Ink

If you are new to letterpress like me, you are probably starting to feel crushed by the expense. (Hmm, subject of a future post, or too depressing?) One pound of ink can be between $10 and $25 depending on the type and the color, plus you will probably have to pay for shipping unless you can find a local retailer. If you are feeling adventurous, contact David Churchman (email under Links That I Like). He is a proprietor of new and secondhand letterpress equipment in Indianapolis and will sell you partly used cans of ink for $1 per pound. I asked for $5 worth and got a selection of red, two blues, green, and mauve. On his advice, I purchased new cans of black and opaque white.

You can also mix your own colors. A white surface is the best surface to work on; the colors stay true and undistorted. I use a transparent rectangle of glass with a piece of white paper underneath. Have as many clean ink knives on hand as the number of inks you plan to mix. Combine small amounts of dark ink into the light ink until you are satisfied with the result. Keep in mind that a little ink goes a long way. The disk on the Pilot Press, which is 11 1/4 inches across, can be fully covered with less than a teaspoon of ink.

I made some pink ink for note cards.

2008 Linoleum block print

Recently, I saw a really cool poster made with linoleum blocks in a letterpress, and decided to give it a try. I bought a linoleum block and a special cutting tool at the art store.

I drew an image in pencil on paper and then rubbed it onto the blank block so that it was a mirror image. My original drawing had a lot of small details and was probably overly ambitious. My husband convinced me to try something simpler since I had purchased only one block. I placed the finished block in the Pilot and mixed a pretty light blue for it. (My next post will be about mixing ink.)


I almost didn't publish the results because I wasn't totally happy with the way they turned out. I tucked these cards into the napkins at Christmas dinner and two of the guests wanted to frame theirs and one of them wanted me to sign it - so I felt more confident about sharing.

Magnesium dies

If you do not want to print from foundry type or from a pre-made block, you can design your own image and have it made into a letterpress die. There are companies that will turn your design into a raised magnesium plate and mount it on a wood block for you. My girlfriend Kim is hosting a baby shower for her sister, and I offered to print the invitations. I designed the invite on Adobe InDesign and emailed it to an engraving company in Portland. A short while later, they mailed this to me:

I placed the block into the Pilot for printing.


Here are the results:

Setting type for a holiday card

I decided to set some type to make some last minute holiday cards on my letterpress. A composing stick probably wasn't strictly necessary for two words, but I decided to do it anyway. Type should be arranged upside down and from left to right inside of the stick, which is adjustable.


Pieces of lead are placed on the top and on the bottom to hold the letters together and for spacing.

The type and lead are both placed inside the chase with furniture and quoins just like any other image.


The cards . . .

Foundry type

I was going to do a post on cleaning the letterpress, but I think that I think that Alexandra Daley on Dolce Press already did a really good one on her blog. The only thing that I would add is to buy a big box of latex gloves to protect yourself from the chemicals you will come into contact with. I'll talk about the foundry type that I bought instead . . .

A couple of weeks ago, I saw an ad on Craigslist posted by a man retiring from the letterpress business. He was selling his equipment - most of which was way too big for our little house. He did have some empty wooden type cases for sale, and I took two because I thought they were kind of old fashioned and pretty. I had a vague idea that they might be useful to store things like gauge pins and dingbats. My husband thought it would be nice to have some actual type because he favors words over images. He even found M & H Type, a foundry in San Francisco, and helped me pick out a 12 and 18 point Univers font, which is a very simple sans serif. Here's how foundry type looks brand new:


And then I went a little blind sorting the individual letters into the type case.

Impression

There are two camps regarding letterpress impression: those who believe that the printing should be deep and tactile and those who believe in a minimal impression. I think impression depends on taste and on use. You would not want, for example, a deep impression on a project that was two sided.

Aside from that, the amount of ink is important. Too much ink will cause the image to look blurry and the fine details to slur. That was the problem with my first effort:


It is okay to remove some ink from the rollers and/or ink plate, but of course, the better practice is to start out with a smaller amount of ink and gradually add more as the image dictates. Here's the improved version:

Makeready

In letterpress lingo, "makeready" refers to the preparation of the platen, the flat surface which holds the paper. The makeready should include enough material to protect the platen as well as the image or type from damage caused by the pressure exerted by the press. Also, it controls the type of impression you get - a softer surface will get you a deeper impression. The conventional top layer is tympan paper because it has a waxy, water proof surface from which you can clean off any ink you might inadvertently get on it. I like to use graph paper so that I can get the position the paper guides just right.

There are three guides holding the paper in place, two on the bottom and one on the side. I'm using a trick that I learned on Briarpress.org, which is an awesome website devoted to all things letterpress, and am using small folded pieces of paper for guides.


Traditional guides are called gauge pins and they involve cutting a slit into the paper to place, and look like this:

Inking the rollers

When I got interested in letterpress, I started looking everywhere for information, instruction, and advice. I found a really great video on YouTube about using a tabletop press; in it, you see a guy dot the plate with ink and then run the rollers until they're totally covered. I've tried it - and discovered it can take a really long time to get total and complete coverage. I have since figured out that dotting the plate with ink and then using a brayer or roller to spread it evenly, and then running the rollers is way easier. The idea is get enough ink on the plate so that in turn, the rollers get enough ink.

So, it's way easier to do this:


Than it is to do this:

First time on the Pilot - Preparations

I decided that my first printing job would be an image of a 1920s couple dancing that I bought on Ebay. Everything that I know about letterpress printing I learned online or in the class that I took at Otis College; at school, we used a cylinder press which is very different from the Pilot, a platen press, but I think a lot of the principles are the same.

First, I locked the block up in the chase, the metal frame that represents the printing area.


I used furniture . . .

. . . and reglets (small skinny furniture) . . .

to fill up the space.

Then I used quoins, which expand by inserting and turning a key, to tighten and hold everything in place.

I bought a letterpress!

My friends think it's cool or crazy. My Chandler & Price Pilot letterpress weighs 200 pounds (which is nothing compared to the full sized floor models which start at about 1200 pounds), and when it arrived from the Bay Area, it was greasy, dusty and, strangely, full of magenta lint. I was told by the man who sold it to me that it had previously been used at a school. I asked how I should clean it, and was told to use a motor de-greaser. I settled instead on Simple Green without diluting it and mineral spirits for the stubborn bits; I finished with some WD-40 to lubricate all the moving parts. I got great results after several hours of elbow grease.