British Letterpress

Tag: Furniture

  • Lockup and Rising Spaces

    Lockup and Rising Spaces

    Lockup (from Alan Brignull)
    Lock­up (from Alan Brignull)

    Know­ing that all of your mat­ter to be print­ed has to be locked togeth­er in a met­al frame (the chase) leads to some impor­tant ques­tions, the pri­ma­ry one being: how can I make sure that every­thing will be lev­el and main­tain its struc­ture?  This prac­tice is called ​‘lock­up’.  Where lock­up is weak, it allows things to move with­in the forme and caus­es inac­cu­ra­cies.  In addi­tion, loose mate­r­i­al (like spaces) can work up from the forme to touch the print­ed page.  This leaves a black square mark between words where the spac­ing mate­r­i­al has been inked and print­ed.

    In longer-run jobs the impact of ris­ing spaces is mag­ni­fied: if a space is loose and can work up on each impres­sion, a move­ment of just 0.001″ per impres­sion will cause the space to print on the page after just 500 impres­sions.  In the world of com­mer­cial, high-vol­ume let­ter­press this could be a mas­sive prob­lem.

    The stan­dard warn­ings appear here about clean­li­ness and accu­ra­cy.  Make sure the bed of your press is clean, but also the back of the forme.  If need­ed turn the chase over and rest it on some paper on the stone.  Brush the back of the forme to make sure no debris will force a move­ment when it’s put in the bed of the press.

    Ensure your mate­ri­als are accu­rate: wood fur­ni­ture will absorb some of the inac­cu­ra­cies of your forme, but can also be affect­ed by mois­ture and warp­ing.  Even the ini­tial cut­ting of fur­ni­ture could be incor­rect.  Most print­ers moved from wood to met­al (alu­mini­um) or formi­ca (Resalite) fur­ni­ture from the 1950s.  Some wood­en fur­ni­ture is still need­ed to absorb some of the pres­sures in a chase.  Make sure you peri­od­i­cal­ly check that your chas­es are true by rest­ing them on your impos­ing sur­face and see­ing if the ​‘rock’.

    Tack­le lock­up in sec­tions: by mak­ing sure each line is prop­er­ly spaced; and then lock­ing up work sec­tion-by-sec­tion you will find and cor­rect errors much more quick­ly than by dis­cov­er­ing an error just before you go to press.

    Dur­ing print­ing any move­ment of the machine or vibra­tion will con­tribute to spaces ris­ing, so the whole machine should be clean.

    There is some spe­cif­ic advice for some types of mat­ter —

    • Mono­type Mat­ter
      Should have most pres­sure for lock up applied at the top and bot­tom of the forme because the spac­ing between words is sel­dom as good as hand com­po­si­tion.  When print­ing on a cylin­der press it should be set par­al­lel to the cylin­der because top-bot­tom move­ment would be min­i­mal
    • Linotype/Intertype/Lud­low Mat­ter
      Should be checked for accu­ra­cy of the slug, espe­cial­ly where the foot of the slug is small­er than the head.  In lock­ing up this would lead to a bulge as the feet of the slugs meet each oth­er and the head of the slug remains in place.  This can be avoid­ed by using thin paper or cop­per strips at the foot of the slug per­haps 0.002″ thick.  An alter­na­tive is to use wet blot­ting paper that will dry to cre­ate a sol­id block.  In print­ing on a cylin­der press this should be set at right angles to the cylin­der as left-right move­ment will be min­i­mal
    • Blocks
      These should be checked to ensure they are true.  Where they need some fur­ther lead­ing on one side, this should be tacked in to place

    Final­ly where a forme can­not be cor­rect­ed there is a very severe option: mix resin and meths.  Pour this on the forme and brush it away from the face of the type.  The whole forme will now be a sin­gle, sol­id mass.  At the end of print­ing, soak this in hot water to dis­solve the resin and diss the type.

  • Leading and other Spacing Materials

    Leading and other Spacing Materials

    Quotes from Composing Room Stores
    Quotes from Com­pos­ing Room Stores

    Lead­ing is a term that has made it’s way to the graph­ic design­er’s com­put­er.  It defines the gap between lines and in let­ter­press print­ing it is done by insert­ing a thin strip of lead.

    Leads are around the same height as spac­ing and so don’t print.  They vary in length and also width.  On width, leads are sup­plied in point sizes and are most com­mon­ly avail­able in 1, 1½, 2 and 3 points.  It can be con­fus­ing to deter­mine the dif­fer­ence between dif­fer­ent sizes when com­pos­ing, so in some cas­es it might be wise to stan­dard­ise on one or two sizes.  It’s dif­fi­cult to detect the 0.007″ between 1 and 1½pt leads.  On length, they should be accu­rate­ly cut and your sup­pli­er will nor­mal­ly do this.  If you are cut­ting then you need to be as pre­cise as pos­si­ble.  It is also worth­while to cut leads ½pt short­er than the page mea­sure used to help over­come the prob­lems of squeeze.

    Be care­ful in your use of leads: Per­pet­ua is the best exam­ple of a small x‑height face and Plan­tin has a large x‑height mean­ing they look small­er and larg­er than each even when on the same body (of, say, 12pt).  Adding lead­ing to Per­pet­ua will light­en the page; and hav­ing no lead­ing in Plan­tin will make for a very dark page.  There are no stan­dards to say what lead­ing will work for each page, that is a mat­ter for you as the typog­ra­ph­er.

    Leads are nor­mal­ly stored in racks with dif­fer­ent com­part­ments for each length and sizes so that they can be eas­i­ly found.  Remem­ber that leads can also be com­bined: there is no need to keep a 40em lead when two 20em leads can sit next to each oth­er.  If you are short of space you could stan­dard­ise here on 6em mul­ti­ples so that you can cov­er 6, 12, 18, 24 and 30 ems which should account for most prac­ti­cal uses.

    Clumps

    Clumps can be thought of as extra wide spaces: they are usu­al­ly made in mul­ti­ples of an em and so 12pt clumps will nor­mal­ly be 12, 24, 36 or 48pt wide.  They are made of the same mate­r­i­al as spaces and are the same height.  A sec­ondary use here is in word spac­ing for larg­er type sizes: a 12 x 36 pt clump makes a use­ful space for 36pt type.

    Reglet

    Reglet is line spac­ing that is larg­er than leads.  Almost always made of wood and the same height as leads, it is used to give more space between lines and is most often employed on title pages or notices to cre­ate white space between lines.  Again, this is often sup­plied pre-cut but can be sup­plied in long lengths to be cut by the print­er.  Adana sold a small saw and mitre block for this pur­pose.

    Quotations

    Next in terms of size are quo­ta­tions, orig­i­nal­ly designed to cor­rect­ly space side-notes and quo­ta­tions in book work.  They are met­al and full spaces that are mul­ti­ples of clumps.  Typ­i­cal­ly 48pt and larg­er they are an accu­rate way of fill­ing space.

    Furniture

    Fur­ni­ture is the largest of the spac­ing mate­r­i­al.  Orig­i­nal­ly wood, it is sup­plied in ems rather than points.  Find­ing wood to suf­fer from warp­ing and eas­i­ly dam­aged, print­ers began to use met­al fur­ni­ture (from the same mate­r­i­al as spaces), and then alu­mini­um gird­er pat­tern fur­ni­ture which was lighter.  One devel­op­ment was the use of a Formi­ca-derived mate­r­i­al called Resalite.  Stephen­son, Blake claimed this was bet­ter than met­al fur­ni­ture because dam­age on one dimen­sion would not cause prob­lems with accu­ra­cy.

    Again, you might have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stan­dard­ise on one or two widths and 6em mul­ti­ples of length to save space and time.

    Curvilinear Quadrats

    This rather grand sound­ing mate­r­i­al is used to set curved lines of type.  It’s not used too often now, but the was a fad for firm names to be set in an arc or cir­cle.  These are always sup­plied in pairs and have two sur­faces that match each oth­er.  Type is set between them and then locked up.  There are a num­ber of meth­ods used to get this to work cor­rect­ly: set­ting type against sticky tape to hold them in place; or spac­ing them with wet paper to form a sold mass once dry.

  • 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