When he showed up on the printing scene in 1962, Bill Paulus was armed with attributes that are a trifecta of the trade: common sense, passion, and a laser-focused 24 hour workday attitude. Fast forward a half a century later and you’ll find that Paulus happily occupies a letterpress menagerie in the Atlanta, Georgia area. And life has never been peachier.

Read on to get the full story on Bill!

PASSION FOR PRINTING  I am Bill Paulus, born in 1950 in Zanesville, Ohio. I began my career in printing in the last days of June, 1962. Only have a high school education, according to establishment quid pro quo. In reality, 50 years of O.J.T. while attending the school of hard knocks.

INK IN THE BLOOD Like it or not, (and I did not like it.) I was conscripted by my mother and stepfather out of economic necessity.

LETTERPRESS MANCAVE I have a private letterpress shop, letterpress studio, or letterpress mancave (choose your preference) in the basement of my home located just a stone’s throw (no pun.) from Stone Mountain Park in Metro Atlanta, Georgia.  Equipment, or toys, to date: 1917 vintage 10 x 15 C&P New Series hand feed; 1930’s vintage 10 x 15 Kluge Automatic; 1954 vintage 10 x 15 Heidelberg Windmill; late 40’s / early 50’s vintage Miehle Vertical V50; 1917 vintage Intertype linecasting machine; 1960’s vintage Ludlow Typograph; 1920 vintage 34 inch Challenge Diamond power paper cutter; 1940’s vintage Challenge floor model paper drill with round corner attachment; 1954 vintage Rosback auto stitcher; and a 1936 vintage 14 x 20 Baumfolder.

PRINTING LEGACIES The Late George Lilienthal, Donald Mathis of Zanesville, Ohio, and Ben Franklin.

DESIGNED FOR PRINT My forte has always been printing production in the areas of letterpress (my first love), offset, flexo, diecutting, embossing, and foil stamping.

FULL TIME FUN From 1962 until 2009, I was printing full time. During this time, a day variously consisted of 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, or 72 hours. There were a couple of times I was printing one way or the other seven 24 hour days non stop. Take note: The word “work” has not been mentioned. I was having too much fun to classify what I was doing under the category of “work”. Adding to it all, if I was moving printing equipment, well, that was fun in overdrive.

PRINTER’S PRIDE The many letterpress and offset printing production awards ranging from honorable mention to best in category presented by peers in the graphic arts industry.  Also, a period of 44 years of moving printing equipment without any kind of mishap.

BOXCAR’S ROLE  They have provided an alternative to corrosion prone magnesium plates, created a very useful web site, provided free equipment manual downloads, and, best of all, provided customer service that is second to none.

SHOP TIPS

1. Always have clean hands and a pure heart.
2. Safety is always the first priority. Period!
3. Never, ever lose a customer’s order.
4. When moving printing equipment, never yank or jerk; be slow and methodical, using common horse sense, and never place your body or body parts in a pinch or crush zone.

WHAT’S NEXT As health permits: Keep on learning. Print. Connect the Intertype to the gas line and cast my first line of type on it. Print. Also build up the Ludlow and cast my first line of type on it. Print. And just for kicks and grins, seek out some of the still living pundits, who in the 60’s and 70’s were chanting “ Letterpress is dead,” and rub their haughty noses in the face of the letterpress renaissance. (Recreation?)

Big thanks to Bill for letting us take a sneak peak into the mind of a fellow letterpress aficionado!

Right before the holidays, Boxcar enjoyed a visit from designer, printer, letterpress instructor, and sister: Amy Redmond. 

Amy’s sister, Carrie, called and arranged the tour as a surprise.  She kept Amy guessing until a short time before they got to our studios.

It was more of a meeting of minds and souls than a tour, as we spent a couple of hours with Amy and Carrie.  We traded stories, shared tips and tricks printer to printer, and discovered how Amy got to where she is now, a Seattle-based freelance graphic designer and instructor of an introductory letterpress printing class at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle.

We are thankful to Amy for being a mentor to many students of letterpress and for giving us a fun day at Boxcar!

Like Nina Interlandi Bell from Tweedle Press, deep dish pizza got its start in the Windy City of Chicago, where people know their dough. Like an artisanal slice, her printings are filled to the brim with flavorful creativity. Whether you get the tried & true cheese style, a smorgasbord of meat toppings home-run, or the more well-honed and inspired artichoke and basil, Nina’s letterpress work and these pizza pies never fail to delight.

Read on to find out more on the commanding and captivating Nina Bell.

THE NATURAL PRINTER I’m a a graphic and web designer, letterpress printer, paper maker, and lover of nature and local/organic food, with a dash of rock and roll. Also, I want to be a cowboy.

FOR THE LOVE OF LETTERPRESS When my husband (iHub, also know around the shop and our house as “Minister of the Office Of Fun”) and I got married 5 years ago, I helped to design and assemble our invitations. I had them letterpress printed by a local printer, and knew when I saw them that I wanted to learn how to do it. I took several series of classes at Columbia in Chicago where I learned to work with cylinder presses, type, and plates, and also helped out up at the Platen Press Museum in Zion where Paul Aken taught me my platen press chops. I wouldn’t necessarily claim one particular moment of insight when I realized I wanted this to be my full time job, but everything just sort of coalesced: my lifelong love of paper and desire to own a card shop, all my years of experience with graphic design, my (apparently) genetic desire to be a business owner, and the fact that I love to get dirty and tinker with dangerous equipment.

PRINTING LEGACIES I knew when I saw the miniature empire that Jen from Starshaped Press had built that it would be possible for me to do what I envisioned. I wanted the flexibility of creating my own schedule, the satisfaction of having people choose to spend their hard earned money on beautiful things that I design and print for them, plus the ability to take time off for kids when I need to (which will be March, 2012!). Paul Aken too, of course, without whom I would never have acquired any of my equipment and who I credit with helping me move closer to accepting imperfection. Still working on that.

THE DESIGNER & THE PRINTER I do everything! My career experience has been 11 years of graphic and web design, and I’ve been printing for the last 4 years. However, I didn’t actually go to school for any of this – my music degree was supposed to help me be a recording engineer for when my band got famous, but that didn’t work out so well. Luckily I have always been a designer at heart, and creating show posters and websites for my band ended up giving me the experience I needed to land real design jobs. It all looks very intentional in retrospect.

THE DAILY GRIND Usually I end up procrastinating on big design jobs because getting over that initial hurdle of inspiration is so intimidating. Once I’m up against a deadline and have assured myself that there are no other “important” internet tasks for me to complete, I usually end up staring at the blank screen for a while. Once something gets me into the zone – it could be an image, a piece of text, or a color combination – then there’s no stopping me. Coveted episodes of TV on the DVR be damned! I can remain glued to my computer, despite iHub’s desperate attempts to force me to “relax”, for a very long time indeed.

FULL TIME PRINTER BY DAY, CREATIVE CHAMP BY NIGHT Just about. I still do a bit of freelance design work here and there that is unrelated to Tweedle Press, but most of my time is spent working at the shop. It has been a slow transition from my full time design job to what I’m doing now, but I’m very lucky that the owner at my previous company let me step down my days there gradually as Tweedle Press got busier. I’m still only making about half as much as I was when working full time at my previous design job, but I’m lucky iHub is so darn supportive and the business is growing every year. (more…)

Here at Boxcar Press, it’s not all about the photopolymer.  People shouldn’t be surprised to know that Harold has a secret room with California Job cases and type cabinets.  Some have never even been unwrapped.

So many of you can understand the feeling, then, when we get a chance to pull out drawers and search through for treasures.  I am partial to the larger wood type and the ornaments.  We hope you enjoy a few of the ornaments and type we find.

These two images are sending the silent message that we should go get a cold one and a jumbo burger – loaded!

The other one is our salute to the military with insignias from the United States Marine Corp, United States Navy W.A.V.E.S (anchor with propeller) and the United States Coast Guard.

Yesterday Harold talked about his letterpress printing mentor, Paulette Myers-Rich of Traffic Street Press. Here’s an email from Paulette that captures her generous spirit. Harold explains: “Paulette wrote this to me in 2001 and I thought it read like poetry. I turned it into a broadside for the APA, printed in Boxcar Press’s basement digs when I was working out of my house, using Zapfino back when Zapfino used to be cool.”

“Harold, Sounds like your adventures with machinery are going along right about how they should. Machines and equipment were never designed to cooperate. They are the boss. We are subservient to them and they are temperamental, destructive, dangerous, and cranky. They need lots of understanding, TLC, and grease. John Henry and his exploded heart found this out. Just finding a place to put the stuff is only the beginning. Then there are the adjustments, the cleaning, the replacement parts, the exotic, expensive obsolete tools to go with the machine, the bolts no longer manufactured, the gremlins that live inside that won’t let you do your work properly. It’s the fourth of four nuts that is rusted on or frozen and refuses to come loose as easily as its three predecessors. It is also the mastery of metal, the ability to use machines to an amazing end, to crank out stuff that few others can, to become one with gears and cylinders, to go places you couldn’t otherwise go. What a life! Take care and wear your steel toes, (I mean it!)”
Paulette Myers-Rich

A few months ago, we sent out a survey to a whole lot of letterpress friends asking them a whole lot of printing things. One of our favorite questions was “Who are your letterpress mentors”? The list of responses was a gushing love fest to the famous, infamous, and unknown printers alike, the people who taught us, inspired us, and stay with us. You can read the list below. So in honor of red hearts and Valentine’s, share your stories with us — who taught you a love of letterpress — and what did they teach you?

Barry Moser a designer, typographer, illustrator and teacher from Pennyroyal Press, shared his mentor story with us:

I got started in printing in 1968. It was a late umber November afternoon in 1969. I wish I knew the exact date, because it was a day that changed my life. When I opened the door of Leonard Baskin’s Gehenna Press I heard a din of sweet noise and smelled the essence of viscera of a sort known to me in some distant and obscure way. The din was the chitty-chitty-bang-bang of the big press running. The essence was the smell of oil and grease and ink and solvents. There was an antique trestle table with stacks of books on it and a model of Gutenberg’s printing press. The books were of a kind I had never seen. Hand made paper. Fine bindings. Impeccable printing. I stood there, a little uncomfortable, and feeling like I had just stepped into another world. (more…)

With Valentine’s Day coming up soon, letterpress lovers, we thought you’d enjoy a free Valentine’s Day vector set! The sweet set includes clever Scrabble messages for you and yours, as well as pair of lovebirds for all you nesting couples out there. All are free for use and in both EPS AND PDF format. Cheers!

One of the most common issues we face here in the Platemaking Department at Boxcar Press is determining a sufficient line thickness. Making that ruling means explaining to customers two things – how do you go about checking to see if lines or text are thick enough to hold on your particular plate? What’s the thinnest line that can hold on the plate?

Surprisingly, there’s just one tool you need to utilize in either Adobe Illustrator or InDesign: The Line Tool. If you are using Adobe Photoshop, the Line Tool unfortunately reverts to a minimum line thickness of 1pt. If you are only using Adobe Photoshop to create your file, we highly recommend placing your final file in InDesign and using the Line Tool to check your work.

What do we mean when we talk about our line thickness guarantee? Simply put, if your lines meet or exceed the line thickness as outlined below, we will guarantee they will hold on your plate. If they are under that thickness, it’s hit or miss. Some days you are lucky and other days, you might lose details.

The first thing you need to determine is your line thickness based on your plate type:

- If your plate type is the KF 95, Jet 94FL, or 94SB, you have a line thickness guarantee of 0.25pt or thicker.

- If your plate type is the KF152, 152SB, or 145SHSB, you have a line thickness guarantee of 0.35pt or thicker.

- For all plate types, your dots (like the ones above the letter “i”, periods, or dotted lines) must be 1pt to 1.25 pt or thicker.

THINK FAST! Quick quiz here – what is usually the most common culprit of too thin lines? Crop Marks! More on that later.

Here’s how to use the handy Line Tool to check to see if your lines are thick enough (and plate friendly, too):

You need to first open your file in either Adobe Illustrator or InDesign. We’ll be using a small type sample in Adobe Illustrator to check to see if our lines are plate-friendly for a KF152 plate type. The KF152 plate type has a line thickness minimum of 0.35pt for lines and 1pt to 1.25 pt for dots. We can see that it looks like there are some thin lines in the serif of the Didot typeface… but will they hold?

First, click the Line Tool icon in the tool palette on the lefthand side of the screen in Adobe Illustrator to activate it. If you cannot find it, hover your mouse over the icon that looks like a line to see “Line Segment Tool (\)” pop up in a yellow box .

Next, in the control panel up at the top, we’ll select the words “1 pt.” in the dropdown area next to the word “STROKE” with our mouse. You’ll be substituting the “1 pt” and replace it with “0.35pt”.

We’ll select the Zoom tool (Z) and move in because we’ll be doing some close up viewing in the area you are inspecting. Select the line segment with your mouse and move it so it is right next to the bottom part of the “L” in “Letter”. Draw a short line so it is parallel with the thin line you are checking on your art board. It doesn’t have to be very long but this little line segment will be our “ruler” to compare thicknesses.

At this close magnification, we see that our line segment set at 0.35pt is much thicker in comparison to the thinnest line in of the serif on the letter “L”. We will need to add a hairline stroke to boost our text’s thickness to correct this.

To add a stroke, using the selection black arrow tool (V), select all the characters in the word “LETTER.” In our Control panel at the top our screen we should see that the letters only have a fill and that we’d like to add a hairline stroke (about 0.15pt). Click the white area next to “STROKE” to activate the area so we can type in “0.15pt”. Immediately single-click the white area anywhere on the board. This will deactivate your selected text and add the hairline (0.15pt) stroke.

Zoom in again using the Zoom Tool around the line segment we created with the Line Tool and the letter “L”. We can now visually see that the serif on the “L” is as thick as the 0.35pt line. Success!

Delete your line segment and zoom back out. Continue around your artboard to visually check to see if other areas look “safe” as well.

For dots, such as the ones around the heart shape, we’ll need to set our Line Tool weight to “1pt” just to be on the safe side. We’ll repeat the same steps mentioned above to create the line, to zoom in, and visually compare the dots’ diameter against the 1pt line segment we just drew on our art board. Like the thinner lines on the “L”, we’ll need to correct this by adding a much thicker stroke of 0.3 pt to boost our dots’ diameter up to 1pt.

Using the Line Tool to check your work should be a “Must Do” test before submitting your files to your platemaking ticket. If anything appears too thin, you will need to correct it.

A few final instructions to help you be aware of potential trouble spots:

-When creating crop marks in your files – the program default setting is often 0.2 pt or 0.25 pt. Keep this in mind so you can make the necessary changes to your crop mark thickness when you place them.

-Thin lines that curve, particularly in wispy script or calligraphic fonts, are always suspect for being too thin. Give them the support they need to hold on the plate with hairline stroke (if needed).

Stay tuned, letterpress lovers — next we’ll solve the mystery of how to create multiple color files!

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Here is a part of a very common printer’s tool. Can you identify it? Here’s a hint: rhymes with coin fee.