This hungry little face is found on the delivery side of a Heidelberg KSBA cylinder press. While it has lurked there unknown, it has eaten many wandering scoring matrices – those are the blue strips inside – plus other mysterious dainties. If your scoring matrix or lunch is missing, ask this fella if he has seen it.
Despite the terrible storm that came close, we were spared and got only rain. Halloween brought fun, more damp weather, a bad ole witch, 2 good witches and an american hero! No bystanders in the shop were harmed or terribly frightened by ghouls or goblins.
Printer Jim pauses for a moment of contemplation before pulling the die he needs from the storage shelf.
When diecutting shapes, a metal jacket is used on the platen instead of oiled tympan paper. This protects the press from the sharp cutting edges of a die. To coax the jacket and its springy clips into place, sometimes we use a mighty “32 oz Rubber Mallet” to tap it into place. Tap, tap with the mallet’s wide surface area and the jacket is locked in and ready to start getting in position. Wielding this 32oz rubber mallet makes me feel like Thor.
On Phil’s press was the most magical shade of blue that I couldn’t stop looking at. As the drum roller spun, the ink looked like blue velvet, so mesmerizing.
For the fifth installment of our letterpress roundtable discussions, we asked some of the printing and designing world’s die-hard denizens to show off their love of all things printing via their tattoo work as well as the stories behind the ink. And trust us, there’s always a good story to be told. As always, we’d love to hear of your own stories embodied in tattoo-form in the comments section!
I decided to get a Fuchs and Lang litho press tattooed on my back as a kind of homage to what is no longer made, and had plans to compliment it with an old style C&P 10X15 eventually; obviously not two at a time. These were by no means my first tattoos, and so I knew what I was getting into and knew what I wanted out of the artist. I found the appropriate engravings and took them to a few tattoo shops and talked to some folks/had consultations, and eventually settled on a fellow named Josh Egnew at 3 Kings who I had worked with before. Firstly, he did such a great job with the Fuchs and Lang that I was excited to bring him the drawing of this C&P; he kinda balked at it at first, as it was even more of a p.i.t.a. than the litho press, but after taking the time to trace it out for a transfer – he seemed happy enough, but a little bit reluctant. It took 2 sessions: one to outline and handle some of the shading, and the other to finish up the shading. By comparison, the litho press took him one session. I’m sure I squirmed a lot more for the C&P.
In the end I know he was very happy with the results, and the work is slightly out of character for him, but it was first rate work and the whip shading he used was top-notch. I can honestly say I will not be very likely to get anything as ornate or difficult to work with as this press, but I feel it is a commitment to what I love to do – and a fitting illustration as homage to this lovely breed of art that, if you are reading this blog, you undoubtably know and love yourself.
When I was about to graduate from CCA (California College of the Arts) with a degree in Graphic Design, I knew I wanted a bit more of a hands-on approach to design in my life than most of my classes had emphasized (I took a lot of letterpress and bookmaking on the side to make up for it). On a whim I applied to the Hatch Show Print internship program for the month after graduation, and I got accepted! Thus, my boyfriend and I relocated to Nashville, Tennessee for 6 weeks.
While at Hatch I got some AMAZING experience playing with type, designing and printing, and learning about the history of letterpress. I knew I had found my calling, and I felt that it was such a milestone experience that I wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate it. I have always loved the Caslon ampersand, and ampersands in general (my cat is even named Ampersand), so when I saw a Caslon ampersand woodblock at Hatch I knew it was the tattoo I wanted. My other tattoos are kind of hidden, so I also knew I wanted it in a place I would see (and others would see) all the time, which is why it’s on my wrist.
I pulled a print of the woodblock, and took that to the tattoo artist to copy. I specifically wanted it to have some woodgrain texture so it would look more like woodtype, and less like digital type. Overall, though getting the tattoo hurt a lot, I absolutely LOVE my tattoo. It is a constant reminder of my passion for history, letterpress, and things that are well crafted and handmade.
While I was at the Ladies of Letterpress conference this year, I decided to get a type related tattoo as a souvenir. It’s a less obvious version of mind your p’s and q’s. When I look at it, it is a p and q within curly brackets and from the perspective of someone else, it is a b & d.
My part time employee at the shop Bill also has a p’s and q’s themed tattoo. His is much more obvious with the actual moveable type forms tattooed with the wording of “mind your” I’m not entirely sure why he got his, beyond a love for letterpress.
I had the tattoo done just a few months after dropping out of college here in Mexico City. My job back then required me to do a whole lot of print work for the company I used to work. However, being so inexperienced and contact-less after dropping out, I had to try quite a lot of print shops, most of which produced less-than-stellar results.
One thing I never got to learn while in school was color matching and the whole printing process, since most of my education was focused around digital output. It took me a really long time to get the hang of these concepts, trying out an endless list of shops and ruining, I’m sorry to admit, quite a bit of paper in the process. At the time, I chose to have the tattoo done since it was very useful to have this comparison point readily available, almost at my finger tips. Now a days, it’s more of a welcome reminder that learning about anything is more akin to a practicing a craft than carrying out a job.
It was only natural when planning for a tattoo to use a ligature as my trade symbol. After a bit of research and exploration, I found this italic ampersand an allegory of my life: … always looking to what comes next... Over the years I’ve see a few other ampersand tattoos, but something about the way this one’s shaded and the subtle wrap of the terminals around my forearm have kept it distinctive.
I have many tattoos large and small, some of them pertain to printing and the rest are Victorian Luddite sentiments. The first and second printing tattoos I got at the same time: an ink brayer and a copy of a “poison” skull from ludlow specimen book. The third is the now famous “apathetic ink knife” of which is a bit cathartic now since some how it proliferated the web a bit after I got it. A friend of a friend drew it (lithoshop) and one of my tattooing friends convinced me to get it. The next one will be a little guy of a windmill……
Do you or someone you know have ink in the blood? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you!
A common downfall of new printers using light colored inks is thinking the print will be the same color as how the ink looks in the can. Here is a can of nice deep rust orange ink but it is actually meant to be a light apricot color. When applying an unfamiliar ink to your press, use a small amount and work your way up to color. That is much easier than having to wipe ink off and possibly put lintballs from a rag on the ink drum or disc. If you do have way too much ink on, it’s less trouble to simply wash up and start over. There is never an end to learning more press tricks!
Thanks to printer Tim for pointing out this other face of the fascinating press we work on. What a charming companion to look down and see!
Everyday at Boxcar Press we throw around these numbers on the phone, in emails and to each other. Some of us have even been known to mumble them in our sleep at night. What makes them so special above all others? See if you can guess what each one stands for.
94, 95, 145, 148, 152, 175: all of the plate types sold by Boxcar Press. The higher the number, the thicker the plate. 94 and 152 are available as both plastic backed and metal backed plates. If the number is followed by “SB”, it is a steel backed plate, not the number of stolen bases.
1:00: the time designated as the cut off or deadline for ordering same day rush service – 1:00pm EST to be exact.
6:00: the cut off time in the evening (again, Eastern standard time!) for creating a job ticket and submitting files for one day turnaround.
17 and 22: the largest plate size we can make in our platemakers that will fit on our Vandercook proofing press. If your files measure greater than 17″ x 22″, break them up and submit 2 files. You can always put them back together on your press to make letterpress love.
62 and 67: pricing per square inch for platemaking – $0.62/sq. inch for plates with the number 94 or 95 in their plate name; $0.67/sq. inch for plates with the number 145, 148, 152 and 175 in their plate name. And for some of you, ’67 may have meant the summer of love in San Francisco.
30: minimum charge for platemaking – $30 per job ticket. Also the cost of overnight air shipping via UPS in the US.
.35 and .25: the minimum guaranteed line thickness for our plates measured in points (pt). Lines should be .25pt for 94/95 plates and .35pt for anything larger. Remember, dotted lines are considered dots and not lines. Dots have their own special numbers and shouldn’t feel slighted at all.
1 and 1.25: preferred dot thickness for our plates, also measured in points. Proper dot thickness helps those individual, stand-alone-by-themselves dots to stand firm and tall and press boldly into your paper.
0.5: the number in inches we add to your platemaking dimensions for the height and width. This half inch is needed for the platemaking process.
.875 and .853: the thicknesses for the standard Boxcar base and the deep relief Boxcar base. And some really good bowling scores after 3 games.
.918: this is an easy one. This refers to type high, or the standard height of type. However, it also could refer to the Porsche 918 Spyder or the name of a letterpress club at the Lancaster Heritage Center Museum Print Shop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (the 918 Club).
Now these numbers will have special significance for you too!