For supply orders: Orders typically ship within 1-2 business days. If you need your order immediately, we encourage you to request expedited overnight shipping. However, if you’re in a serious letterpress emergency, please place your order before noon EST and mention that you’d like same day shipping. We’ll do our best to make it happen!
For platemaking: place your same day rushes by 1 p.m. EST.
For platemaking, the day your order is completed (Order Complete) is the day your order ships. You will get a UPS tracking number via the log-in email on your account. Your invoice will be shipped in a separate email. Review your Order History to see all past and current orders for your status. For international orders using the US Postal Service, you will receive an email with your tracking number.
For Supplies – an email will be sent with the tracking number.
Photopolymer supply orders ship from our warehouse within 1-2 business days.
Custom Platemaking orders ship depending on the service you choose:
We offer a 1 business day turnaround, or Same Day Rush – an extra fee service.
For shipping in the USA, we offer UPS Ground, UPS 3 day air Service, UPS 2 day air Service, UPS Overnight morning, UPS afternoon Saver and UPS early Am (before coffee) 8:30 am service.
For International Customers, we offer US Postal Priority or Express Mail and UPS Worldwide Saver.
Remember that the days refer to business days and not weekends.
We carry plates that are very similar to those recommended by Art Jewelry Magazine. Many metal clay artists have used our plates to great success. We have several plate types that will suit your needs and preferences.
| Art Jewelry Suggests | Boxcar Press plate | Boxcar plate thickness | Plate material | Impression |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.8mm | 94FL | .94mm/.037” | plastic backed | shallower |
| 1.52mm | KF152 | 1.50mm/.060 | plastic backed | deep |
| 0.9mm or greater | 94SB | .94mm/.037” | metal backed | shallower |
| 0.9mm or greater | 145HSB | 1.40mm/.057″ | metal backed | medium |
| 1.52mm | 152SB | 1.50mm/.060″ | metal backed | deep |
Boxcar Press offers two options to metal clay artists. We can sell you unexposed polymer plates for do-it-yourself artists to create their own negatives and process themselves. Check out our new Plates by the Pound service for our plastic backed plates under our Supplies. Or we can take your digital files or images and professionally create plates for you, quickly and economically.
In either case, you will want to store your exposed plates in a zipper bag out of sunlight. You may also want to consider using a silicon spray to protect the plate from the moisture in the clay. You will want to clean the plate with vegetable oil. Exposure to too much light and moisture will cause your plates to deteriorate.
Remember, we’re a letterpress shop, and letterpress is our expertise. We can’t answer specific questions about how our plates work with your process, but we can offer information on the polymer plate material, thickness, exposure times, and processing.
For additional information, you may also want to check out:
Because processing your own plates can get complicated – and the results need to be excellent for quality letterpress printing – we recommend using a dedicated photopolymer platemaker. If you don’t already own one of these machines, we can help you source out light boxes, washout and exposure units, whatever your budget. If you’d rather learn how to hand-process your plates, we recommend checking out Letterpress Commons and, if you can, taking a class at one of these great book arts centers: Center for Book Arts (NYC); Minnesota Center for Book Arts; San Francisco Center for Book Arts; Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts (Chicago). You’ll find essential exposure information in your plate’s datasheets, though you’ll want to use a Stouffer Gauge to perfect exposure. We can always process your plates professionally for you through our platemaking services.
None of the byproducts of processing photopolymer plates are known to have health risks, except if you’re allergic by contact to plastic. Check out the MSDS’s for more specific health information. You can find each plate’s MSDS on it’s product page: plastic-backed plates; steel-backed plates; intaglio plates.
While our troubleshooting only extends to using photopolymer plates for letterpress printing, there are literally dozens of other uses for photopolymer plates. If you know the tech specs of the plate that you need, or if you can send us a sample of the plate required for your application, we would be happy to try and recommend a plate that we have in stock that will work for you.
We have innovative people using our plates for metal clay jewelry making, translucent porcelain, and leather work. We always like to hear what you want to try.
Roller gauges are especially indispensable with a platen press. Letterpress rollers need to be positioned just right in order to deposit a thin film of ink onto the surface of the form, without squeezing ink over the edges. A roller gauge will help you accurately measure the height of your rollers so you can produce the crispest printing that your press is capable of. We sell roller gauges, precision ground to type high, which are also very fashionable.
When your rollers are positioned correctly, your printing will look beautifully crisp. But if your rollers aren’t positioned at the right height, your printing will have a halo effect: dark around the edges and/or chunkier/blotchier than it should be. If you ever notice ink on the back of your polymer plate or on your base — it’s a roller gauge emergency! Adjust your rollers now! We have a great video on setting roller gauge height in our Boxcar Training Videos and step by steps are listed here.
Step 1. While your press is inked up, remove the chase (on platen presses) or the base (on a Vandercook).
Step 2. We recommend checking the roller height in the four corners of the press bed. We’ll start in the upper right hand corner. Engage the form rollers and position them over the upper right corner of the bed.
Step 3. You will be pulling a stripe of ink on the round surface of the roller gauge. Pull the gauge underneath the form rollers so that a stripe of ink is transferred to the rounded surface of the gauge’s cylinder. Measure the stripe of the ink: you want your ink stripe to measure 3/32”. If the strip of ink is less than 1/16”, you’ll have difficulty consistently inking your plate (some areas will appear too light, and some areas will appear too dark). If your strip of ink is wider than 3/32”, your rollers put too much pressure on your plate and cause your printing to be chunky/blurry.
Step 4: On a platen press, to adjust the height of your form rollers: add tape to the rails that the roller trucks ride on. You may have to add several layers of tape. Strapping tape or plumber’s silver tape is frequently used for this. If you’re using a press other than a platen press, consult your manual as to how to raise your form rollers.
Step 5: Repeat steps three and four in each corner of your press bed.
Step 6: When your rollers are positioned correctly, you should pull identical 3/32” stripes of ink from the four corners of the press bed, and your printing should be both crisp and beautiful!
If you continue to notice inconsistencies in your inking after adjusting your roller height correctly, you may need to purchase new rollers and, if using a platen press, roller trucks as well.
Every platen or lever press has wear on the rails and needs tape on the rails to raise the rollers to the right height. This is whether you use lead type or polymer—although the problem surfaces more frequently on polymer if the roller rails aren’t set correctly. You have to build up the rails that the roller trucks travel on so that the rollers just graze the surface of the form. The best way to do this is to add equal layers of masking or strapping tape to each rail. Keep building up the rails in this fashion until whatever you’re printing doesn’t ink up at all (i.e. bring the rollers up just past the point where the rollers ink the plate). Then take off one layer of tape so that the rollers drop down with minimum contact to the plate. This will keep ink from getting on the backing of the plate and the base, and it will also help make your printing crisper. It’s not uncommon to have to add as much as a 1/16″—or sometimes 1/8″—in tape in order to get the rails to the right height. These presses are often 100 years old and have 100 years of wear that you have to overcome. We do not recommend that you adjust your trucks or printing plate/base for this problem. Better printing results from type-high rollers. After you add tape to your rails, we recommend using a roller gauge to perfect the height of your rollers.
We totally understand that you want to get the most use and space out of your press. However, knowing about some of the challenges you will face can help you make decisions about the correct size.
First, keep in mind that every press, like every person, has a limit to its strength. A press with a 10 x 15 chase will never be able to hammer a 10 x 15 block of text. You’ll be able to get a good impression using about 60-70% of your chase, depending on your form. Secondly, your base needs to stay put in your chase with a good lockup. To secure your base in your chase, you need to make room for the quoins plus furniture for distributing the weight of the base, and gauge pins. Gauge pins fit in the space outside the base and over the furniture.
We recommend checking out our Base Selection Chart which recommends the ideal size base for your chase. With a 10×15 chase, we would recommend a 9×12 base, for instance.
If you really want to max out the base size, keep in mind your base should be at least 1 inch, preferably 1.5 inches, smaller than your chase. If you use a lot of paper that is precut, it is most likely smaller than your base. This can make it challenging to place your gauge pins and still hold the paper and not hit the base. One safety note, the larger the base in your platen press, the further you have to reach into the press to place your paper. This is very important with a larger press with a motor, so take into consideration your comfortable reach, the speed of the press, and your fingers when locking up a larger base.