Gamewell Press Blog

Same Great Taste

So I finally got around to redesigning the blog a bit. It only took half a year, but I did also have to choose a logo, etc. One of my sisters is a graphic designer, so my logo, my "branding" was a Christmas present from her. Then she also gave me a metallic Pantone book too! She's a very good sister, my sister.

She designed the Gamewell Press logo, and now that I've picked a color combination and put it up on the blog, I guess I ought to print some new business cards and prop cards too. But maybe I'll change up the colors for some of them. Are you allowed to do that or do I have to become married to these colors? Branding is still a foreign concept to me, and honestly, I don't think following the standard practices is that important for me right now anyway.

Please let me know how the new blog design looks on your monitor or browser - if there are any problems or anything you CANNOT STAND. I tried it on a few different computers, but I just want to make sure.

In other, slightly sad news, it looks as though I will not be able to pick up the new press this weekend after all. John Barrett is being his usual awesome self, going out of his way to help me out, and when I do pick it up (March 14!!!) it will be even better. It's those damn roller hook springs, you see. They are really turning out to be a bear to find or fabricate. On the bright side however, it turns out that the part we thought needed to be fabricated and machined, doesn't! According the guys at the machine shop, it'll be just as good if I simply fuss around with some electrical tape or something. Hooray for saving money!

Letterpress Things

As I wrote in my previous post, we went by John Barrett's Letterpress Things a couple weekends ago. This isn't the first time I've been there, but it is the first time we've remembered to take pictures. Wanted to share them with those of you who haven't been so lucky to get over there yet. As you can see, it's a letterpress printer's mecca. I actually almost called this post something adult entertainment-related, but I decided that the search engine hits from that wouldn't be a good thing!

 

Here's a row of platen press lined up all pretty. There are a couple rows like this. Some are sold, some are for sale or awaiting repairs. No Pearls though, sigh.

 

On the white-covered tables are some basic supplies that John has organized for new printers just getting set up with a table-top platen. There are composing stones, sets of furniture in galleys, spacing, basic ink colors, tympan cut to 5x8 or 6x10, etc. On the metal shelves are galleys, chases, slug cutters and other goodies (many I can't identify).

 

A row of empty furniture cabinets. John also sells these filled with furniture and empty and full reglet cabinets as well.

 

In addition to this wall of cuts, there's also two more like this, plus at least 9 cabinets whose cases are all full of cuts. Last time I was there, I bought cuts of JFK and Andrew Hamilton, plus a mortised sign post. Another woman was picking up every cutesy animal she could find. In addition to these totally random cuts, there are also plates from books and cases full of themed cuts (sports! Christmas!).

 

Along this wall are many empty cases of different sizes. I feel like every time I come, I bring John a couple empty California cases that I don't use and buy a couple 2/3 cases from him. I can buy any size 2/3 case since Glendon made me a cabinet that will accommodate all the different sizes (see this post for further details). Just remember to measure your cabinet and the cases if you're buying solo cases and don't have a fancy type cabinet like mine.

 

What is this? Is it a slug cutter? Whatever it is, it looks neat, and I'm going to make sure to ask John about it next time. I've been doing a handset wedding invite that's been kicking my ass, and a slug cutter would have really been handy. I think I may look into getting one next time I'm there.

 

This is just a press we thought was cool looking. I don't think I've ever seen one like it before. I love the lines and the paint job, but I don't know if it would be such a treat to use. That's really the wonderful thing about Letterpress Things. Every time I go I see something (usually a few things) I've never seen before and I always learn something new from John. It's gotta be one of my favorite places, and that's saying something since I hate being cold, we always seem to go in winter and it isn't heated.

Movin On Up

As you perhaps know, I've been wanting to get a bigger press for a while now. Ideally I want a Golding Pearl #11 or similar as it's the only treadle press that has a small enough footprint to fit into the tiny Brooklyn apartment I call home. Of course presses of that size are pretty popular and therefore scarce in the New York Metropolitan area. I haven't yet found one, but I'm going to keep looking.

In the meantime, fortune has paid me a visit from another corner. A friend of mine was over a few weeks ago, saw my press and said that his mother has a press just like mine but bigger. And she wants to get rid of it. I may have pounced on him like a cheetah with visions of 6x10s: pilots, sigwalts and kelseys dancing in my head. Long story short, I got in touch with his mother, the press is a 6x10 Kelsey Excelsior (exactly like mine but bigger, just as my friend said), and she said I could pick it up from her in Saugerties, NY. Now I must admit that I was kind of hoping it would be a Sigwalt, but you know, a bigger press is a bigger press, my Kelsey has served me well despite the undeserved bad rap it gets from printers with big fancy presses, and most importantly free is free (well free plus car rental and rollers).

Basically the current plan is to get the new Kelsey in working order, sell my current little press to recoup the cost of rollers, etc. Save the rest of that money until such time as I can find a Pearl or similar and then sell the larger Kelsey to finance the rest of the Pearl purchase. I think it's a pretty good plan so if you have or hear about a Pearl, give me a call! Or, if you want to buy a lovely 5x8 Kelsey also give me a call.

We (me and the long-suffering boyfriend whose muscle and navigation skills are ruthlessly taken advantage of - is it awful that I'm scared to drive in NYC alone?) went to pick up the press last weekend. Since we were already going to drive North, I decided that we would go from Saugerties to Chicopee, MA and have John Barrett take a look at my new acquisition. We drove up to Saugerties on Friday evening and picked up the press, and while we were there looked at my friend's mother's new acquisition, some sort of crazy old etching type press. I took some pictures of it, which I'll post here and on the Letpress listserv later since she wants more information about it. Then we had a very nice dinner at a little cafe in Saugerties and picked up a bottle of wine to drink later at the hotel. We needed a screw top bottle, and the wine shop had two choices, one of which was called the Excelsior! How auspicious is that? So we got the other bottle. No, that's a lie.

Then, with the snow beginning to fall, we headed up the interstate to Massachusetts so that we could be at Letterpress Things first thing Saturday morning. It's important to note that there had been no forecast of snow in the weather report, but boy did it snow. The snow forecast is something I check before driving anywhere because I grew up mostly in TEXAS and therefore have NO EXPERIENCE driving in SNOW. Now I do. It took us about 3 hours to get to West Springfield instead of 2, and I was briefly concerned that my knuckles would forever remain white and the look of terror might never come off my face, but we got in okay.

The snow drive of terror was well worth it though because we got to Letterpress Things pretty close to the 9am opening time and had John all to ourselves for over an hour before anyone else showed up. John poked and prodded the press while I anxiously looked on but it turns out that the press is in pretty good shape. It needs new rollers, cores and trucks, which I've ordered from NA Graphics. The bed of the press is missing this little tab that John's going to try to get machined, and I left the press with him for that and a good tune-up. The only other problem is that the press came with 2 Kelsey 6x10 roller hooks and springs and 2 Kelsey 5x8 roller hooks and springs. They are not compatible, and I'm having some trouble locating 2 more 6x10 ones. John actually has 2 roller hooks but no springs, so I've tried to buy either 2 sets of both hooks and springs or just 2 springs, but neither NA Graphics nor Dave Churchman have any in stock. I sent an email to Rich's friend at the Excelsior Press and I need to post on Briar Press or the listserv, but it isn't that big a deal. I can always buy the 2 hooks John has and he and Glendon feel that it'll be pretty simple to order the proper spring from a spring manufacturer?!

So we'll head back up to Letterpress Things in about a month to pick up the press and this half height 2/3 type cabinet that I kind of accidentally bought and whatever else I may accidentally buy. That will be the weekend of my birthday however, so it's okay. Honestly, if I'm going to undertake the expense of renting a car and driving up there, it only makes sense to spend some money while I'm there. That's right ladies and gentlemen: buy more to save - the great American way! This time I did pretty well: a free press, a lot of spacing of various sizes, some really cheap paper, two blank type cases, three caps cases, and a couple old cuts. Not too extravagant.

Ready! Set! Makeready!

Hello there. Long time no see. I've been sick, the heat in my building broke (making it too cold to sleep, much less print), I've been helping people design invitations that I'll print in the next couple months, I've been buying and sorting new (to me) type, and I've been looking for a bigger press (with mixed luck - more on that later). Busy with so much that's letterpress related except blogging and printing.

I have done one project recently, which is actually part one of a large (for me) wedding suite for a friend. I'll be printing the rest of it in the coming week, but I wanted to post specially about the save the dates we sent out a couple weeks ago.

I try not to push my press or come close to exceeding its limits. One reason for this is that the printing isn't always as good, but also I've read horror stories about press parts snapping under the pressure or overloaded, over-tightened chases snapping. Stories that fill you with fear...and caution. With that said, these save the dates pretty much pushed the press to the limit (my limit - which is a perfectly safe limit) and required some fancy-ass makeready.

My friends who are getting married are artists and have designed all the components of the invitations with assistance from me on what works well for letterpress printing. We sent all the files to Owosso Graphics and had plates made and mounted type high on wood. I have been waffling on whether I can make the monetary investment to purchase either a boxcar base or a honeycomb base and which of those I would want to go with anyway, so type-high wood mounted plates that can be printed at home or another shop it is. If anyone has really strong feelings about either system, please weigh in. Right now I'm leaning towards Boxcar, but a week ago I was firmly in the honeycomb camp.

The save the date measured 4x6, so of course I had doubts about printing it on the 5x8 Kelsey, but we were sort of pressed for time and I wasn't sure what press rental options I would have. Since the happy couple wanted to send out the save the date as a postcard that wouldn't get too beat-up in the mail, they chose a hard, thin stock and bought pre-cut 4x6 cards. I could tell by touching the cards that impression would be pretty difficult to come by, so we just decided to go ahead and print it on my Kelsey, get a good print and say to hell with impression this time.

As you can see, the form was too large for me to use the gripper bars properly, so I used a rubber band stretched between them to hold the card down. I stupidly threw away most of my early test prints, but really the print was pretty good from the first. The side at the top of the chase was consistently printing lighter that the rest, and this was somehow not fixable by tightening the impression screws or changing the overall packing, so I taped some newsprint over that part of the tympan and that solved that. After doing that, there were light bits here and there, but no major problems that weren't fixable by by-the-book makeready.

Yes, that's right. I did major, proper makeready for the first time in a while and it was fantastic. I've always had trouble with the concept of accurately placing the makeready sheet under the tympan and the first packing layer so that everything lines up properly, but this time I got it down. I think my stumbling block has always been that I wanted the makeready sheet to be the same size as the packing sheets, so I wanted to pull the proof before setting the guage pins, but without the guage pins you can't really hold the sheet in place. This time I had the brilliant idea of pulling my proof on tracing paper using the guage pins for proper positioning and taping it to one of the packing sheets. Brilliance can be a relative thing. I first made sure that the packing was pretty much correct but needed a tiny bit more, so that the addition of one sheet of tracing paper would be perfect and I pulled my final couple proofs with an extra layer of tracing paper behind the paper I printed on.

To make sure that everything lined up properly I cut a slit through the tracing paper, tympan, and first couple sheets of packing while the tracing paper was positioned but before I printed onto the tracing paper. You can see the slits circled in white below.

I placed the finished makeready sheet behind the tympan and one sheet of packing and used my handy slit in the layers to properly line everything up. This was especially useful since I did have to remove the sheet and add a bit more makeready here and there after pulling more proofs. You can't really see it in the below photo, but there are three more packing sheets and the pressboard behind that. I used regular cover for this packing; I tried a sheet of softer paper, but harder was definitely working better for this. Packing is something I need to experiment with more, to really understand the difference between hard or soft packing and different printing papers, so you can hopefully expect a report on that at some point.

I have to make a couple points here. 1. I was really very pleased with how well the Kelsey and I, working together, were able to achieve such a nice consistent print of such a large form. Kelseys have a bad reputation, and they really aren't the easiest presses to work with given their limitations, but I think I've learned so much more by using my press than I would have if I had started out with a Pilot or a Pearl. Or a Vandercook. Part of me thinks that a monkey could print adequately on a Vandercook, which isn't to say that I would kick it out of bed for eating crackers (the Vandercook, I mean). 2. By-the-book makeready is awesome. It may take a bit more carefulness and thought at first, but the consistency and quickness of results make up for that. I'm often a bit slapdash with my makeready. I'll pull a proof right onto the tympan and slap on some scotch tape. I still think that's perfectly fine if it's two letters printing crappily, but I've also ended up in a situation where I've taken it too far and had a ridiculous amount of tape or paper right on the tympan. I'm reformed though! I'm now a proper makeready kind of girl. And honestly you feel so proud of yourself for doing it that it's worth it for the self congratulation alone.

Below is the final project, and in a couple weeks I'll post pictures of the rest of the wedding material (envelope, invitation, RSVP 2-sided postcard). We wanted to wait until the guests receive the invitations before showing them anywhere else. As a huge bonus, the bride is a wonderful photographer (she took the picture of my shop cat, Gus), so at least for once the pictures I post will be high quality!