10 x 15 Heidelberg Windmill, 1963
Why we love this press: This is our workhorse at Boxcar Press. Fast, nimble, precise, and photogenic. This particular press came from an honest printer in Illinois, but perhaps because of its Midwestern roots, that’s all the story the press has. It printed ordinary things in an ordinary shop, and then it came to us. To be honest, none of our 10 x 15’s have a particularly colorful history. But even without a lurid past, we love these presses because they print really well. They are sturdy, dependable, always there for us, and they get the job done. If we may rhapsodize about the inking system, for instance….unlike all other automatic platen letterpresses, the 10 x 15 doesn’t have an ink disk but an oscillating ink drum which helps keep consistent inking over a long run. And we’ve been able to feed everything from tissue-weight paper to 60 pound board into the press-—this is easy to do with its turn of the wrist impression control (no wrenches necessary!). If we were stuck on a desert island, we would pray to be washed ashore with one of these presses (but just don’t tell this to our Vandercooks).