You might have tens of quoins in your let­ter­press set-up. They seem to mul­ti­ply in my works, and I occa­sion­al­ly turn up a cache of quoins that seems to have appeared overnight. Print­ers need a sol­id sur­face from which to print and quoins are the devices that force every­thing in the forme against each oth­er to hold every­thing in the chase togeth­er.

Wedge-Type Quoins

The first way of get­ting mate­r­i­al to expand and fill space was to have two wedges, act­ing against each oth­er to push out­wards. These were orig­i­nal­ly wood, with a spe­cial tool — a shoot­ing stick — used with a ham­mer to force the two wedges to expand by being forced against each oth­er. The May and June British Print­er for 1912 com­ment­ed on the con­tin­u­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the prim­i­tive pair of wood­en quoins.

This was refined with cast iron wedges hav­ing both a chan­nel inside and teeth so that they would main­ly move left and right, rather than in all direc­tions, and so a cog-shaped key could be used to dri­ve the quoins apart. These are Hempel quoins and while using the same prin­ci­ples as the first wood­en quoins were still in wide­spread use at the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Wickersham Quoins

The prob­lem with wedge-type quoins is that as a print­er you need them to move out­wards to fill space, not left-to-right. Wedge quoins could only move out­wards if they moved side­ways and this addi­tion­al move­ment had a ten­den­cy to dis­rupt the oth­er items in the forme, espe­cial­ly spac­ing mate­r­i­al.

Wick­er­sham quoins were devel­oped with a cam inside that could be turned with a key on top. Springs at either end of the quoin held the out­side faces against the cam. This action meant that the quoin for the first time just pushed out­wards to fill space.

One frus­tra­tion of a Wick­er­sham quoin is that as the cam moved through a com­plete rev­o­lu­tion, it would go back to the start point. In prac­tice the quoin could be opened too far and click back in to the orig­i­nal posi­tion.

Notting Quoins

As print­ing became more and more pre­cise, bet­ter reg­is­tra­tion was need­ed (for colour work, for exam­ple), and press­es ran at high­er speeds a bet­ter solu­tion was need­ed to meet a large num­ber of cri­te­ria. These includ­ed the need to have a pos­i­tive action, be light, be pre­cise, be pos­si­ble to cal­i­brate.

In 1917, Per­cy Simp­son of the engi­neer­ing firm Not­ting, of Far­ring­don, Lon­don, patent­ed a new type of quoin. This held a wedge lift­ed by a screw. As the wedge lift­ed up this forced the inside of the quoin apart. Either side of the quoin was pinned togeth­er to hold all the com­po­nents in place.

Not­ting Quoins utilise the screw and wedge sys­tem and are there­fore very pow­er­ful and free from any ten­den­cy to slip in use. They are made of steel and accu­rate­ly machined on all work­ing sur­faces, to give com­plete­ly par­al­lel sides at all stages of expan­sion with con­se­quent free­dom from spring­ing. The expan­sion for one turn of the screw is rel­a­tive­ly small, so that the quoins take longer to lock than the sim­ple wedge or cam types, a fault more than rec­om­pensed by their secu­ri­ty.

Print in Britain, 1954 — Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Pre­ci­sion — Pre-Mak­eready

A fur­ther advance was the 1957 patent to amend that design slight­ly — rather than a flat wedge inside the quoin, this was changed to a con­vex or curved shape, mean­ing that only a short strip of met­al was in con­tact with the inside of the quoin at any time. This, claimed C. F. Moore & Sons, would avoid the ten­den­cy of Not­ting quoins to lift slight­ly as they were tight­ened.

In a British Print­er arti­cle of 1960, W. J. Hig­gs sug­gest­ed this lift­ing ten­den­cy was dri­ven not by the quoin but by oth­er inac­cu­ra­cies in the forme. Flat-sided wedges in this set-up would exac­er­bate the inac­cu­ra­cy. Hav­ing a con­vex wedge means that the quoin can accom­mo­date some of these inac­cu­ra­cies.

Specialist Quoins

Hav­ing cov­ered the basic types of quoin, there are a few spe­cial­ist items asso­ci­at­ed with quoins, dri­ven main­ly by the dri­ve to make let­ter­press print­ing more and more pre­cise.

Some quoins car­ry a means of indi­cat­ing how open or closed they are. On the quoin above the pin in the chan­nel to the left of the key hole shows how open the quoin is. In some oth­er cas­es, the key-hole at the top of the quoin has posi­tions marked. This was essen­tial to accu­rate­ly re-posi­tion mate­ri­als in the forme, espe­cial­ly colour work where lay­ing down a fine screen of a sec­ond colour had to be in per­fect align­ment with the first screen.

A small­er quoin, the pre­ci­sion reg­is­ter quoin, was designed for use in reg­is­ter work so that they could be arranged around each block — allow­ing move­ment in any direc­tion with­out dis­turb­ing adja­cent blocks or type. This was in the form of a screw on a plate, the screw being turned with a pin.

Final­ly a torque quoin key was avail­able. This helped pre­ci­sion because it avoid­ed over-tight­en­ing. The key could be set to allow only a cer­tain force to be deployed to tight­en quoins, and would ​‘trip’ once that force was exceed­ed.

Quoin Care

One final word: mechan­i­cal quoins are pre­ci­sion built. The work­ing parts need lubri­ca­tion if the quoins are to give long and effi­cient ser­vice. Ser­vic­ing, there­fore, should be a more thor­ough and reg­u­lar rou­tine than it is at present in many print­ing offices!

Print In Britain, 1960

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Location

Bowl­ing Green Lane, Far­ring­don, Lon­don as home of the Not­ting Works dur­ing Per­cy Simp­son’s patent appli­ca­tion.

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Head­er Image: from front to back — small Cor­nert­sone quoin and key; usu­al side Cor­ner­stone quoin; Hempel cast iron quoins; Hempel key; shoot­ing stick. Authour’s col­lec­tion.