British Letterpress

Tag: Specialist Printing

  • Ludlow Typography

    Ludlow Typography

    Ludlow Type Specimen Book
    Lud­low Type Spec­i­men Book

    From the 1920s, Mono­type took the chal­lenge of improv­ing typog­ra­phy very seri­ous­ly and embarked on a pro­gramme of devel­op­ing new faces and reviv­ing clas­sic faces so that the world might be rid of faces like Chel­tenham.  Inter­type and Lino­type were slow to fol­low and con­cen­trat­ed on speed of pro­duc­tion rather than qual­i­ty.  My view is that Lud­low took typog­ra­phy seri­ous­ly, but their small­er mar­ket share meant they did­n’t have the same impact.

    The sys­tem itself had some advan­tages as well as the ital­ics (men­tioned below), the same degree of con­trol was avail­able over spac­ing as in hand com­po­si­tion.  Con­trast this with linecast­ers using adjustable spaces that some­times led to rivers of spaces fol­low­ing through work.

    The name R. Hunter Mid­dle­ton is syn­ony­mous with the Lud­low Cor­po­ra­tion, and he designed some of the fir­m’s most suc­cess­ful faces includ­ing Depl­hi­an Titling, Tem­po (sans serif), Kar­nak (slab serif), and a Gara­mond

    Italics

    Ludlow Italic Matrices
    Lud­low Ital­ic Matri­ces

    Because of the sim­plic­i­ty of the Lud­low sys­tem, they could make amend­ments to the oper­a­tion of the machine rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly.  Once such change was to intro­duce ital­ic matri­ces, and a spe­cial ital­ic stick.  A dif­fi­cult prob­lem for line-cast­ing is that ital­ics have a ten­den­cy to encroach on the area of the pre­ced­ing and fol­low­ing let­ters: take the f for exam­ple, which will hang under the ear­li­er char­ac­ter and over the fol­low­ing.  Because most oth­er cast­ing uses rec­tan­gu­lar mats, this can­not eas­i­ly be account­ed for and so the face has to be adjust­ed and weak­ened to fit with­in the con­fines of the mat.  In 1913 Lud­low decid­ed to go with the ital­ic whole­heart­ed­ly and devel­oped matri­ces that slope at a 17° angle and are held in a stick with ends at the same angle.  The result is that an f, for exam­ple, can be cast at that angle and fit neat­ly with the oth­er types at the same angle.  By means of tri­an­gu­lar spaces, roman and ital­ics can mix on the same line.

    Lud­low took full advan­tage of this and devel­oped some beau­ti­ful ital­ics to go with their faces.

    Ruleform

    Know­ing that they were keen to attract the job­bing print­er, Lud­low set out to make the print­ing of ruled formes very easy.  Job­bing print­ers had to pro­duce invoic­es, bills, account sheets and so on, and tra­di­tion­al­ly had used met­al rules sat between lead types to cre­ate the right pat­tern.  This approach tied up mate­r­i­al and took a vast amount of time: imag­ine set­ting mul­ti­ple hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal rules with some type to cre­ate a petrol sta­tion receipt, for exam­ple.

    Mr Mer­rill of Lud­low devel­oped Rule­form in 1923.  The approach was to cre­ate uni­form-width matri­ces and exploit the slug by cast­ing over­hangs and under­hangs at the top and bot­tom of the same slug.  Using the repeat cast­ing func­tion meant that one line could be set and dupli­cat­ed, and the under­hangs and over­hangs would mesh with each oth­er to cre­ate a whole, sol­id lump for print­ing.

  • Full Colour Letterpress Printing

    Full Colour Letterpress Printing

    While most small job­bing print­ers worked in sin­gle- or two-colour work, the pub­lic was keen to see full colour. And although let­ter­press was not the only process that could deliv­er high-qual­i­ty colour work, it was with­in the reach of the medi­um- and larg­er-scale print­ers. The process is the same as mod­ern-day colour print­ing: the orig­i­nal is divid­ed into a num­ber of colours and each colour is print­ed with a dif­fer­ent ink. Just as your mod­ern desk­top com­put­er print­er uses cyan, magen­ta, yel­low and black (CKMY) to cre­ate any giv­en colour; the print­er had to use this approach to get full-colour let­ter­press work. It’s the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of doing this, though, which makes full-colour let­ter­press a dif­fi­cult under­tak­ing: every­thing must be pre­cise and of the best qual­i­ty, for a sin­gle error in one colour can spoil the whole set of print­ed sheets. The advice below is sum­marised from The Art of Let­ter­press Machin­ing by Jack Deller and gives a pic­ture of the state of the art in the late 1950s.

    Colour Blocks – the Engraver’s Art

    The full colour orig­i­nal must be made in to a series of blocks to print each colour sequen­tial­ly. This was a task del­e­gat­ed to the colour engraver, a very spe­cial­ist trade sup­ply­ing the print­ing indus­try. The orig­i­nal would be pho­tographed through a series of coloured fil­ters on to a sen­si­tised sur­face and this would be used as the basis for pro­duc­ing a plate with the rel­e­vant high and low sur­faces for let­ter­press print­ing. The screen would define the ​‘res­o­lu­tion’ of the fin­ished image and was orig­i­nal­ly just that: a screen through which the image would be pho­tographed. The finest let­ter­press screens had some­thing like 175 lines to the inch, but this chal­lenged even the best print­ers. Fine work was typ­i­cal­ly run on spe­cial­ist paper at 150 lines to the inch. Each colour plate was pro­duced using a screen at a dif­fer­ent angle so that the dot of ink sat next to each oth­er rather than on top of one anoth­er. The engraver would sup­ply the blocks along with pro­gres­sive proofs, show­ing how the colour image would be built up colour by colour. The colour of each block was typ­i­cal­ly marked on the flange of the met­al plate. If you have full colour blocks to print but no mark­ings then these tips might help: yel­low will be the dens­est of the blocks; black will be the light­est; blue will look like the near­ly fin­ished image and red will be the remain­ing block.

    Preparation: Makeready and Printing Sequence

    Mak­eready is the process of elim­i­nat­ing inequal­i­ties in the forme: this is impor­tant so that the whole forme prints with even pres­sure and so pro­duces the best result. It’s an impor­tant step in all let­ter­press print­ing, but becomes cru­cial when using halftones and even more so when work­ing in colour. As a gen­er­al prin­ci­ple the least pos­si­ble impres­sion should be used and the thinnest film of ink deliv­ered to the plate for print­ing. To achieve this you should use an inter­lay— a series of thin paper sheets between the plate itself and the mount­ing. Use inter­lay for heavy areas but make sure that this does not bring any light areas so high that they will print. To avoid the plate mov­ing around dur­ing print­ing it should be tacked in place with the pins fac­ing towards the cen­tre of the plate. Look­ing at the lock­up, avoid using wood­en fur­ni­ture (which can warp and bend) and lock the block using two quoins on each side (eight in total). This will allow for minute adjust­ments to be made to the posi­tion of the block with­out unlock­ing the whole forme.

    Materials

    The very best papers and ink should be used. Paper should be kept in the press room for a peri­od before print­ing so that the paper is unlike­ly to stretch dur­ing the print­ing process which would dis­tort the sub­se­quent colours. Paper should be trimmed on two edges to the fin­ished size so that reg­is­ter is accu­rate for each sheet. On inks, it is wise to take the man­u­fac­tur­er’s advice based on the paper and screen used. No dri­ers should be used because this would reduce the abil­i­ty of sub­se­quent lay­ers of ink to ​‘stick’ to low­er lay­ers. The machine and inks should be fair­ly warm (clos­er to the room tem­per­a­ture) so that it does not cause pick— the tack of the ink pulling the sur­face of the paper away.

    Printing

    The tra­di­tion­al sequence for print­ing in colour was: yel­low, red, blue and black. Exper­i­ments were con­duct­ed in the 1950s to work on a bet­ter sequence and it was found that the best approach was: black, red, blue and yel­low. The rea­sons were: (i) the first colour is dark­er and so can show that the posi­tion of the block is cor­rect, (ii) red shows bet­ter that the film of ink is of the cor­rect thick­ness, and (iii) the key colours are print­ed ear­li­er. Pro­gres­sive proofs should be exam­ined under day­light, rather than flu­o­res­cent or oth­er arti­fi­cial light. Rollers need to be of the best qual­i­ty. Final­ly the dif­fer­ent colours should be print­ed in quick suc­ces­sion so that sub­se­quent colours can ​‘take’ on top of the colours under­neath. A gap of three hours is prob­a­bly a good guide. Longer gaps may lead to crys­talli­sa­tion where the vehi­cle or var­nish of the ink is absorbed to the paper, but the pig­ment remains on the sur­face of the paper and can be rubbed off.

  • Edmondson-style Rail Tickets

    Edmondson-style Rail Tickets

    Background

    Michael Farr sets out below his approach to print­ing Edmond­son-style rail­way tick­ets.  It fas­ci­nat­ing from both a print­er’s per­spec­tive and a rail­way per­spec­tive.  If you have infor­ma­tion about either print­ing these tick­ets; or oth­er spe­cial­ist areas of let­ter­press please get in touch!

    Personal background

    Tick­ets came first for me, hav­ing begun my col­lec­tion when offered one num­bered 000 (the first of the series) for my dai­ly jour­ney to school in Bris­tol from Sea Mills sta­tion to Clifton Down.

    Print­ing fol­lowed soon after­wards when I joined mem­bers of the Bearpit Press at Clifton Col­lege. We used an Adana No 3 H/S and had a rea­son­able range of type, the most pop­u­lar faces in ​“prop­er” cas­es and the oth­ers in the small Adana 36 divi­sion draw­ers.

    The two hob­bies came togeth­er when I joined the Talyl­lyn Rail­way Preser­va­tion Soci­ety, the first rail preser­va­tion project in the world. They used Edmond­son tick­ets, ini­tial­ly print­ed by Edmond­son and lat­er by Har­lands (of Hull) and Williamson (of Ash­ton-under-Lyne). In addi­tion to the tick­ets for reg­u­lar jour­neys I could see a need for short runs for spe­cial trains and events. The nor­mal capac­i­ty of a Talyl­lyn Rail­way train was about 200–240, a work­able quan­ti­ty for print­ing by hand.

    You need to remem­ber is that every tick­et needs one (or prefer­ably two) ser­i­al num­bers and there is like­ly to be a coloured over­print let­ter, sym­bol or stripe and word­ing may be required on the back as well as the front of the card. Thus 240 tick­ets may need feed­ing and print­ing 1200 times.

    Ticket material

    The tra­di­tion­al mate­r­i­al was paste­board, pre-cut to the size pio­neered by Thomas Edmond­son in the 1830/40s, 21/4 x 13/16 or about 57 x 30 mm. The cen­tre lay­er of the sand­wich was a cheap board with thin white or coloured paper lam­i­nat­ed to it. British Rail were will­ing (though they did not adver­tise the fact) to sup­ply small quan­ti­ties of the tick­ets they bought from the Dick­in­son Robin­son Group to bona fide ama­teur tick­et print­ers. When BR com­put­erised rev­enue con­trol DRG dis­man­tled the paste­board machin­ery.

    Update from Michael, June 2021
    It may be pos­si­ble to pur­chase stock from Aeschbach­er AG of Worb, Switzer­land.

    Update from Nor­man Brown, Ear­ly 2023
    It is easy to repro­duce blank tick­ets by sand­wich­ing 700 micron grey­board (the mod­ern equiv­a­lent to straw­board) between coloured 80 gsm copi­er paper, 70 gsm would be near­er the orig­i­nal thick­ness but there is less of a sec­tion of colours and can be more expen­sive! The fin­ish tick­et thick­ness comes out to .035”

    Using the Adana machine

    I have tried mak­ing spe­cial fit­ments to mount on the plat­en but expe­ri­ence has shown they are not nec­es­sary for print­ing body text. I have filed away a lay bar so it clears the box around the out­side of the Letha­by num­ber­ing machines which I use.

    Han­dling such small card is fid­dly but thanks to the thick­ness you can push the print­ed tick­et along the bar with the new one you are lay­ing down. I arrange for the print­ed card to fall into a tray along­side the machine.

    Pos­si­bly because I am left-hand­ed, I have always pushed down the han­dle with my right hand and fed in the card with my left — so the receiv­ing tray is on the right.

    Typesetting

    Tra­di­tion­al­ly tick­ets were print­ed from hot met­al although BR changed to plates when they opened the new com­bined tick­et print­ing unit at Crewe.

    If you use stan­dard Adana chas­es you will need a large amount of fur­ni­ture — except per­haps for the No.1 H/S chase. I am for­tu­nate to have some of the very small chas­es sup­plied for the Water­low machines used by most British rail­ways and these will just fit into a 5–3 size chase.

    It may well be worth mak­ing some small chas­es if you intend to print large num­bers of tick­ets.

    Numbering

    At first I used a hand oper­at­ed plunger machine (by ENM), with a guide to posi­tion the tick­ets. I was sub­se­quent­ly able to buy two sec­ond-hand Letha­by machines for mount­ing in the machine chase.

    The plunger can play hav­oc with the dress­ing on the padding card and so I posi­tioned it towards the edge of the plat­en. I took an ini­tial print and then stuck (with dou­ble-sided tape) a small square of paste­board to take the impact.

    One friend has mount­ed a hand oper­at­ed machine in a ver­ti­cal drill stand; two oth­ers had twin box­es made espe­cial­ly by Letha­by with a remote plunger to oper­ate them.

    I usu­al­ly feed and remove the tick­ets from the plat­en indi­vid­u­al­ly, stack­ing them in piles of 25 until ful­ly dry. Remem­ber that most pre­served rail­ways use tra­di­tion­al grav­i­ty-feed tick­et racks for which the low­est num­ber needs to be at the bot­tom of the pile, so a for­ward-count­ing box is best. Mod­ern plas­tic tick­et racks need them to be num­bered with the low­est num­ber at the top of the pile — for which a back­wards-count­ing box is ide­al.

    Tra­di­tion­al­ly tick­ets have been sup­plied bun­dled in 250s.

    Quantities

    Although I began by pro­duc­ing runs of 240 for the Talyl­lyn, as my ​“fame” spread I was asked to pro­duce longer runs and for many oth­er lines at home and abroad. Some week­ends would find me push­ing the machine hand down 20,000 or more times. Hind­sight tells me this was very fool­ish because I now have a per­ma­nent strain in my side which can be most uncom­fort­able — and has caused me to ​“retire” from tick­et print­ing at the age of 71.

    Cer­tain­ly there is not so much need for ama­teurs to pro­duce tick­ets by hand as there are many indi­vid­u­als and pre­served lines who own the for­mer BR Water­low machines and are will­ing to print for oth­er cus­tomers. I am sure there will always be a need for short runs to be pro­duced by hand.

    Adana Machine Models

    When I left school I invest­ed £4.17s.6d in an Adana No. 1 ​“High-speed” machine, which was quite capa­ble of print­ing Edmond­son tick­ets. I pro­gressed to the 5–3 mod­el which ran much more smooth­ly (and qui­et­ly) but there were sev­er­al advan­tages of pro­duc­ing even tiny tick­ets on a larg­er machine, such as the 8–5. This needs less effort to obtain a good impres­sion and it is pos­si­ble to print more than one tick­et at a time. I have print­ed fronts and backs at the same time, though this needs very care­ful organ­i­sa­tion to pre­vent hav­ing some tick­ets with two fronts and oth­er with two backs!

    …and finally.

    I have thor­ough­ly enjoyed my tick­et print­ing. So far as the Talyl­lyn was con­cerned I felt I was able to help the rail­way even though I lived 200 or more miles away and was unable to vis­it it reg­u­lar­ly. I have also struck up many friend­ships with peo­ple who give so much time to pre­serv­ing the past.

    I would not rec­om­mend tick­et print­ing as a lucra­tive past-time. One has to com­pete with the peo­ple who have pow­er-oper­at­ed machines and with each card need­ing more than one run the work is time-con­sum­ing. As I became old­er (and wis­er?) I often struck barter deals which mean I can now enjoy a free ride on some lines, know­ing that by print­ing the tick­ets for a spe­cial­ly low price (or more often free) I helped an impe­cu­nious line in its ear­ly days.

    If you have a small hand-oper­at­ed let­ter­press machine and an inter­est in pre­served trans­port, why not have a go? You can begin by using card cut to size in a guil­lo­tine, but please try to cut accu­rate­ly or your cus­tomer will find the tick­ets stick in the issu­ing tubes.

    Good luck!

    Michael Farr, with update in June 2020