Brad Woods from Maginating has been on a wild ride the last six years. Although he had a degree in classical animation and a Master’s in computer animation, it was love at first sight for Brad and letterpress. Being surrounded by computers most of the time, letterpress enabled him to use his hands again: drawing, erasing, cutting and packaging until soon he couldn’t get away from the cast iron machine and the tactile qualities of letterpress. He took time away from his one man studio to have a Boxcar Talk:

How did you first get into letterpress?

About six years ago I was at a restaurant with my sister.  She suggested I check out the shop next door – she thought I’d think it was pretty cool.  Turned out it was Sugar Paper, a letterpress company who specializes in stunning custom letterpress and includes a storefront.  Anyway, I was blown away!  I’d never seen anything like it before.  Jamie, one of the owners, was in the shop that day and was very kind – she was happy to answer all my questions.

About six months later I was fortunate enough to meet Bob Paduano – a master of all things letterpress.  He’s been in the business a long time and was able to restore a Kluge 10×15 for me.  At the time I was still doing freelance work so, for about a year, whenever I had some spare time, I worked down in our garage – trying to figure this big hunk of cast iron out.  I never took any classes…couldn’t find any that used platen presses.  I just kept looking online for answers, and spoke with all sorts of helpful and generous printers.  It took some time but eventually my knowledge base grew to a point where I was able to get going at an operable speed.

Believe it or not – my first job was a wedding invitation set. Miraculously, it turned out great – the client was very happy. Knowing what I know now, this was a craaazy first piece. I don’t know what I was thinking. In my defense, I plead temporary insanity (and a whopping case of ignorance.)  Glad I didn’t blow it!

Not long after that I stopped taking on any freelance work and dedicated all my time to creating a greeting card line. That was almost four years ago. (It’s important to note that none of this would have been possible had it not been for my lovely wife, Stacy.  She supported me all the way – encouraging me as I gradually expanded the card line and brought in no income…)

What was your very first press (and are you using it still)?

Yes, I still use my first press – a hand-fed 10×15 Kluge. It’s fantastic – I’ll probably keep it forever!!

What medium do you usually print (lead/wood type, photopolymer, lino, etc.)?

I only use photopolymer (specifically KF152)

What’s your process from sketch to press?

I have this little sketchbook (4×6) that I keep close at hand. It’s crammed with doodles – all the ideas that come to me, wherever I am… Most of the time they’re these crummy little drawings, but that’s all they need to be. I don’t want to pause to consider the logistics of a design but act more as a camera to my mental images. If an idea looks like it’s going to work as a card, I take a photo with my point-and-shoot digital camera and import it into the computer. I find it’s good enough quality to meet my needs and much faster than scanning. This next stage is where the computer comes into play – it’s hard to avoid. I prefer the crisp edge of a vector graphic as opposed to a raster one, so I tend to work in Adobe Illustrator (check this out for more information about the difference between the two.) I import the photo of the doodle into Illustrator and “trace” it.  A lot of the refinement happens in this stage and I try to keep it as loose as possible when using a mouse. Once I feel it’s done I then consider whether or not it’s good enough to be a card (I really don’t know until then). Sometimes it isn’t, and I’ll go back to the drawing board. Sometimes I’ll rework the design over a couple of months (or several years.)  For example, my “Birthday Owls” card began as an idea in 2006 but wasn’t released until 2009. Once it’s received the “Maginating Seal of Approval,” I send it off to you guys at Boxcar Press to be converted into a photopolymer plate and we’re off and printing not long after that.

What other print shops do you admire?

I am a big fan of many, many print shops, however, I recently discovered Pie Bird Press at the National Stationery Show…their work blew me away – everything about it was awesome! (and yes, it’s letterpress!)

P.S. great blog, too

Who or what inspires you the most?

I find inspiration in a great variety of things, artistically speaking, some of those are:
- Jon Klassen

- Danish Modern furniture

- William Joyce

- Mo Willems

- UPA animation studios

- Alexander Girrard

- Charles and Ray Eames

… and Jim Henson

What do you enjoy most about working with Boxcar Press?

I love Boxcar’s photopolymer system – I have a Deep Relief Boxcar Base and appear to be addicted to KF152 photopolymer plates…(but I can quit at any time – I swear).

Any neat tricks you can share?

As anyone who uses Crane’s Lettra knows, it draws like crazy when cut in large quantities. The same problem applies when you try to corner round a good quantity of finished cards. Our solution has been to create a die for each card size with round corners and the score line included. It’s quick, efficient, and everything comes out perfect!

What are you looking forward to? (i.e., upcoming shows, publications, events, etc.)

I’m working on a top-secret project right now…can’t tell you about it (but I’m very excited!)

What was the experience like for you at NSS?

We’ve been exhibiting at NSS for the past three years. This year was fantastic – it’s taken some time, but we’re finally beginning to see the full merits of what the show has to offer. While sales are always great (and we’re grateful for each and every one) the NSS offers a potentially massive networking opportunity. While it’s always been a part of our show experience, it’s becoming more substantial.  The opportunity to speak with bloggers, press, fellow card-creators, reps, designers and all sorts of other creative types is not only fun, but a great way to increase your “prosperity” at the show.

Do you have any suggestions for people hoping to exhibit next year or how to promote their new product lines?

There are so many details to consider when exhibiting for the first time at NSS. I would highly recommend signing up for the mentor program offered by George Little Management. This program will partner you with a “veteran” exhibitor – someone who has similar design sensibilities and product and has exhibited at the NSS before. And for those of us who have already exhibited at the show, I would highly recommend that they also sign up as a mentor for GLM’s program.

I would also recommend not using foam core walls – they may be fast and look great, but they’re expensive.  Also, once the show’s over, you’re probably going to leave the walls there (everyone else does) – which, to me seems like a terrible waste (and a bit odd, given the push on keeping this industry as green as possible).  I would recommend trying to create a flame-proof soft-wall, using some type of fabric, sign material – something like that.  I’ve seen all sorts of amazing applications!  The show’s already expensive enough and the last thing you want to do is spend more money on shipping or materials (or foam core walls).  That said, I have semi-hard walls (burlap stretched over wooden frames).  Had I known about the weight and shipping factor (my booth’s just under 400lbs.), I would have done a soft wall.  I’ll keep using what I have for now (get my money’s worth), but will go the soft-wall route next time around, for sure.

Thanks, Brad, for such fantastic advice and input! We can’t wait to hear about your top-secret project!

A while back, we reviewed the L Letterpress and provided some printing tricks and tips for achieving good quality prints with the L Letterpress and our KF152 photopolymer plates. Amy Graham recently put our tips to the test, ordered a set of plates and with a little and trial and error, printed her own letterpress wedding invitations. They look great! Amy shares, “The results are impressive, using your suggestions.  I achieved the best results using minimal ink and cleaning the plates, roller and inking block about every six prints.”

And check out her invitations -

Great work, Amy, and thanks for sharing! You can check out Amy’s design work at avail & company.

Sycamore Street Press, a husband and wife duo from Heber City, UT, began printing on a Vandercook #3 in their dining room in 2007. Quirky sketches lead to a stationery line, limited edition prints, and collaborations with numerous fine artists. Today, with a more spacious set up, they have been featured on design*sponge and Good Morning America as well as a variety of creative blogs and magazines. They will also be featured in the highly anticipated book, Impressive: Printmaking, Letterpress, & Graphic Design, due to be released in the states in a matter of weeks! Kirk and Eva found time to partake in our cool new blog feature, Boxcar Talk.

What made you want to become an artist?
Drawing was my favorite part of kindergarten, and tole painting with my mom is a favorite early childhood memory. I don’t remember ever not wanting to be an artist.

How did you first get into letterpress?
I studied fine art printmaking during my undergrad years, and really wanted to learn letterpress at that point. Unfortunately it was only available to the graphic design majors. So, when I went to grad school at the University of Utah, learning letterpress was on the top of my list. Marnie Powers-Torrey and the rest of the staff at the Book Arts program were great teachers and mentors. I taught Kirk how to print, and he also took a course through the University of Utah to fill in any gaps I may have missed.

What was your very first press?
A Vandercook #3. I got it in September of 2007 and it’s still the only press that Kirk and I print on. It’s completely hand operated. There isn’t even motorized inking. One of these days, we’ll get a windmill, but this press has really treated us well.

{Image at far right by Zuzanna Audette.}

What medium do you usually print (lead/wood type, photopolymer, lino, etc.)?
Photopolymer plates from Boxcar. I’ve printed with lead and wooden type before, as well as lino cuts and mag cuts, but photopolymer is what we use for our line of paper goods. We love the versatility of it.

What’s your process from sketch to press?
Well, I can’t speak for the other SSP designers (there are 3 other regular contributing designers), but this is my process: I usually have an idea in my head of what I’d like the image to look like. I do a few rough sketches, and then proceed to do a detailed drawing in pencil, which I then go over with pen and ink. I scan the drawing into Photoshop, bump up the contrast, and turn it into a bitmap. I upload my file to Boxcar’s site, and within a week, I receive a photopolymer plate with my drawing on it in the mail. We slap that onto our Boxcar base, get it all positioned, and start to print.

What other print shops do you admire?
I am constantly amazed by the technical prowess of Studio on Fire. Their blog is full of useful tips and information about printing.

Dee & Lala and Dutch Door Press are both smaller operations with two full time partners who design and print their own line of stationery (kind of like us!). We see both companies pretty often at craft shows, and they always have beautiful work.

Mandate Press is another Utah-based studio who does great work…I guess I’ll stop there, but I could go on and on. There are so many wonderful letterpress studios out there!

Who or what inspires you the most?
I wrote a really in depth post on this a couple of months ago as part of SFGirlByBay’s Blog it Forward project. Here’s the shortened version: the creative people in my family, the traditional Maori art of Ta Moko, folk art from all over, contemporary artists (such as Kiki Smith, Jockum Nordstrom, and Margaret Kilgallen), the letterpress process and its limitations, my good friend’s dogs, and my time spent studying and living in France and Belgium.

What are your favorite things/items from Boxcar Press?
Definitely the plates and the base.

Any cool printing tricks you can share?
If the piece of paper I’m printing on is too small to reach the gauge on the feed board, I cut up an old plastic credit card, membership card, etc… and tape a strip of it onto the cylinder packing to act as a guide instead. This comes in handy for smaller size envelopes as well.

What are you looking forward to?
Kirk and I are currently in New York. We’re here for an entire month, selling our goods at the National Stationery Show, the Brooklyn Flea, and the Renegade Craft Fair. We are so excited for the shows – we love meeting our customers face to face. We are also looking forward to taking some time to explore different neighborhoods, museums, shops, etc…around the city. On a more personal note, Kirk and I are having our first baby in November! We are over the moon about this and can’t wait to meet the little one!

Thanks Kirk and Eva! Congratulations on the little one on the way – we can’t wait to see the baby announcements!

{Photos by Sycamore Street Press unless otherwise noted.}

One of our esteemed Boxcar platemaking customers, Suann Song from Simplesong Design, is guest blogging on design*sponge this week where she showed off her Boxcar base and KF152 plates and is sharing insight into letterpress printing, design and more. Check it out!

The L Letterpress can produce nice printing. No, really, it’s possible. Note: I didn’t say “easy.”

When I first saw the QuickKutz L Letterpress earlier this year I was troubled (as were many of the other professional letterpress printers I knew). It seemed like it would cheapen and denigrate our 550 year old craft and confuse people who are used to high quality letterpress printing. If you comb the internet, you might still be able to find some of my irate comments on blogs denouncing the machine.

But rather than writing the machine off, I’ve recently tried to come to terms with the machine. Whether I like it or not lots of people will be buying this press and hoping to have fun printing. (They’ll probably have a lot more fun than many of us professionals making a living by printing!) Some of the new printers will hope to sell quality printing made from it. It’s really in everyone’s best interest to make sure these new additions to our tiny letterpress community have the best materials and techniques at hand…so that they make letterpress look as good as possible. I don’t want letterpress to have a bad name!

My hope is that by sharing some time-tested letterpress techniques (that aren’t in the manual), I can help L Letterpress printers from getting discouraged. And without help, I think the press can be very discouraging. Eventually, my hope is that these new printers will use the L Letterpress as a stepping stone to a more substantial press, say a 13×18 Heidelberg Windmill, and that they will help preserve the craft and equipment for future generations to cherish.

After spending a few days tinkering with my own L Letterpress, I’m convinced that quality printing is possible on this machine, but it’s not going to happen “out of the box.” It’s not going to be very easy, either, but with enough patience and effort it can be done. Anyone who wants to make nice prints on this press is going to need to make five changes right off the bat. These often reflect techniques that letterpress printers have used for over 500 years, but somehow didn’t seem important to the L Letterpress manufacturer. The press itself is fine. Don’t tell anyone with a Kelsey that I said this, but for single-color printing it’s probably going to give you better results than an old cast iron Kelsey press, if you use it right! You just have to learn how to “mod” it to print well:

1) Throw away the supplied ink roller and buy yourself one that will work.

Why? This is the most important thing you can do to improve your printing on the L Letterpress. As with a big cast iron press, you will never get quality printing without quality rollers…and the manufacturer has not shipped a quality roller. The manufacturer’s ink roller was too hard for letterpress printing. It wasn’t even round, and had “dry spots” when I rolled out ink on an ink slab.

I didn’t even try to pull a print with the supplied roller because it was so obviously problematic. Fortunately I had a big printmaking brayer that’s used in hand printing woodblocks laying around the shop. (You don’t need one that’s nearly so big, this roller is definitely overkill. My point is that you need a soft roller that’s round and wide. )

How to do this? Purchase a printmaking brayer. You can get these for under $10 from your local art store, but I’ll recommend a few that are a little more “up-market” so that you can be assured your roller will work.

Here’s my top choice, if you have the money:

B4802 6.5” x 1.75” Japanese Soft Rubber Brayer $59.75

And then there’s this (along with a lot of similar rollers) which will get the job done:

54129 Speedball 6”x1.25” Soft Rubber Brayer #66 $11.70

(This second brayer is also available at many art stores around the world. The key is the word soft.)

You’ll see why I’m suggesting such a wide (6 inch) roller in my third tip. Also, you’ll probably want an ink knife (shown in the background of the photo above) from a hardware store—check the paint section. This should only cost you a couple bucks. I’ll post shortly with some more specifics on how to ink more consistently. Start here, though!

2) Throw away the supplied plates and make yourselves custom KF152 photopolymer plates.

Why? With just two impressions on the L Letterpress, we had shattered the plastic plates the manufacturer had supplied. A quick Google search showed that we were not alone. Clearly, the plates that ship with the press are made from a material that is not suited to the pressure involved in letterpress printing. Thankfully, we have been making custom photopolymer plates for years that do withstand the pressure of letterpress printing. Our plates are resilient and bounce back after each impression. They won’t shatter if you handle them correctly (keep them out of light when unused and sealed in the ziplock bag provided).

How to do this? Order letterpress plates from us! Our plates are designed to handle the stresses of letterpress printing. Just request the KF152 plate material from our online order form. Our plates come with adhesive backing already on the plate and with a letterpress-printed proof to show what the plate will print like when you start—and when you finish—your printing! You’ll receive them sealed in a bag, so all you have to do is remove them, peel, and stick.

Please note that every plate we made is custom, and we don’t have a catalog of stock plates. We just ask that you send us a PDF or a file suitable for graphic design (AI, EPS, etc.) and we’ll ship you back a plate of what you see on the screen. Also, read over our tips for file submission, which has detailed instructions on preparing custom artwork for letterpress. Real quickly: make sure everything is 100% black, line art, crisp. Feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you might have about sending us custom artwork for your L Letterpress!

The KF152 is the same thickness as the plates supplied with the L Letterpress:

3) Use roller bearers to ink your plate consistenly.

Why? You’re hand inking on an L Letterpress. Inking in letterpress is very touchy, so slight deviations in the pressure or the angle of the roller are going to be visible on the printing. This problem dates back to the handpress era of letterpress, when rollers were first invented in the 19th century. The solution always has been to put roller bearers to support the roller alongside the part that you want to ink. This will be easier to show with a photograph (again, ignore the massive roller, which is overkill):

You can see that two thin strips of plate material—which are the exact same thickness as the plate—are supporting the ink roller on either side of the plate. This keeps the roller parallel thereby keeping it from exerting too much pressure on the plate. You’ll know you need to do this if your printing appears splotchy, bloated, or isn’t crisp; it will probably never be crisp without roller bearers unless you are superhuman!

How to do this? There’s no additional cost—how about that? Prior to shipping your plate, we have a border around the plate material that would make perfect roller bearers. We usually cut this off prior to shipping the plate out because most people don’t ink by hand. You can simply request that the plate is not trimmed down when you place an order, which will give you strips of material which you can cut down to place alongside your printing plate.

This is our KF152 plate material, available for order via our Platemaking service

Ink up with the roller bearers perpendicular to the direction you’re rolling the roller. When you’re done inking for each print, remove the bearers and set them aside to use on the next print. It’ll add a few seconds to each print but it will improve your printing considerably!

Make sure to peel off the inked-up bearers when you go to pull your print (you don’t actually want these to go through the press). You can put them back down when you’re ready to ink up your next print.

4) Throw away the sponge foam for positioning the paper and use paper “gauge pins” instead.

Why? There are several things keeping you from printing in good “register” on the L Letterpress. The biggest problem is easily solved with a few pieces of paper and double stick tape. The manufacturer instructs you to position your paper with pieces of adhesive foam that stick down to the press bed. One look at that idea and I said, “no way!”

First of all, the foam pieces are not very re-positionable if I want to move them to align the printing. And secondly, the foam is very squishy so I can never be sure where the paper will rest. No letterpress printer in their right mind would use foam to hold their paper in position! We (printers) are accustomed to much more accurate placement of the paper because we have to print multiple colors in register on top of each other. If you’re planning on multiple colors printed on your piece, listen up! While it’s not a traditional solution, people have been making paper “gauge pins” (this is the name of the pins that hold the paper) for ages as a way to hold the paper in a tight squeeze.

How to do this? I used a few pieces of the paper supplied by the manufacturer to make my gauge pins. First I cut six ¼ inch by ½ inch strips.

Then I used double-stick tape to adhere three of the tabs down the press bed where I wanted the paper to be. Finally, I adhered a thin strip on top of these tabs to hold the paper down and in place. The paper we print on will slip under these top strips and bump (securely) up against the bottom tabs. Since the paper is much thinner than the printing plate, you won’t see any indentation where the top strips overlap your piece of paper after squeezing them in the press. If you need to re-position the gauge pins, they peel up nicely and you can move them around to square up your plate to the sheet you’re printing on.

Note: I used our Boxcar film adhesive for the double stick tape, which we sell as a way to mount printing plates. Since this is a re-positionable double stick tape, it fit the bill for this application as well.

In this photo, you can see a comparison of our KF152 plate (top) with the cupped plastic plate that ships with the machine (bottom). You can also see how the paper gauge pins are holding the paper in position.

5) Tape the press bed down to keep it from moving around.

Why? After a few impressions I noticed that the press bed itself was getting warped. At this point, I also realized that the press bed doesn’t fit perfectly into the machine, it actually has some slop in it. This means that the paper will not be registered to the plate every time you pull a print. To keep this from happening, tape down the press bed at the corners to keep it from moving around.

How to do this? Scotch tape! Letterpress printers are very fond of this supply. Make sure you always have some on hand in your L Letterpress print shop.

Note: I still noticed slop in the registration of the machine, because the hinge that the plate sits on also is pretty sloppy. I can’t figure out a quick or cheap way to improve this, so you’ll just want to be mindful of this looseness if you’re planning on printing multiple colors on top of each other in tight register. Always try to position the panel that flaps down over the plate in the same spot relative to the press bed.

Printing on this machine is still going to take a lot of practice. How much ink do you put on the plate? How do you get multiple plates positioned correctly? I’ll post some more ideas to help you out with your printing in some upcoming blog posts. But for now, I just wanted to point out quick, simple ways to make good printing possible. It’s my opinion that the L Letterpress printing press can actually print well—if start by following these five tips when you start using it, and keep at it long enough. There is going to be a bit of a learning curve, but I hope these tips will at least get you started in the right direction.

I hope this is helpful! If you’ve just bought an L Letterpress, welcome to the wonderful letterpress community! I think you’ll find you’re in good company. It’s a very fun craft to pursue and I hope that these techniques will help you get off to the right start. Let us know if you have any questions or concerns via the comments here and we’ll try to help you out as best as possible!

Here’s a nice print we made for Paper Crave. Her blog post got me started on this project. Thanks Kristen!

We think it’s beyond cool when people decide to tackle letterpressing their own wedding invitations. Like Lindsay, Beverly and Neil, a graphic designer and an architect, designed and printed their own letterpress invitations. We love the hands-on approach! These were featured on Mint earlier this week – the couple used photopolymer plates from Boxcar Press and Neenah paper, and got to take over the printshop of their friend Amos Kennedy of Kennedy Prints. How sweet is that? Beverly and Neil printed invitations, thank you notes and all of the corresponding envelopes, then added a cool textile inspiration by sewing the invitations.

You can read more about these invitations on Mint.

photo via Mint

Receiving awesome letterpress samples from our platemaking customers never stops being fun for us. These come from Officiana Briani in Raleigh, North Carolina where Brian Allen brings over 30 years of work in the field of typography to his love for letterpress. Brian tells us that his primary press is a Swiss-made Gietz, approximately 12×18 inches, unknown model, unknown date of manufacture, likely from the late 1950s or early 1960s – a sweet press, with adjustable roller height, considered one of the best hand-fed platen press ever made. He uses a Boxcar Base and KF152 photopolymer plates, except for those occasions where he turns to handset and wood type.

In addition to past work as a typesetter, calligrapher, digital typeface production worker and letterpress printer, Brian loves to teach the letterpress craft. “Teaching letterpress is a very important part of my mission, sharing my love of letterforms, etc. Most students are young women, but all are people seeking balance and to regain a sense of touch in their lives. Fewer than half of the students have thoughts of printing themselves, the rest just want to see what it’s all about and get their hands inky! I share my 30 years of knowledge of type and letterforms, let students look through my large library and soak in the camaraderie with other students who have felt alone in their passion for handcraft but have found a home at my studio. I love to emphasize finding the extraordinary (lovely letterforms) in the ordinary (a lowly trade). Words and their expression still matter in my world.”

Brian also has a really cool Albion handpress that he eventually plans to use to print posters, but currently uses for demonstrations when visitors come by the studio so they can print their own copy of a keepsake to remember their visit to Officiana Briani. Brian says, “It entrances and seduces people into the magic of communicating with letterpress! The press is an Improved Albion 18×24 from the 1850s, made in London. It’s a crude/elemental machine, but symbolizes much – the arguments over who we were to be as a country were printed on a wooden handpress, one lever pull at a time, just as our single vote makes a difference in the aggregate. The most refined thoughts of the Enlightenment were given physical form with a handpress, and I use mine to emphasize to young people that an individual’s thoughts and actions matter, can be given form. Truly the power of the press!”

Brian’s career has been a true evolution that has led him through three decades of work with typography and even led to his personal handwriting being developed into the Microsoft font Segoe Script, for which he is listed as co-inventor on the patent. He tells us that he found his path “accidentally, but inevitably by working first as a typesetter in Boston and New York in 1975-79, taking calligraphy classes and reading the history of printing and typography. In 1982 Sumner Stone hired me at Autologic, Inc. in Southern California, to work in the pre-desktop world of digital type. Autologic made 700 dpi typesetting machines for the newspaper industry. We used the German IKARUS software to digitize outlines of alphabets, which were converted to run-length encoded bitmaps.”

After a time, Brian found himself at Imagen Corp. making type in a proprietary digital format for before moving to IBM to make fonts in the Folio F3 format, then PostScript Type 1 followed by TrueType formats. During this time, he opened his first letterpress shop as a part time venture, before leaving IBM to make letterpress his full time career. Eventually he closed his shop and returned to font production before finally returning to letterpress in 2005 when he moved to Raleigh and set up shop with Officiana Briani.

According to Brian, “The 1980s/early ‘90s was a very exciting time to be involved with fonts as the desktop revolution happened…It is quite amazing to see how many “civilians” know what a font is now. I was a part of the “font wars” in the late 1980s – the format competition between Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft, with Type 1 and True Type. Now of course, we have the blend of Open Type. The font wars are over. What comes next?”

Okay, we’re in love.

Actually, we fall totally head over heels in love with the Studio On Fire calendar every single year, and this year is no different. The design is always amazing. The letterpress printing is always amazing (amazing solids, great impression, super crisp type).

And we’re so thrilled that the calendar is printed using our Boxcar Base and Boxcar’s photopolymer plates.

Studio On Fire, by the way, is a design and letterpress shop based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and they consistently create some of the most original letterpress work out there — so go check them out and get inspired! The calendar is available for purchase for $30 from their web site — and sure, it’s March, but that means you can still get nine more months of authentic over-the-top letterpress pleasure from this calendar. Also check out their awesome letterpress blog Beast Pieces.

One of the joys of the new year for us is letterpress calendars – 12 pages of pure letterpress pleasure! So we were thrilled this year to receive a beautiful calendar from one of our platemaking customers, Rick Ziesing, the owner of Red Oak Press in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Turns out, in addition to being a letterpress printer, Rick is also a photographer and has taken amazing photographs of his shop, his Windmill, and his printing. His pictures remind us of why we love letterpress printing so darn much – because everything about this printing process is beautiful! Can you imagine an offset shop looking so gorgeous? (see more photos of more letterpress printing at Red Oak Press here)

Rick shared with us some thoughts about letterpress (see below), and all photographs are taken by Rick. The calendar was printed using the Boxcar Base and KF95 plates.

“We bought a beautiful ‘red ball’ Heidelberg Tiegel (windmill) in August of 2007, in order to make products designed in-house without those pesky clients telling us what to do.”

“Of course, I was not a printer, had never run a press nor even seen a Windmill in the flesh until it arrived. Armed with the Heidelberg manual, Platen Press Operation, by George J. Mills, and Kelsey’s little green book, I commenced my self education. The paper companies loved me as I burned through reams of cotton paper while learning to get the press to feed, then to print, then to print properly. Many trials and errors later, I am able to produce something of reasonably good quality.”

“This calendar was designed by Lori Gray, my wife’s partner in Kedash Design, a graphic design firm in Kennett Square, PA.”

“The printing of the calendar itself was not particularly difficult, registration was not critical but getting good ink coverage on both the text and the graphic for the month was trying. I resorted to running most colors twice through the press, which is supposedly a sacrilege but certainly gets the job done without having to resort to smashing one run and deforming the letters to get the graphic to print. I did some makeready by glueing some tissue thin press packing to the platen in certain areas. Of course, the Heidelberg is so beautifully designed that you can run pieces through multiple times and get dead on registration every pass.”

“The gray wash graphics were simple, once I got the color right. There’s just a hint of color anyway and lots of trusty transparent white was consumed. We bought a hand operated wiro binding machine for finishing as the cost of outsourcing 100 calendars to some drone in a copy shop was more expensive (and frightening) than just doing our own.”

“I use standard Boxcar Bases and the KF95 photopolymer. If you’ve dealt with them, you know that this is a top-flight operation.”

“Here are a few hard learned tips. If you’re running a Windmill, get it to feed perfectly before trying to print. If your final print looks bad, it can be a million things, but I always go to the packing first and use fresh tympan and packing for every run. Roller height is critical and may even need to be changed according to what kind of job you are doing. Don’t overink….as in most things, less is best.”