British Letterpress

Tag: Buying a Press

  • Installing and Caring for Letterpress Machines

    Installing and Caring for Letterpress Machines

    Back at the height of let­ter­press, buy­ing a print­ing machine must have been a joy­ous task for those with the mon­ey and busi­ness to ser­vice a new press.  Machine mak­ers from all over Britain had offices in Lon­don to show­case their wares; and there would be enough print­ers around you to seek advice on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of each press.

    No print­ing machines are made in Britain any more, but you might be lucky enough to get hold of a new press from time to time.

    Tak­ing con­tem­po­rary advice, here’s a run-down of what to look for and what the ear­ly steps are in com­mis­sion­ing your new press – they are as rel­e­vant to you whether you have a press that has nev­er been used; or a work­horse of a machine that has worked non-stop for the last hun­dred or so years.

    • Foun­da­tions
      These need to be rock-sol­id and lev­el.  If you’re machine is floor-stand­ing you should check the lev­els as you assem­ble it lest the extra parts have cased it to move out of true.  Remem­ber that pack­ing under one cor­ner might not have the desired result at the oth­er cor­ner, so check as you lev­el
    • Clean­ing
      Make sure every­thing is clean.  My expe­ri­ence of the Arab is that there are advan­tages and draw­backs – a machine is much eas­i­er to han­dle, work and care for if it begins clean; and clean­ing is eas­i­er when you can reach each part.  On the down­side, you might expose a reliance on accu­mu­lat­ed grime!  If, per­haps, the bear­ings hold grit and this has caused wear, remov­ing all the dirt might high­light ​‘play’ in some of the parts.  It’s much bet­ter to know this now, though, so get it clean.   Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to oil holes; and coat parts in oil as you work
    • Test­ing
      As you progress with instal­la­tion make sure parts turn freely by hand; and repeat this process once assem­bly is com­plete.  If you have time (and ener­gy) run the press with­out any forme for a peri­od (half a day was sug­gest­ed).  Use this test­ing to show that oil is reach­ing the right parts and that the move­ment is smooth. Cau­tion: some machines can only be turned one way – make sure you don’t turn the machine against the nor­mal direc­tion of use
    • Adjust­ments
      There are plen­ty of adjust­ments to a new machine but get this right once and you should not have to wor­ry about these things very often.
    • Rollers
      The gen­er­al prin­ci­ple here is to deliv­er the right amount of ink from the roller to the type.  Rollers too low will slur or wipe ink across the type and the result will be very uneven ink­ing of each char­ac­ter.  Rollers too high will result in too lit­tle ink hit­ting the type; and no amount of fur­ther ink­ing will help.  Either use a roller gauge (looks like a short sol­id cylin­der on a stick); or a large M or H locked up in a forme.  When the roller pass­es over the gauge a strip of ink around 0.25″ should appear – wider strips indi­cate too low; thin­ner strips indi­cate too high.  Using a large M or H, ink­ing the sur­face of the let­ter (the face) plus a tiny amount on the shoul­ders is about right.  Get­ting ink on the shank or with­in the coun­ters indi­cates the rollers are too low.  Remem­ber that rollers might be an uneven shape and you should test along the length of the rollers (ie the right and left-hand sides of the forme).  Know­ing that they are too high or low can be com­pen­sat­ed for in dif­fer­ent ways – on an Adana the roller trucks (lit­tle wheels) can be turned to face two ways and low­er or raise the rollers.  On plat­en press­es the roller bear­ers can be aug­ment­ed – the Arab uses paper or card under the leather strips either side of the forme.  Art plat­en press users can adjust their roller bear­ers with a screw­driv­er.
    • Platens
      Platens can also be adjust­ed but this is noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to get right.  Most plat­en machines (includ­ing hand platens) have screws or bolts at the back of the plat­en for adjust­ment.  I would test the machine first with a new tym­pan to see whether any adjust­ment is need­ed.  If you do have to move these bolts around then make a note of the num­ber and direc­tion of turns – tight­en­ing at one cor­ner can have the effect of throw­ing anoth­er cor­ner off kil­ter and plen­ty of prob­lems ensue.
    • Tym­pan
      The tym­pan is the paper-based pack­ing on the back plat­en (where you lay paper on and off).  The make­up of this will depend on your machine – each man­u­fac­tur­er rec­om­mend­ed their own make­up.  Sug­ges­tions range from plac­ing card next to the met­al; then three sheets of nor­mal paper; then two sheets of manil­la; to Adana’s use of per­haps ten sheets of news­pa­per between light card­board and the manil­la top sheet
    • Oil­ing
      When new, the machine will need a good deal of oil; and will need to be oiled per­haps three time a day in nor­mal use

    In terms of look­ing after the machine, the biggest task is to keep every­thing clean.  With­out clean­li­ness it’s dif­fi­cult to main­tain the machine; see poten­tial prob­lems or pro­duce good-qual­i­ty work.  If you’re in a high-pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment set time aside on a reg­u­lar basis to tidy the machine.

    Sec­ond­ly, oil is need­ed by print­ing machines.  You’ll need to choose the right oil – tiny 3‑in‑1 cans are good for small parts on lit­tle press­es; larg­er press­es might ben­e­fit from diesel engine oil that’s a lit­tle thick­er.  Your machine might rec­om­mend a par­tic­u­lar type of oil.

    Aside from your own con­sid­er­a­tions of space, the work need­ed, funds etc., there are some mechan­i­cal points you should look for.  You should­n’t be tak­en in by a shiny, clean machine sim­ply on that ini­tial view.  Remove some of the guards or shields and see whether dirt is accu­mu­lat­ed in the less obvi­ous places; remove a few nuts or bolts to see if the threads are deep, sharp and clean.  Turn the machine over and see if there’s any rat­tling and that teeth on gears fit snug­ly with each oth­er.  Lis­ten for any vari­able nois­es or grat­ing.  Look at the cast­ings to see if a ham­mer or oth­er inap­pro­pri­ate tool has been used to assem­ble the machine pre­vi­ous­ly.  Final­ly, with the machine braked, pull the platens apart to see of there is play in the machine at all – if there is some slack­ness or loose­ness this will man­i­fest itself in poor qual­i­ty print­ing.

  • Finding a Press

    Finding a Press

    For those wish­ing to print let­ter­press, the choice is wide-but it’s all sec­ond-hand, nowa­days. Ads in news-sheets such as the Oxford Guild of Print­ers and that of the British Print­ing Soci­ety, local auc­tions and eBay pro­vide leads. All the type you are like­ly to be offered is of a stan­dard height, so inter­change­able between machines of dif­fer­ing size and make. Prices are essen­tial­ly nego­tiable, there being no ​‘book’ or ​‘offi­cial’ scale it is sim­ply a mat­ter of arriv­ing at a fig­ure accept­able to both par­ties.

    Small press­es requir­ing lit­tle space, which can be lift­ed by one or two peo­ple and car­ried in a pri­vate car are more in demand and thus cost more. That includes most bench-mount­ed hand-press­es, small­er trea­dle-platens and small­er gal­ley press­es. Nev­er intend­ed to print more than rough­ly-inked read­ers’ proofs, few gal­ley press­es incor­po­rate any means of accu­rate­ly posi­tion­ing paper and are best suit­ed to short run posters, small­ish lino-cuts, etc. Some, such as the lat­er Far­ley series, with adjustable impres­sion height, auto­lift, grip­pers and feed-board, and occa­sion­al­ly with a prim­i­tive self-ink­ing sys­tem can, with great care, pro­duce con­sis­tent high-qual­i­ty results; rel­a­tive­ly light and com­pact, these are worth seek­ing. Super­fi­cial rust is eas­i­ly cleaned but the resilient ​‘cloth­ing’ of the impres­sion cylin­der should be sound. This ​‘rub­ber coat­ing’ can be replaced, but mea­sure up and get a quote.

    Appear­ance can affect price, the more dec­o­ra­tive machines fetch­ing more than their aus­tere coun­ter­parts. The first gen­er­a­tion of iron hand-press­es, with hor­i­zon­tal platens — Albions, Columbians, Impe­ri­als, etc. are much sought after, in their small­er sizes, as ikons of inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion and tend to pass a gen­teel retire­ment in car­pet­ed print­ing works foy­ers or enthu­si­asts’ draw­ing rooms. Their cur­rent val­ue is thus around 500 times what they were deemed worth 50 years ago. Like pro­fes­sion­al view-cam­eras, they are capa­ble, in well-informed sen­si­tive hands, of high qual­i­ty work of amaz­ing ver­sa­til­i­ty, but demand a well-planned almost cer­e­mo­ni­al approach. For texts they def­i­nite­ly con­sti­tute ​‘the long way round’ — if you reg­u­lar­ly make cof­fee in a Cona you will prob­a­bly enjoy using one; if the ​‘des­ti­na­tion is more impor­tant than the jour­ney’, stick with self-ink­ing ver­ti­cal plat­en and cylin­der press­es.

    The prices of most oth­er press­es bulki­er than the small­est trea­dle platens reflect the space required to house them and, per­haps more impor­tant, the cost of hir­ing spe­cial equip­ment — or pro­fes­sion­al help — to car­ry them. Awk­ward loca­tions neces­si­tat­ing hoists and some dis­man­tling to get a machine out of its cur­rent home can reduce its val­ue to zero, irre­spec­tive of con­di­tion. Once you have learn’t your way around them, larg­er pro­fes­sion­al machines can more eas­i­ly deliv­er high qual­i­ty print­ing than their small cheap­ly built coun­ter­parts. Some, when new cost the price of a decent car when a small Adana cost the price of a wheel­bar­row! If you have space, a machine which owes lit­tle more than the cost of trans­port can thus prove a good bar­gain.

    How­ev­er, few of us require high speed — even by 1950s stan­dards — the abil­i­ty to hand-feed paper of awk­ward shape and sub­stance being our pri­or­i­ty. So the mechan­i­cal com­plex­i­ty of fast pro­duc­tion machines requir­ing expert main­te­nance might be best avoid­ed. The bet­ter-class hand-fed platens to con­sid­er include the Arab, trea­dle or pow­er-dri­ven and the much heav­ier, pow­ered Vicobold and sim­i­lar art-platens. But using an trea­dle plat­en demands good co-ordi­na­tion of hands and foot; oper­a­tors of un-guard­ed platens fre­quent­ly lost a fin­ger or two in the bad old days!

    Per­haps the most ver­sa­tile-and eas­i­est to use and main­tain are the pre­ci­sion repro. press­es of the 1950s and ​’60s. Most com­mon are those by Van­der­cook, their British copies by West­ern (lat­er re-badged as S.B. Pre-Press), FAG and Lit­tle­john.

    All fea­ture a dress­able cylin­der, allow­ing pre­cise make-ready, sin­gle-phase pow­er ink­ing which is eas­i­ly dis-con­nect­ed to allow hand-ink­ing when required, and pre­ci­sion hair­line reg­is­ter with microm­e­ter adjust­ment. The small­er ones, print­ing around 15 x 22 inch have a hand-wound impres­sion cylin­der, larg­er ones, up to four times that size have pow­er-dri­ven cylin­ders, usu­al­ly 3‑phase; con­vert­ers are avail­able.

    The small­er ones, occu­py­ing a 6–7 x 3 foot space, weigh around 12cwt. and can be loaded via the pow­ered tail-lift of cer­tain hire-firms’ vans or pick-up trucks. They can be rolled over hard sur­faces using suit­able lengths of scaf­fold pole or hired machin­ery skates and will pass through domes­tic door­ways (with han­dles of machine and door removed). Two peo­ple can, with a lit­tle thought move, install and lev­el them with­out prob­lems — the larg­er ones require more of every­thing-oth­er than cash! Sev­er­al firms can re-clothe the ink rollers. Most of the more pre­cise wear­ing parts are obtain­able new, as Van­der­cook spares, from the USA, most oth­er bits and pieces can be repaired by ​‘black­smith’ tech­nol­o­gy or found in engi­neer­ing sup­pli­ers or motor­cy­cle shops — again, try Yel­low Pages.

    As with all things…caveat emp­tor!

    Additional Notes