Gamewell Press Blog

Laser-Cut Love

I said in my last post that I finally got to do some printing last week, but I didn't go into further detail. The reason being that Glendon and I were combining our resources and experimenting with using our powers for letterpress good, and I wanted to write it up in a separate post.

Glendon's department at school recently purchased a new laser cutter, and he’s one of the people testing it and figuring out not only how it works, but its utilities and limits. I mentioned that I had read a post on Briar Press where a printer discussed using a laser cutter to make type-high woodcuts. Serendipitously, Glendon was way ahead of me, and I was like “score! Wood type just for me!” We’ll see about that, but our first experiment was pretty promising.

Last week he finally got a chance to try it out and he chose one of the free, vectorized cuts from Briar Press and made a woodcut initial. He used 3/4” finished plywood, so that it had a very smooth face. We’re going to try cherry too, a la the Briar Press post, but plywood seems to be working fine. The laser cutter is a 75-watt Epilogue CO2 laser, which is probably overkill for this sort of engraving since Winking Cat Press seems to be doing just fine using a 40-watt.

There are still a few kinks to be worked out, number one being wood height. Like I said, Glendon only had 3/4” wood, so he had to build it up to type height with sheets of acrylic. This process took a while and in the end one corner was still a bit lower than the others. We ended up using a few sheets of regular 20 lb paper cut to size and strategically placed under the cut to even it out. That was pretty easy and not a big deal; however if anyone knows a good source for type-high wood, please share. I found one site, but those prices aren’t cheap. In the meantime, we’re going to try to work out a better system of building up the cuts. Perhaps we’ll try to find two pieces of wood that equal type high when put together. When I say we, I don’t actually mean me. But look! Isn’t that cool?

We had a couple other fixable problems: the wood either got dinged or had a knot in the middle of the A where the blank spot is. I can fix that with makeready, but it would be much easier to just avoid it in the future through better wood examination and care. And then Glendon forgot about the whole reverse printing thing and neglected to reverse the image before printing it with the laser cutter. I’m pretty sure he would have noticed this if we’d been printing pretty much any other letter besides A, but for testing purposes, who really cares?

We didn’t really try to get an impression or anything because we were printing on a hard coated paper, and just getting the block even was rather time consuming. Actually, I signed up for this letterpress swap thing but naturally left it till the last minute, so this new process is already proving pretty handy. I might try to get some impression with one of those cuts since I’m using 100% cotton paper, and we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway we had a really good time printing the cut and doing makeready and stuff. Glendon’s often around while I’m printing, but it was so great actually doing the whole thing together. For me, it was basically the best date ever. Glendon had fun too, but I don’t think letterpress printing is his new passion or anything. Hey, as long as he keeps on playing with printing cuts on the laser cutter, it still seems like a pretty good partnership.

I got got got got no time

It's funny how things go sometimes. I just got that beautiful Pearl (well it's been a month now), and all I wanted to do was play around with it, but that's not how it worked out. Instead, all sorts of great but busy-making things have been happening, like planning a children's book, and having to suddenly seriously think about what my prices are/would be after receiving multiple random quote requests. I'm not a planner, but I'm trying to become better. I also declared myself the sole proprietor of Gamewell Press by filing a "doing business as" form. Did you know that until I filed that form Gamewell Press was an illegal alias and every time I mentioned my press, Gamewell Press, I was committing fraud? I'm pretty sure that for me at least, it's a crime on par with having a beer on the stoop or jaywalking, but the legalese on the website that explains everything made it sound like I was Al Capone. So that was kind of cool and I walked around for a few days alternately whispering "Gamewell Press" out of the side of my mouth and elbowing Glendon in the ribs to "keep it quiet, ya hear?" or referring to it as the press that dare not speak its name.

The main activity that's been sucking away all of my time and preventing me from blogging is a web design class I'm taking. The class runs for three hours twice a week (after work) for four weeks, and the last class is tomorrow. It's been really great, and I'm well on my way to building a website, but it's been a lot of work in a short period. Also after spending so much time looking at other websites and messing with Dreamweaver, the last thing I want to do is go back to the computer and blog. I'll be back fairly soon, but I wanted to give a reason for my absence and post a sneak peak of my website to be.

Lessons from Boxcar Press - Gauge Pins!

I've noticed that this blog comes up fairly near the top in Google searches for "setting gauge pins," "how to gauge pins," etc., and this has made me feel ashamed since I don't show a how-to, I just complain that no one on the internet was showing a how-to when I needed one. I've been meaning to put together a how-to-set-gauge-pins-post, but now I don't have to because Boxcar Press has gone and put together a video on this very subject.

This is way better than me posting about this because I would never have made some fancy motion picture. You would have been stuck with slightly blurry, still photos, so I say hooray for Boxcar. The video is ostensibly about how to not smash your gauge pins into your Boxcar base, which has always seemed fairly obvious to me (don't put the pins in contact with the base), but I know we all have our own weirdo stumbling blocks.

Anyway, what it seems really useful for is a demonstration of how to put in the pins and what goes into their basic packing (although I might have added a couple sheets of bond). I've seen a few questions about packing come up lately, and while an entire book could easily be written about packing, this video seems like a good start. They have a couple other how-to videos on their website, like one on adjusting roller height and one on makeready, and plans to add more.

This still hasn't convinced me to actually purchase a Boxcar base, but I am still leaning towards it. If anyone has thoughts or opinions, please share. I've seen so many posts lately on the listserv or Briar Press where people who print just fine with type or wood-mounted plates get a base and polymer plate and suddenly everything goes to hell, so that's frightening. A few months ago, I bought a very, very cheap honeycomb base on ebay, and I just ordered a couple plates for that from Owosso. They should get here in the next couple days, so if I ever finish printing wedding invitations, maybe I can play with them this weekend. I held out on using the base for months because after I bought it I realized that most bases are .668" for mounting 1/4 inch, .250" plates, whereas mine is .759" and takes 11 point plates. This difference from the usual made me hesitate, especially since I kind of wanted my free plate from Owosso to be copper and that doesn't come in 11 point. Finally last week I realized that it can't hurt to give what I've already got a shot before spending a couple hundred bucks on a new honeycomb or Boxcar base. As I said, we all have our own weirdo stumbling blocks. I'll report back soon.

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!

To blog (my trials) or not to blog (my errors); What was the question?

There's been an interesting discussion on the letpress listserv the last couple days that also veered for a minute into a more relevant (to me, right now) tangent.

The original discussion had to do with what it takes (time-wise, money-wise, talent-wise) to start your very own letterpress business. As someone contemplating this, it was interesting to read the opinions and advice of those who've done it themselves and those who've made the conscious choice for a hobby to stay just that. Of course this isn't really an issue for me yet, for reasons of press, time, practice etc., but I do hope to one day run at least a part-time business.

One of the respondents was Erin McCall, a Canadian printer and graphic designer. Her company is called Sunlit Letterpress, and she also has a blog, "Adventures in Letterpress." Erin started printing and blogging about two years ago, I believe, and she started out with a 5x8 Kelsey, just like me. Her blog's goal at the time was to chronicle her adventures in learning letterpress printing, and for a while you could read about her frustrations with the Kelsey's limitations or things she discovered about polymer plates or customs taxes. She would also answer readers' questions from time to time, especially those from newbies. This was great (although she never answered multiple questions about where she bought her envelopes - I could never figure out why). She mentioned the blog on Briar Press as a learning tool for people, so we all flocked (and still flock) in droves.

Since she began blogging, she has bought a bigger floor model platen and achieved a certain degree of success. I would say she's very successful, based on the fact that I've actually heard of her and the amount of press she gets, but I haven't seen her account books, and how do you measure these things anyway? How successful is any letterpress printer? It's a dead medium for chrissake. She has also completely stopped blogging about the act of printing itself. She actually posted to the listserv with a printing problem recently, but you see no sign of this on the blog.

This is fairly common with blogs of established printshops; you click over to the blog from their website and you get "look at our awesome new cards!" or "come see us at this craft fair!" It's a promotional tool, not a bloggie blog. This is fine and apparently Erin gets A LOT of business from her blog, which is awesome, and she writes that that's why she stopped going into detail. It makes sense. As she pointed out, customers don't want to hear you bitch and you don't want customers to know how close you came to screwing up their project (or whatever).

That's all well and good, and I really I hope I'm as successful as Erin or Shelley from Albertine Press one day, but what about people like me? People who read these blogs from the printing side, hungry to soak up any information, any tips or hints, as well as (but not just) to drool over the beautiful printing. Posting questions on Briar Press is great too, but it's not the same as watching someone else's process, with pictorial proof. You're also liable to get conflicting advice or get yelled at for using the wrong terminology or caring about the environment (kidding!)

Erin's main advice is to take classes before buying anything, read the books, and remember that behind these pretty blogs are people whose feet and back often hurt, who spend hours printing 30 items, and who are occasionally reduced to tears by the vagaries of these antique machines. And that's great advice, but I've taken multiple classes, I've rented time at the Center for Book Arts, I've bought every freaking book I could find even remotely related to letterpress, but sometimes I still get stumped. It would be so wonderful to have a source to turn to that has been through the same thing. When I could NOT, for the life of me, remember how to put in gauge pins - even though I've done it in class and it's described in Polk, but I still couldn't figure it out - I turned to my blogroll for help...and found no real information. I found printers talking about how gauge pins could be tricky, but no step-by-step instructions with pictures. The same goes for most of the problems I've had. I know other fledgling printers have the same problems that I do, but they don't go into the exhaustive detail I require and crave. I've figured most of these things out for myself, but it would have been nice to get a hint or two and identify with someone else.

I guess what I'm saying is that I plan to go into that exhaustive detail. I don't actually have any readers right now, but if I ever get any, they're going to know exactly how many pieces of what kind of packing I was using and what I added or subtracted when that didn't work. I feel that it's important; plus my mind is like a sieve, so if I don't write it down, I won't remember, and I'll just make the same mistakes again. Don't get me wrong, I hope to eventually generate business from this blog and my yet-to-be-created website, and I'm certainly planning to post pretty pictures, but I'm going to keep going into the nitty gritty details because I so desperately wanted them myself.