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!)
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!
Snap & Tumble is a one woman operation studio based in a home in Toronto, Canada. With just two table top presses and a showcard press, Tanya Roberts reminds us that if you put your mind to it, anything is possible. Since the spring of 2007, she has shared every trial and error of learning and mastering her tabletop presses on her blog. What made you want to become an artist?
I never set out to become an artist. My love of craft printing and the desire to do letterpress – to search through antique markets for type or old printer’s blocks, to mix the ink, to operate the press itself, and to see the results of my labor – is what has led me to where I am today.
How did you first get into letterpress?
My desire emerged from the shadows – literally! I was in a stationery store and noticed the shadows formed by the deep impression on a card that had been made by a letterpress. I picked it up, ran my fingers over the type, and fell in love. From there, my curiosity took over. Probably the most important early move I made was taking a letterpress workshop at Open Studio which introduced me to a flatbed press. It was after doing the workshop that I decided to go out on a limb and get my own tabletop. From then on I’ve been self-taught but have been guided by the online letterpress community. One of the reasons I now offer workshops is so that other people have an easier time learning about letterpress than I initially did.
What was your very first press?
My first press is the Adana Eight-Five. It was perfect for me when I started out because it was small and it fit in my basement apartment kitchen. I’ve moved up to a 6.5 x 10 Canadian Craftsmen Machinery Co. press which is what I primarily use now. I’ve also added a small Showcard Press to the family.
What medium do you usually print (lead/wood type, photopolymer, lino, etc.)?
It depends on what I’m printing. I usually use Boxcar photopolymer plates and lead/wood type. I like making use of my type because I’ve acquired a great collection of the classics. I started off experimenting with magnesium dies mounted on wood, but ever since I tried out the polymer plates and registration, the Boxcar system seems to be the best for me.
What’s your process from sketch to press?
I tend to skip the hand-sketching part and go straight to Illustrator. There, I play with shapes and type, getting an idea of layout and composition. I don’t usually concern myself with color at this point. It’s not until I get the plates on the press that I’ll consider color and mix inks until I’m happy with what I see. Many times I simply experiment with moveable type – deciding all elements of design on the fly. Having a background in advertising design and copywriting, I think my brain is wired to latch onto anything type-related. Most of my product is type-heavy, making use of my beloved gothic wood and Poster Bodoni lead type. If I find something that I want to include in a design, I will scan it in to the computer. For example, there was an occasion when I found a vintage embroidery pattern book that included an exquisite alphabet. I scanned it into Photoshop, converted it to black and white, heightened the contrast and exported it to Illustrator. From there I traced the letters and it was ready for Boxcar.
What other print shops do you admire?
I’m consistently moved by the work of Maria Vettese from Port2Port Press. The simplicity of her prints is extraordinary.
Who or what inspires you the most?
In no particular order: I’m inspired by skillful typography, interesting use of colour, antique wood cuts, Hatch Show Print posters, Heather Smith Jones’s use of organic shapes, snail mail from friends, excellent design, and generally by passionate people who make stuff.
Any neat tricks you can share?
Here’s a tip for cleaning rollers: get a regular Rubbermaid plastic bin that’s just under the length of your rollers (pins included), drill a hole at each end of the bin. Slide the pins of the rollers into each hole. This way you’ve got both hands free to scrub instead of using one to hold the roller while the other rubs it clean.
What are you looking forward to?
There’s starting to be a real visible presence of letterpress printers in Toronto and I’m excited to see it grow. In terms of shows, I always look forward to the annual City of Craft fair and hopefully I’ll be able to attend the next Wayzgoose Festival in Grimsby, Ontario. As for books, I’ve got for Reinventing Letterpress: Prints by Contemporary Artists on my wishlist.
Thanks Tanya! And if you’re in her neighborhood, be sure to check out Letterpress Curiosity Workshops especially if you want experience on a tabletop press.
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.
Ladies of Letterpress, an online community dedicated to women printers, began with just two women who strive to promote the art and craft of letterpress printing. Kseniya and Jessica have worked hard to build this fantastic online community where members discuss process, advice, and share resources. The Ladies are growing more and more each day and have recently awarded their first annual scholarship to one of their members to help develop printing skills and also attended the 2010 National Stationery Show in New York as a joint exhibit with some of the members.
Kseniya Jessica
How did Ladies of Letterpress start? Kseniya: Jessica and I met a few years ago at an Oak Knoll Fest, which I was attending as a book fan, and where she was exhibiting with the University of Iowa. Her fabulous badges caught my eye, and they got us talking about starting a nation-wide organization of the same name (which started as a loose association at the University of Iowa). We found Ning, and went live with it in late 2008. Now we have almost 600 members, and big plans!
Jessica: Ditto what Kseniya said. We met in the fall of 2006 at the Oak Knoll Fest, a conference for book arts and fine press, where she told me about her ideas for creating this type of community. She already had a website ‘dedicated to the proposition that a woman’s place is in the printshop’, but wasn’t seeing any real results, while I had made those patches just for fun, without envisioning much more until we started talking. We decided on the spot that we should work together to form this community, and create a forum where women printers could come together, have discussions, share skills, and keep in touch. We live in different parts of the country, so we’ve kept in touch and made it happen all through emails and occasional phone calls.
How did each of you first get into letterpress? Kseniya: I had a six-month-long internship at the printshop of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany after I graduated college; the internship was a part of a year-long fellowship. When I applied for the position, I really had no idea what they did there, and less of an idea about how they did it–I actually thought they made books! But I was quickly disabused of that notion when, on my first day, a retired type-compositor handed me a set of reglets and started teaching me all sorts of German letterpress vocabulary. I spent the next six months setting type from their fabulous, 1000-case collection, printing small jobs–once for a princess–and pursuing my own projects. It was absolutely wonderful; little did I know where it would lead!
Jessica: I remember seeing some letterpress printed posters and broadsides while I was an undergrad at East Carolina University, but at the time I was completely focused on sculpture, especially metal work and casting bronze and iron. It wasn’t until grad school, when a friend of mine showed me how to set type late one night, that I was hooked. By that point, my work had already shifted to printmaking and book art, and I think the tactile qualities of setting type and printing on a Vandercook brought the sculptor and printmaker sides of me together.
Besides Ladies of Letterpress, what else do you do? Kseniya: I’m the owner of Thomas-Printers (new site coming soon!), a commercial letterpress shop in Carlisle, PA. We debuted a new wedding line, YonderYest, at this year’s Stationery Show.
Jessica: I have a print shop and bindery, Heroes & Criminals Press, where I make books and prints, and occasional commission work. I also teach printmaking and bookbinding workshops at Asheville BookWorks, and will be teaching papermaking and book art this fall at Warren Wilson College.
What was your very first press, and are you still using it? Kseniya: My first press was a 12×18 C+P NS, and we still use it for big things (posters, broadsides, etc.), and die-cutting.
Jessica: Well, the secret-midnight-printing-session at school was on an SP15, which I continued to use while in school. I’ll always consider it my ‘first’. I just graduated last year, moved to Asheville, NC, and purchased a Kelsey 5×8 and a Showcard press. The Kelsey is my on-the-road press, the one that I take to differences places when I give demos. Most of my printing these days is done on the Showcard or on one of the Vandercooks at Asheville BookWorks, where I often volunteer and teach workshops.
Who or what inspires you the most? Kseniya: I’m inspired by music, my home state of Utah, non-fiction in the New Yorker, and the wonderful work produced by the other Ladies of Letterpress! Also, of course, the desire to stay in business is very inspiring. In the same vein, I find the number of new people starting letterpress shops/studios completely inspiring. It means that people are still wanting to try the scariness of managing your own business, making things by hand–and it shows that the demand for letterpress-printing is still high.
Jessica: I’m completely obsessed with books, especially book illustrations. Some of my favorites now are the same favorites from when I was a kid: E.H. Shepard, Edward Gory, Max Ernst (especially his collage stories), and Kate Greenaway. As you can tell, I’m a little stuck in the past, but I also love contemporary comics and graphic novels, and some of my favorites right now are Anders Nilsen, Chris Ware, and Marjane Satrapi.
What’s your favorite thing about working with Boxcar Press? Kseniya: The people who work there! The fabulous pics on boxcarpress.com! Also, the Boxcar Base, without which I might not be here today.
Jessica: A few years ago, I saved up for a 13 x 19 Boxcar Base and still use it regularly. It felt like such a splurge at the time, but now I can’t imagine getting anything done without it.
What was the experience like for you at the National Stationery Show? Kseniya: It was unspeakably great. The best part was meeting all the wonderful people we did, including the other Ladies in the booth. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better experience, or for better people to work with. This isn’t to say that the planning, purchasing, organizing, arranging, etc., weren’t stressful and a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. We’ll be back next year!
Do you have any suggestions for people hoping to exhibit next year or how to promote their new product lines? Kseniya: Having only exhibited once, I don’t have much advice, except to start early! Start the fall of the previous year–earlier than you think you should. The last few weeks will be consumed with all the details, so it’s good to have as much squared away as soon as possible.
What are you looking forward to? Kseniya: I’m looking forward to what the future holds for Ladies of Letterpress (it’s going to be great!), and next year’s NSS, seeing all our old friends again, and making new ones!
Jessica: I hope I can make it to this year’s Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair, The Book (R)evolution. I’m also excited about some special events for Ladies of Letterpress that are now in the works!
Our friends Chandler O’Leary of Anagram Press and Jessica Spring of Springtide Press shared their latest collaboration with us and it was too meaningful of a project to keep to ourselves. Their newest broadside, entitled “Drill, Baby, Drill,” was created in response to the oil spill in the Gulf and features a quote from writer, scientist and environmentalist Rachel Carson, from Under the Sea-Wind. A portion of all proceeds will be donated to Oceana, an organization dedicated to stopping offshore drilling. The print is a limited edition run of 136, 10 x 18 inches, printed on a Vandercook Universal One press. Each piece is printed on archival, 100% rag paper, and signed by both artists – you can purchase yours here.
“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the sun lines of the continents for untold thousands of year…is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”
- Rachel Carson
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.
(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.
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!
Debbie and I, the co-owners of Boxcar Press, found ourselves for a week in Chicagoland visiting her parents last week. While the kids ran amuck upstairs, Debbie’s father and I combed through the basement looking for films on printing. Larry Urbanski, as it happens, owns the largest film archive in the Midwest, and his basement is filled wall-to-wall (and floor-to-ceiling) with stacks of printing films. “Looking for films” involves skirting on tip-toes through stacks of precariously stacked film cases with flashlight in hand, hoping to find a gem.
Well, despite hours combing through a small portion of the basement, I didn’t find anything related to printing. Freight trains? Yes. 1898 footage of NYC subway construction? Yes. 1950’s dating advice? Yes. Nothing on printing in all my searching. It was quite fun and I hope that someday Larry and I can visit his 5,000 square foot warehouse of film in downtown Chicago to spend a few days combing there.
But thankfully Larry had two already pulled aside from the archive when we arrived. Larry took the time to help transfer the one below from 16mm film to a disk, then I got this in format to share with you. This film is about Ginn and Company, a large textbook publisher. The first 9 minutes are a little slow, but you can skip ahead to watch the printing and bookbinding of a textbook on 1925 equipment. I found the machinery and craftsmen & craftswomen very interesting to watch. Grab some popcorn and enjoy!
Also, he had pulled another film called Newspaper Story, from 1950. This movie shows a lot of interesting footage from the Rockford, Illinois newspaper at the time. The parts that weren’t about printing were even worth watching. Here’s the video courtesy of archive.org:
Here’s hoping that the Moviecraft archive can continue to produce printing films to share on future visits to the in-laws!
Harold: Debbie and I have a new baby coming any day now [so I'd like to wrap up this purchase]. I’ll mail the initial payment today for you. When will you deliver the press? I probably need to give my guys here two weeks to get the space ready.
Equipment dealer: Good luck with the new baby. We can deliver at any time, so just have your guy call us when you are ready up there, many thanks
Harold: Didn’t know you got involved in midwifery HAHAHAHA. Will call when ready for the press delivery. Honestly, I’d rather you deliver the press instead!
Equipment dealer: Got me there. I will stick with Heidelberg deliverys, thanks
[Truth be told I have been known to call my Heidelbergs my babies.]
Jessica
