While in process of cleaning this Heidelberg windmill press, one cannot help but be struck by the fine engineering of the many MANY tiny parts and how they all fit precisely together. Not bad for mid-20th century pre-computerized production!
Today’s news is to highlight the different impression levers (what sets paper to touch inked form) on two models of Heidelberg Windmills. Our general workhorse for letterpressing invitation sets is the 10 x 15 windmill, with it’s solid bar capped by a red ball. The hulking cousin to this press is the 12 x 18 model with wider feed tables and more of a yoke for putting a firm handshake into to get it on impression. Can you see the family resemblance with their yellow eyes? How sweet!
The sleep machine is running, unaware it is being watched. Long out of production, this Heidelberg 10 x 15 windmill letterpress still runs smoothly & precisely with the loving care it has been given over the decades. If you listen closely, you can hear it breathing & purring as ink is pressed to downy white cotton paper.
In a gleaming array of fine machinery, here stand some of our prized workhorses, Heidelberg 10 x 15 Red Ball Windmills!
This is a rare view from the back of a Heidelberg Windmill letterpress machine. The array of rollers is called an ink train because ink is being transported from the rear ink fountain (reservoir) to the front rubber (form) rollers that come in contact with the photopolymer printing plate.
by Carrie Valenzuela, letterpress printer. 4:30 p.m.
Here is Jake’s letterpress (Heidelberg Windmill Red Ball 10 x 15) sitting quietly while he is home with his family and brand new baby girl. Congratulations, Jake & Chellsea!
by Carrie Valenzuela, letterpress printer. 2:07 p.m.
Some of our Windmills primed and ready for printing!
by Carrie Valenzuela, letterpress printer. 1:06 p.m.
Heidelberg Windmill,
You are a glorious workhorse!
With you, so many wonderful things can be letterpressed & die cut & scored.
I love you, windmill! And all of the other presses too!
by Carrie Valenzuela, letterpress printer. 11:18 a.m.
Letterpress printing is so darn pretty that we wanted to share it with the world – so Harold spend the afternoon filming our printer Jake interacting with one of our favorite Heidelberg Windmills as he printed some letterpress invitations — then Harold spent days and nights and days and nights editing the footage down into three really tight seat-gripping minutes of total printing beauty. Enjoy (and make sure to turn the volume up loud so you can dance along to the press sounds)!
Harold spent a few hours downstairs in the letterpress shop today taking some really great atmospheric photos of our presses and our printers. Nothing looks better to us than bright ink on a Heidelberg Windmill under dramatic lighting conditions! We’ll be posting more pictures from our shop’s photo shoot to Boxcar’s flickr account in the next week or so. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving! Today we’re being grateful for the creation of letterpress and cast iron, and also for you, all of our awesome letterpress-loving customers. We’ll be thinking of you all as we eat our tofurkeys! (By the way, our offices are closed Nov. 27, Thursday, and Nov. 28, Friday).
