across the length of the roller.  Advance the press grad­u­al­ly to expose the oth­er areas of the rollers and con­tin­ue the process.  Do this for each roller.

    At this point you should have removed the bulk of the ink from the press and rollers.  Start now with a clean­er rag and repeat the process until the press is clear of ink.

    Finally

    Your press will always repay being looked after.  Take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to clean the oth­er parts of the press with a light­ly oiled rag; remem­ber that she might also need a lit­tle oil­ing here and there.  Final­ly you might cov­er your press up: Adana machines came with a plas­tic cov­er.  Your press will look like new next time you start work.

    Now have a cup of tea and a bun.

  • Metallic Inks

    Metallic Inks

    Metal­lic inks are now sup­plied ready mixed, but you might like to exper­i­ment with old­er types of inks.  The basic premise is that the var­nish (a clear vehi­cle for the colour) is mixed with a pow­der (typ­i­cal­ly made of ground up met­al) to cre­ate an ink.  This approach was need­ed in the past because the two had a ten­den­cy to sep­a­rate.  Sil­ver ink was first to be sup­plied ready mixed because alu­mini­um is light and so did not sep­a­rate.  Gold­en inks relied on heav­ier met­als that had a ten­den­cy to fall to the bot­tom of the con­tain­er and so ruin the over­all ink.

    The process is to set the pow­er out with­in the rec­om­mend­ed pro­por­tions by weight, typ­i­cal­ly —

    • 3 Var­nish: 1 Gold
    • 2 Var­nish: 1 Sil­ver

    But man­u­fac­tur­er’s advice would over-rule these sug­ges­tions.  The pow­er should have a lit­tle well made in it and the var­nish should be added to this.  A test for readi­ness is to use an ink knife to scoop up the ink and make sure that you can cre­ate a three inch strand of con­tin­u­ous ink flow­ing.

    Too much pow­der will leave too lit­tle var­nish to car­ry the ink and this will leave the pow­der on the sur­face of the fin­ished job which will be prone to rub­bing off.

    Final­ly, whether using ready-mixed or tra­di­tion­al metal­lic inks, you could exper­i­ment by adding a lit­tle colour to see if you can achieve a metal­lic coloured effect on your work.

  • Simple Bookbinding

    Simple Bookbinding

    If you are think­ing of assem­bling your fold­ed pages using a domes­tic or office sta­pler, think again. Such machines use clum­sy rec­tan­gu­lar-sec­tion mild steel sta­ples which are prone to rust. Bindery wire stitch­ers use slim­mer wire, which for pub­li­ca­tions meant to last can be cop­per or stain­less steel — much less like­ly to cor­rode and rot the paper. We should there­fore learn and apply sim­ple skills no longer prac­tised by the mass-pro­duc­ers

    This will be suf­fi­cient to deal with a con­tri­bu­tion to the Jubilee project [An OGP ini­tia­tive]. A mul­ti-sec­tion bind­ing is not real­ly more demand­ing — it just takes longer — and there are help­ful books, new or sec­ond-hand; recre­ation­al class­es at cer­tain local adult edu­ca­tion cen­tres will take you fur­ther.

    Notes on Binding
    Notes on Bind­ing

    This arti­cle by John R Smith of the Old Forge Press

  • Letterpress From Scratch

    Letterpress From Scratch

    The let­ter­press print­ing process is one of the old­est ways of get­ting the print­ed word on to a page. It relies on a phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of each let­ter being inked and then pressed against the paper — and this is why it’s both inter­est­ing and expen­sive. Think­ing a lit­tle fur­ther about it for each page the print­er needs a piece of met­al to rep­re­sent every sin­gle char­ac­ter; a way of apply­ing ink to each char­ac­ter and a machine to force the met­al and paper togeth­er. It fol­lows that chang­ing from bold to ital­ic, for exam­ple, will need a total­ly new set of met­al char­ac­ters rather than a few clicks of a mouse. Oth­er print­ing process­es like lith­o­g­ra­phy or dig­i­tal print­ing are more flex­i­ble, quick and less expen­sive. But while com­mer­cial let­ter­press is in decline there are many who are start­ing from scratch with this won­der­ful process.

    This arti­cle looks briefly at this resur­gence of inter­est in let­ter­press, why you might like it and some help to begin enjoy­ing this fas­ci­nat­ing pas­time.

    So why do peo­ple want to get into this arcane world? The biggest rea­son I can find is that it offers a hands-on imme­di­a­cy that oth­er meth­ods can’t offer. The whole process feeds the sens­es: the cold­ness and weight of met­al type; the rhythm of print­ing machines cycling qui­et­ly; the smell of oil and ink and the great sense of see­ing a won­der­ful print­ed page. Our grow­ing demand for the ​‘one-off’ or the home-grown trans­lates to let­ter­press where each item has been han­dled, pre­pared and checked indi­vid­u­al­ly.

    It’s a con­strain­ing process but allows a cer­tain free­dom which inspires lots of design­ers. The time tak­en can induce a con­cen­tra­tion which excludes the imme­di­ate world. In many ways let­ter­press is the antithe­sis of the mod­ern graph­ics work. It pro­vides a won­der­ful and absorb­ing pas­time that demands just as much time, space and mon­ey as you would like to allow.

    Let’s look now at how you can get into this world. First, you should estab­lish a pur­pose for your ven­ture. Some peo­ple come to let­ter­press to make mon­ey. I’ll be frank and say that you’ll need to be very good, have plen­ty of time and effort to be able to make a prof­it — try to begin with a ​‘plea­sure as prof­it’ approach to test the waters first. Many of us have a mild obses­sion with typog­ra­phy and let­ter­press is a won­der­ful way of being immersed in the detail of type and design. Com­mon terms in dig­i­tal design: points and picas, lead­ing and white space all appear as three-dimen­sion­al objects bring­ing a new clar­i­ty to your think­ing about the print­ed page.

    You might want to devel­op new skills. I’ve espe­cial­ly enjoyed the engi­neer­ing side of let­ter­press: tak­ing old and dirty machines, clean­ing them, mak­ing small repairs and get­ting them run­ning again. There’s a min­i­mal out­lay in terms of tools and the equip­ment is so well made that it with­stands the efforts of the ama­teur.

    Armed with a pur­pose, you need to speak to some­one about let­ter­press. There are many won­der­ful online com­mu­ni­ties out there cater­ing for the let­ter­press new­bie, but most of the expe­ri­ence rests with the job­bing print­er on your high street who still isn’t on the infor­ma­tion super­high­way. Many print­ers are keen to help new let­ter­press print­ers and you can’t afford to miss out this step — ​‘word of mouth’ is still the biggest source of infor­ma­tion in the let­ter­press world. If you have no luck local­ly (and the decline in com­mer­cial let­ter­press might mean you might meet blank faces) then you’ll have to con­tact a ​‘fine book’ or ​‘pri­vate press’ print­er and they too will help new print­ers when they can.

    Once you have found some­one, you can ask some of the more detailed let­ter­press ques­tions: how did you start print­ing? is there any equip­ment avail­able local­ly? where would I get the ​‘con­sum­ables’ like ink and paper? You need also to ask about get­ting some hands-on expe­ri­ence. Are there any local class­es, enthu­si­as­tic print­ers or pro­fes­sion­al print­ers who would be will­ing to give you some time with them? Take some time to get into let­ter­press as much as you can while you exper­i­ment with this as a hob­by.

    You’ll now have a much bet­ter feel for whether let­ter­press is for you. Let’s take stock for a moment about what lies ahead — you need to decide how much time, space and mon­ey you can afford to invest in let­ter­press. There are plen­ty of guides that can take you from here: decid­ing on a par­tic­u­lar machine, the act of print­ing and devel­op­ing a style. One key point: you can get the ben­e­fits of let­ter­press from the most mod­est of equip­ment — there is no need to put off print­ing through lack of space or mon­ey — start small.

    On now to some top tips for your next steps –

    • Remem­ber that there’s a lan­guage bar­ri­er. Just as web design­ers wince when novices talk of using tables for lay­out; print­ers share their own lan­guage with its own nuances — the point and picas, lead­ing, formes and founts are all spe­cial­ist terms. Give your let­ter­press guide a sense of your enthu­si­asm by using the right terms
    • Set some para­me­ters for your­self. It’s easy to acquire all man­ner of things and you’ll very quick­ly run out of space. Work out what you need to get hold of and where it will go when it’s home. In terms of finances cheap press­es can soon esca­late in cost when rig­ging and mov­ing is includ­ed
    • Soak up the let­ter­press resources on the web
    • Steal­ing John Ryder’s words, see ​‘plea­sure as prof­it’ and enjoy your new hob­by before tak­ing on pay­ing work

    Offline help

    There are many books about let­ter­press, but few start from the posi­tion of the ama­teur tak­ing their first steps. I’d rec­om­mend John Ryder’s Print­ing for Plea­sure and J. Ben Leiber­man’s Print­ing as a Hob­by but unfor­tu­nate­ly these are out of print — try look­ing for sec­ond-hand copies of them. For prac­ti­cal help Gen­er­al Print­ing (re-print­ed by Liber Aper­tus Press) gives an excel­lent illus­trat­ed guide to each step in the process.

  • A Small Printing Office

    A Small Printing Office

    Big type founders used to sup­ply ​‘com­plete print­ing offices’ described in great detail in their cat­a­logues. They might include hun­dreds of pounds of type for a news­pa­per set com­plete­ly by hand.

    Small­er con­cerns have more mod­est needs; and the require­ments for a print­ing office for the cur­rent small print­er aren’t dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from those of fifty years ago. This list is adapt­ed from both Print­ing for Plea­sure by John Ryder and oth­er book­lets on small print­ing.

    A Small Press

    Ryder sug­gests Adana machines (espe­cial­ly the Adana QH), or Mod­el press­es. Rollers will be need­ed

    Type

    The wide­spread advice is to choose one face and stick with it.  Once you have a set­tled view of the type you want, the recomme­da­tions are –

    • From Print­ing for Plea­sure
      • Two ​‘card founts’ of 12pt, 18pt and 24pt Roman (for 12pt, this would be around 20A 32a)
      • One ​‘card fount’ of 12pt, 18pt and 24pt Ital­ic (at 12pt, this would be around 10A 16a)
    • From Basic Print­ing: Let­ter­press for the Begin­ner by the BPS
      • 2kg (c. 9A 18a) of 18pt Bold
      • 2kg (c. 20A 40a) of 12pt Bold
      • 2kg (or 4kg of finances allow) of 12pt Roman
      • 2kg of 12pt Ital­ic
      • 1kg (c. 22A 44a) of 8pt Roman

    Oth­er things from type founders that are need­ed are –

    • Spac­ing (c. 1/2kg per size)
    • Quads
    • Hair spaces
    • Leads
    • Bor­ders:

    Other Items

    • Fur­ni­ture: alu­mini­um, plas­tic (Resalite) or wood — 2 or 3 times are area of the chase of the machine
    • Quoins: expand­ing met­al.  May also need nar­row mar­gin quoins
    • Print­ing rules (brass or from the type founder)
    • Reglet

    Tools

    • Com­pos­ing stick
    • Bod­kin
    • Tweez­ers
    • Plan­ing block
    • Type­scale
    • Impos­ing sur­face
    • Lead cut­ter
    • Ink knife
    • Hand rollers

    Storage

    • Type cas­es and cab­i­nets
    • Gal­leys
  • Composition

    Composition

    It’s a won­der­ful feel­ing to have a met­al chase in front of you filled with type, know­ing that it’s only held in with the wood­en and met­al spac­ing and the expand­ing met­al quoins you’ve used. It’s a dif­fi­cult thing to mas­ter, but prac­tice is your friend.

    You need to start by assem­bling the type in a com­pos­ing stick, then trans­fer­ring this to a lev­el sur­face to ​‘lock up’. There are some addi­tion­al bits and pieces you’ll need

    This is an iter­a­tive process and you’ll have to go over set­ting type and lock­ing up mul­ti­ple times before you can be sure it’s safe to attach to the press. The steps are out­lined in this guide to lock­ing up

    Where the type meets the impres­sion of the press there’s the tricky busi­ness of mak­eready: get­ting all of your type, blocks of images and oth­er things to be print­ed to be per­fect­ly lev­el so that you can get the right impres­sion on the press. There’s a few point­ers in this tech­ni­cal notes on ​‘mak­eready’

  • Cutting Paper

    Cutting Paper

    Whether or not you aspire to print­ing books and pam­phlets, a paper-cut­ter will prove use­ful. Due to safe­ty reg­u­la­tions, clo­sure of small foundries and forges and short­ages of skills, new ones are either crum­mi­ly made or out­ra­geous­ly expen­sive.

    Thank­ful­ly there is a float­ing pop­u­la­tion of those long-since out­lawed from schools and offices because they lack safe­ty guards; most of them date from an era when things were accu­rate­ly machined and built to last. Most cities have a firm which spe­cialis­es in sharp­en­ing trim­mer and guil­lo­tine blades, too — try Yel­low Pages or ask a local print­er who he uses.

    Don’t be fright­ened; if you can safe­ly use an un-guard­ed Adana and are suf­fi­cient­ly polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect to have an IQ in excess of 3 or 4, you’ll be per­fect­ly safe, and in any case they are less dan­ger­ous than the fear­some alter­na­tive of sharp knife and steel straight-edge. Just don’t let the cat use it!

    The unguard­ed card or board-cut­ter (1) is most ver­sa­tile, being capa­ble, with care, of cut­ting lengths far in excess of its blade. Small guil­lotines can quick­ly trim the un-even edges of quite thick part­ly bound books.

    Notes on Guillotines
    Notes on Guil­lotines

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

  • Further Bits and Pieces

    Further Bits and Pieces

    Composing Sundries
    Com­pos­ing Sun­dries

    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

  • Small Presses: Getting the Most from the Least

    Small Presses: Getting the Most from the Least

    The heav­ier pro­fes­sion­al machines, designed to print formes involv­ing bold type and blocks gen­er­al­ly have a set of rollers ded­i­cat­ed to dis­trib­ut­ing and prepar­ing or ​‘milling’ the ink and anoth­er set, the forme rollers, which apply that ink to the type. The lighter trea­dle or pow­ered ​‘job­bing’ platens and the table-top hand platens make do with just one set of, usu­al­ly only two, rollers to per­form both func­tions. The sheer sim­plic­i­ty of table-top platens such as Adanas and those small trea­dle or pow­ered platens with an ​‘impres­sion throw-off’ allows one to fool their basic mech­a­nisms into behav­ing as though they have at least twice as many rollers which results in a bet­ter ink film and, thus bet­ter print­ing. By run­ning a thin­ner film of well-loos­ened ink and rolling the forme twice or more for each impres­sion your lit­tle press will pro­duce far bet­ter work.

    The builders of larg­er plat­en press­es spent a lot of mon­ey on mech­a­nisms to sim­u­late what old hand-press print­ers using Albions, etc. called a ​‘sink­ing pull’. This allows the forme to dwell in con­tact with the paper rather than jump straight on and off and again the result is a bet­ter print­ed sheet. This is eas­i­ly achieved with a hand-press, whether Albion or Adana and well worth the lit­tle extra time involved.

    Adanas, in par­tic­u­lar, com­pro­mise ink­ing to allow one to print on paper larg­er than the plat­en. To keep the roller tracks below the plat­en the met­al or plas­tic run­ners at the ends of the rollers are of larg­er diam­e­ter than the actu­al roller. The sur­face speed of the roller over the type is thus dif­fer­ent from that of the run­ner which results in the roller skid­ding slight­ly across the type which caus­es ​‘ink slur’ rather than an even coat­ing. If print­ing paper suf­fi­cient­ly small­er than the inner width of the chase, one can over­come this by fit­ting a fair­ly thick piece of wood rule, to act as a ​‘type-high bear­er’ for the rollers, at each end of the chase. This will also neces­si­tate remov­ing the ​‘patent head-lay’ fit­ted to most Adanas (since its ends would crush the rule), and using tra­di­tion­al front or head and side-lays. These can be either quads glued to the tym­pan, slips of fold­ed card attached with mask­ing tape, or if you are lucky enough to find some, met­al gauge pins, some of which are adjustable, which are pushed into suit­ably placed holes pricked or slit into the top sheet of the tym­pan.

    Adana’s head-lay and frisket grip­per fin­gers are infa­mous for crush­ing the type of the unwary — con­vert­ing to card lays attached after tak­ing a proof impres­sion is part of the answer. The 8 x 5 has two frisket fin­gers which are best replaced by stretch­ing the sort of rub­ber band the post­man drops on your front path between the frisket arms. This will not dam­age the type of the absent-mind­ed, but will still lift the print­ed sheet clear of the type forme.

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