British Letterpress

Tag: Paper

  • Day Glo Ink

    Day Glo Ink

    The prin­ci­ple behind Day Glo ink is both sim­ple and mind-blow­ing. When we see a colour on a page, this is the nat­ur­al light being trans­formed and reflect­ed back off the colour to our eyes. Day Glo pig­ments not only reflect this light back, but the also pig­ments con­vert some of the unseen light — ultra­vi­o­let light — to vis­i­ble light. When this reflects back to our eyes we per­ceive that more light is reach­ing our eyes than in the wider envi­ron­ment — look­ing like the colours are them­selves glow­ing or giv­ing off their own light.

    The Day-Glo Col­or Corp. was found­ed in Ohio in 1946 by Joseph and Robert Switzer, but the broth­ers had been work­ing on pig­ments with these qual­i­ties since the 1930s.

    By Novem­ber 1950, the British Print­er ran a detailed arti­cle on the cur­rent state of Day Glo in the UK. The pig­ment was ini­tial­ly only offered to hand-painters (for signs) and screen print­ers. There was some relief that all man­ner of print­ing could­n’t use Day Glo inks and that it would be lim­it­ed to some spe­cif­ic uses. While best in day­light — con­tain­ing the ultra­vi­o­let light need­ed for con­ver­sion — the arti­cle notes that posters that were ​‘invis­i­ble’ beyond 50 yards remained clear­ly vis­i­ble at 200 yards when print­ed Day Glo.

    Advertisement: Day-Glo inks
    Day Glo Ink Advert, embed­ded from Flickr

    The ini­tial appli­ca­tion of Day Glo had to be in a film 3/1000th of an inch thick mean­ing it could not be applied through let­ter­press which lays a film much thin­ner than this. Ini­tial colours were the now-famil­iar crim­son, ver­mil­lion, green and yel­low but to give an impres­sion of their bril­liance these were re-named — Neon Red, Fire Orange, Sat­urn Green and Sig­nal yel­low. Day Glo posters were list­ed as hav­ing around a month of fade resis­tance in strong sun­light.

    Just as have many oth­er spec­tac­u­lar inno­va­tions, so has ​‘Day Glo’ suf­fered from mis­use in its ear­ly days. Hoard­ings in the vicin­i­ty of The Hay­mar­ket and Leices­ter Square have been plas­tered with such unre­strained enthu­si­asm that they have become caul­drons of riotous colour: super­flu­ous bril­liance so engulfs the pass­er-by that he can­not pos­si­bly, with­out dif­fi­cul­ty, assim­i­late any­thing but the largest pat­terns and let­ters.

    – British Print­er com­ment on Day Glo, Novem­ber — Decem­ber 1950

    The next devel­op­ment to bring us let­ter­press Day Glo was a change of approach by 1957 where a Chica­go print­er was not­ed as using litho but then a bronz­ing-type process to apply Day Glo pig­ments. Essen­tial­ly, slight­ly wet ink is dust­ed with Day Glo pow­der, and a light brush dusts away the pow­der from the non-stick­y/uninked areas of the paper. This pow­der was not as light fast as the inks used in screen print­ing.

    Day Glo Letterpress

    https://www.tumblr.com/thesalvagepress/41516984606/the-first-colour-on-this-poster-is-a-flouro

    By 1962, Dane & Co inkmak­er was offer­ing Day Glo let­ter­press inks. They had been offered ear­li­er but had to be applied in two coats. The inks dried with­in 4–6 hours and were as light-fast as the screen inked ver­sions.

    Day Glo then became anoth­er char­ac­ter­is­tic of let­ter­press that can’t be eas­i­ly repli­cat­ed at home. We can each now print high qual­i­ty pages, with many dif­fer­ent fonts from our own home, but like the light impres­sion of let­ter­press, it’s not easy to recre­ate Day Glo at home.

    Suppliers Today

    My favourite let­ter­press ink sup­pli­ers each offer flouro inks:

    Hawthorn Inks — Son­ic Flu­o­res­cent
    Lyme Bay — Ink in Tubes

    Day Glo and Paper

    One addi­tion­al Day Glo inno­va­tion made it in to the world of com­mer­cial print­ing — just as the base chem­i­cals behind Day Glo reflect back addi­tion­al vis­i­ble light, paper­mak­ers could add a small amount of ​‘opti­cal white’ pig­ments to their papers.

    By adding just 0·05% of phos­pho­res­cent zinc sul­phide to dry pulp, the result­ing paper reflects back more vis­i­ble light giv­ing the over­all effect of an ultra-white stock.

    Year and Era

    1946 / Mod­ern

    Object Type

    Oth­er Objects

    Location

    Cleve­land, Ohio as head­quar­ters of the Day Glo Corp.

    Sources and More Information

    • British Print­er Mag­a­zines: 1950, 1957 and 1962

    An Appeal

    If you have some­thing linked to this object, please get in touch.

    Head­er Image: ​“An ear­ly Globe Poster” flickr pho­to by Nick Sher­man https://flickr.com/photos/nicksherman/14992854186 shared under a Cre­ative Com­mons (BY-NC-SA) license

  • The Art of the Marbler

    The Art of the Marbler

    Richard Small found this lit­tle gem about paper mar­bling.

    https://twitter.com/letter_presser/status/643929360697692160

  • Positioning Paper on the Platen

    Positioning Paper on the Platen

    Bob Richardson's Platen Grid
    Bob Richard­son’s Plat­en Grid

    Bob Richard­son’s approach to trou­ble-free posi­tion­ing of stock on your plat­en

    Fol­low­ing on from recent post­ings about lin­ing up items on the plat­en of a press [on the LETPRESS dis­cus­sion list], I thought I’d share my solu­tion. For the last 15 years or so I have used a sheet of ani­ma­tion acetate as a top sheet on the plat­en of my Adana press. It’s obtain­able from art stores, or you can use a sheet of mylar which is more expen­sive.

    Beneath the top sheet is a sim­ple grid, print­ed ​‘land­scape’ on my com­put­er. The grid has let­ters along the top and num­bers down the left and right sides. This pro­vides a fool­proof guide to whether the item is straight on the plat­en and also allows me to gauge how far left or right (or up and down) I need to repo­si­tion the item when I’m lin­ing up. The acetate means I can take a pull on the top sheet and posi­tion the card/paper, then wipe off the print with a rag moist­ened with white spir­it. This avoids any set-off on the back of the items when the print run begins. It’s very easy to do and quick to replace.
  • Printers’ Paper

    Printers’ Paper

    When exam­in­ing paper, a print­er can look at four dimen­sions –

    • Gen­er­al qual­i­ty: this is the colour, look-through, fin­ish and strength
    • Price
    • Suit­abil­i­ty for pur­pose
    • Effi­cien­cy of con­di­tion: matu­ri­ty, free­dom from damp, flaws, bad edges and the con­di­tion of the coat­ing

    Print­ing papers were pre­dom­i­nant­ly made from wood­pulp or espar­to.  Espar­to is a long, wiry grass from Spain and North Africa.  The fibres are short and soft and so not quite as strong as rag.  That said, espar­to stretch­es less and more even­ly than oth­er fibres.

    In gen­er­al terms, ordi­nary machine paper that is strong and opaque is suit­able for book work pro­vid­ed that the fideli­ty of illus­tra­tion is not so impor­tant.  Imi­ta­tion art paper is based on espar­to pulp but has chi­na clay added.  Just before cal­en­der­ing, a fine spray of water is applied — bring­ing the clay to the sur­face — and it is this that forms the high sur­face.

  • Machine or Grain Direction in Paper

    Machine or Grain Direction in Paper

    Paper Curling
    Paper Curl­ing

    You might have noticed that when you tear a square from a sheet of paper, one direc­tion leaves a nice clean edge but the edge is much more ragged on the right-angled tear.  You’ll have also spot­ted that when fold­ing A4 sheets in to A5 book­lets there’s a strong ten­den­cy that the book­let will spring open.  Paper dis­plays dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties depend­ing on whether you’re work­ing in the direc­tion of the ​‘grain’ or ​‘across the grain’.

    Because paper is made from long fibres of one form or anoth­er, there is a ten­den­cy for paper machines to draw these fibres in to the machine in a par­tic­u­lar direc­tion.  Nat­u­ral­ly paper­mak­ers look to avoid this but even in fine papers you’ll end up with long fibres run­ning in the same direc­tion as the paper machine runs.  This is the ​‘grain direc­tion’.  There’s no firm rule about which direc­tion the grain will run in any giv­en pack­age, but paper mer­chants tend to cut the paper so that the grain runs from top to bot­tom.  On larg­er sheets that you might buy direct­ly the grain could run in either direc­tion.

    There are two sim­ple tests to find grain direc­tion.  If you tear the paper once and again at right-angles, you’ll see that the tear looks dif­fer­ent: with the grain will leave a much clean­er tear; across the grain will leave a more messy tear.  Alter­na­tive­ly you can cut two sim­i­lar pieces of paper around 2″ x 6″ at right angles to each oth­er and put them togeth­er.  Hold­ing one end out you’ll find that one might flop and anoth­er seem more strong; if not one might be ​‘sup­port­ing’ the oth­er.  This ​‘sup­port­ing’ or stronger piece will have the grain run­ning down the length of the paper.

    Grain direc­tion will affect ten­sile strength; rigid­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty.  The degree to which these affect us will depend on the spe­cif­ic paper and mak­er so there are no con­crete rules on how big a prob­lem this might be for you.

    Strength will be most impor­tant in some spe­cial­ist appli­ca­tions: bot­tle labels, for exam­ple, are applied left-to-right on the bot­tle and so are pulled from left-to-right by the labelling machine.  Because the paper will be strongest with the grain, it should be print­ed so that the grain runs from left-to-right.  Oth­er areas might include hole punched doc­u­ments that might be sub­ject to pulling from left-to-right.

    To pre­vent ​‘spring­ing’ when a book­let is opened; the grain should run par­al­lel with the spine.  Look out for this if you intend to print, say, an A5 book­let from A4 because the A4 is usu­al­ly sold with the grain run­ning from top-to-bot­tom.  Using this will lead to the fold­ed book­let spring­ing open.

    Rigid­i­ty is impor­tant where print­ed arti­cles have to be han­dled or stored upright.  Index cards, for exam­ple, need to be print­ed with the grain run­ning from top-to-bot­tom as this will mean the card is strongest in this direc­tion, and so avoid the cards flop­ping down or curl­ing slight­ly.  Clock­ing-in cards should be print­ed with the grain run­ning top to bot­tom to help with the han­dling of the cards.

    Final­ly, sta­bil­i­ty rests on the ten­den­cy of paper to take up water from its sur­round­ings.  When this hap­pens the paper swells across the grain because fibres have a ten­den­cy to expand in their width rather than length.  This is most impor­tant when doing very close reg­is­ter work or colour print­ing.  There may be a direc­tion where the reg­is­ter is less impor­tant.  One exam­ple would be ledger sheets where top-to-bot­tom reg­is­ter is less impor­tant than the need to get left-to-right columns cor­rect, for a change in these could lead to mis­tak­en use of the wrong col­umn.  In this case, if the tol­er­ances are very tight, con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to have the grain run­ning left-to-right across the page so that any expan­sion in the fibres has an effect top-to-bot­tom rather than left-to-right.

    All of these con­sid­er­a­tions seem small in com­par­i­son with machin­ing or the ini­tial lay­out but it’s these small details that will make the final job look and feel bet­ter than one with­out con­sid­er­a­tion of the grain direc­tion.

  • 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

  • Paper

    Paper

    Tra­di­tion­al­ly those of us who print let­ter­press on a small scale often used to beg or buy off­cuts from com­me­cial print­ers, few of whom went whol­ly litho until the 1970s. Since then papers for litho have become increas­ing­ly dif­fer­ent to those suit­able for let­ter­press. The lat­ter, essen­tial­ly soft, absorbent and spongy, allow type to sink in with­out exces­sive­ly dis­tort­ing the oth­er side of the sheet. This enables one to achieve a decent impres­sion from rather worn case type whose char­ac­ters are no longer of pre­cise­ly con­sis­tent height. Such papers are not suit­ed to mod­ern high-speed pho­tolith­o­g­ra­phy which demands hard non-absorbent sur­faces which require less ink and don’t shed fibres on con­tact with plate-damp­ing solu­tions.

    With unworn type, newish rollers and near per­fect dis­tri­b­u­tion of ink and pres­sure it is pos­si­ble to print kiss impres­sion (ie no per­ceiv­able inden­ta­tion) let­ter­press on such paper if it is smooth sur­faced, although the slight­est over-ink­ing will result in a splodgy edge to the print­ed let­ters. Such rel­a­tive­ly brit­tle papers, when giv­en a tex­tured or embossed sur­face and even those made to resem­ble a tra­di­tion­al laid paper, such as the mod­ern ver­sion of Con­queror are, though, total­ly unsuit­ed to let­ter­press and will quick­ly wear out ones type rather than accept a decent impres­sion. Many cur­rent ​‘pres­tige’ brand­ed papers do not resem­ble in sub­stance or char­ac­ter those pro­duced under the same name thir­ty or more years ago: beware!

    The days when one could find paper suit­able for let­ter­press in a sta­tion­er’s shop are long gone.

    For let­ter­press, choose paper with a soft, silky sur­face and a resilient core which allows type to bite with­out over­ly emboss­ing the oth­er side.

    You don’t have to splurge on hand-made paper — mould-made paper, made on a slow­ly rotat­ing wire-mesh drum is more con­sis­tent and there­fore eas­i­er to print. Often made of sim­i­lar raw mate­ri­als, it is more afford­able whilst gen­er­al­ly of neu­tral ph and thus regard­ed as archival­ly per­ma­nent and will cer­tain­ly out­last most mod­ern mass-pro­duced papers. Cer­tain machine-made papers made on a wire-mesh con­vey­or belt, are of equal per­ma­nence and still less expen­sive. But avoid all hard, shiny, arti­fi­cial­ly tex­tured stock.

    Most machine or mould-made paper has a def­i­nite grain direc­tion; along the grain it is stiffer but eas­i­er to tear, across the grain it will more read­i­ly curl but is hard­er to tear. Book pages should have the grain ver­ti­cal so that they open and lie prop­er­ly, thus for a book project you need short-grain A4, which fold­ed will give long-grain A5 pages. A ream of A4 will be enough for more than 200 eight-page pam­phlets with an allowance for wastage.

    Think in terms of 100 to 160 gsm-or thick­er if you wish. Con­sid­er hav­ing a larg­er sheet cut down to approx­i­mate­ly A4 size and using the off­cuts for future projects.

    Take the advice of a knowl­edge­able spe­cial­ist paper mer­chant. Spe­cial­ist paper-mer­chants, who will advise on and sup­ply suit­able paper in small sizes and quan­ti­ties include-

    • Paper Resources Ltd., (Peter Gilbert and Simon Gilling­ham) Low­er Mill House, Mil­ton Road, Ship­ton Under Wych­wood, OX7 6XU (tele­phone 01933 276 689)
    • John Pur­cell Paper, 15, Rum­sey Road, Lon­don SW9 0TR (tele­phone 0207 737 5199) John Pur­cel­l’s cat­a­logue indi­cates the suit­abil­i­ty of each list­ed paper and includes an excel­lent four page arti­cle out­lin­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tics of all the class­es of paper one is like­ly to wish to use.

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