13 x 18 Heidelberg Windmill, 1963
Why we love this press: this press is big and bad. There is a lot of cast iron flapping back and forth when it runs. It's a tough press
When we had just moved to Syracuse and were going through new equipment withdrawal, we attended an auction in Oneida, New York and fell in love with this beautiful, pristine and perfect piece of machinery. Unfortunately we weren’t the only love-struck printers there, so we got ready for a whole lot of bidding to win the heart of this windmill. In its previous life, it sat at Stanton Paper Box, though we don’t think it had been touched in 30 years. This particular auction marked our unfortunate first meeting with a local printing equipment dealer, who had 40 years of experience buying and selling Heidelberg equipment (and incidentally he also had a lot more money in his pocket than we did). We thought he was going to rip our head off when we bid up the press more than we could pay. The look he gave me when we were bidding was something like, "Boy, you don't know who you're dealing with here." He was right. Though we hoped the auctioneer would have given the press to whoever loved its cast iron body more, the dealer took the press home. But two years later, when we had a little more money in our pockets, and the dealer wasn't looking at us so angrily, we bought the same press from him, as beautiful and pristine as it had been sitting in Oneida (though it was a little more expensive the second time around of course).