Print­ing works of all sizes hold an unhealthy fas­ci­na­tion for me.  Since see­ing my first com­mer­cial book print­ers at the Incline Press, and then works rang­ing from the small (like St. Mar­garet’s Press) to the largest (Hand & Eye Let­ter­press), I have been keen to doc­u­ment what is need­ed to make a print­ing works.

In try­ing to help new print­ers, I want to be able to say ​‘here is what you will need’, and ​‘here is what to look out for’.

I have used a num­ber of sources and tried to bal­ance this list with my per­son­al expe­ri­ence.  Here you will find my list of every­thing you will need — aside from type and press.  I have also divid­ed the list in to a ​‘starter’ sec­tion and an ​‘advanced’ sec­tion — although you should be able to pro­duce top-qual­i­ty work from the ​‘starter’ sec­tion, where space and mon­ey per­mit you can prof­itably move through to the ​‘advanced’ sec­tion.

I would tru­ly appre­ci­ate any com­ments you might have on this list.

Compositor’s Tools

Starter	Advanced
Type Scale: met­al if pos­si­ble, then plas­tic, then wood	Set­ting rules: grad­u­at­ed, pre­ci­sion-cut brass rules to set the com­pos­ing stick to a deter­mined length
Tweez­ers and Bod­kin (although the use of each of these is dis­cour­aged)	Make-up gal­ley: a spe­cial gal­ley with one side that can be set to the line length.  As lines are moved from the stick, they can be set in this gal­ley to be sure that lock-up will be an eas­i­er activ­i­ty
Com­pos­ing Sticks (ide­al­ly 8″ and 12″)

Spacing

Starter	Advanced
Fur­ni­ture: wood, lead or steel, but see ​‘advanced’ for bet­ter options.  Stan­dard sizes are 24, 36 (or Nar­row), 48 (or Broad), 60, 72 (or Dou­ble Nar­row) and 96 pica (or Dou­ble Broad)	More pre­cise fur­ni­ture: made of alu­mini­um or plas­tic (Formi­ca)
Leads: typ­i­cal­ly in 1, 1½, 2, 3 or 4pt.  In start­ing out you might want to stan­dard­ise on length (usu­al­ly mul­ti­ples of 5 or 6 pica) and width (usu­al­ly 1½ and 2pt)	Inter­lock­ing Fur­ni­ture: this con­sists of iron bars with mitred ends that can be assem­bled togeth­er to form large ​‘frames’ of space bor­dered by met­al bars
Reglet or Clumps: usu­al­ly 6 or 12pt wide.  Reglet is the term for wood (usu­al­ly oil-soaked) and clumps for met­al
Quo­ta­tions or Quads: essen­tial to fill small area of white space

Imposition

Starter	Advanced
Quoins: ide­al­ly Not­ting but pos­si­bly Wick­er­sham, Hempel or — as a last resort — wood	Presci­sion quoins: torque quoins (that exert a giv­en force), or reg­is­ter quoins (that have mark­ings to show the exact amount of force)
Lead and rule cut­ter: with microm­e­ter adjust­ment if pos­si­ble	Mitre­ing machine: either rotary (a ​‘bowler’), ver­ti­cal, or pow­ered Slug cut­ter Pow­ered saw
Machine chas­es (those that come with your press)	Spe­cial­ist chas­es: book, fold­ing, job­bing
Page cord to tie up blocks of lines, ide­al­ly using fur­ni­ture with chan­nels to acom­mo­date the cord	“Quick‑S Lock­up” inter­lock­ing met­al cor­ners with sprung edges
Impos­ing sur­face: start­ing with a gran­ite chop­ping board or thick glass; to steel sur­faces	Type-high gauge
	Mount­ing sur­faces for blocks

Furniture (for the works, not for the forme)

Starter	Advanced
Small type cab­i­net and cas­es: usu­al­ly Adana cas­es in var­i­ous sizes	Full-size print­ers type­cas­es and cab­i­net, spe­cial­ist cas­es for blocks, script, woodlet­ter, rule etc.
Lead stor­age: can be a box divid­ed in to stan­dard lengths	Lead and fur­ni­ture racks
Gal­leys to store stand­ing jobs	Ran­dom top on which to put type cas­es while set­ting type
	Space bins