This is the culmination of a long three-pronged refitting of the pump on my Monotype composition caster. The three parts were disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling the pump head mechanism, refitting a pump latch mechanism scavenged from another caster, and making…
Author: kpmartin
Monotype piston rod finished
The extended-stroke piston rod I was making for my Monotype caster is now finished. Now that it is off the mill, cleaned up, and has its handle put on it looks so much like it could have been a factory-made…
Monotype piston rod—Mounted on mill, ready for cutting
After finishing one side of the extended-stroke piston rod for my Monotype, I took apart all the work holders and gave the mill a bit of a cleaning. The rod has now been clamped down to the milling table with…
Monotype piston rod milling half-completed
With the flats completed on the piston rod, it was time to mill the groove by which the piston is raised and lowered. This took quite a bit of time as I had the mill running at very conservative feed…
A new needle size
We noticed that we had a gap in our needle sizes: There was a big jump in diameter between the #17 needle (1.4mm) and the huge #15 needle (1.8mm). It may not seem like 0.4mm sounds like much but when…
Our “new” guillotine
New to us, anyway, as it is older that the one it is replacing. This one is a Challenge Diamond 32″ guillotine with mechanical cut and manual clamp. This machine has an after-market dual-hand control added so you have to…
Finally working on the Monotype piston rod again
It has been a while but I finally got around to working on the extended-stroke piston rod for my Monotype caster’s pump tonight. A while ago I had drilled and tapped the end hole for the handle. I was fortunate…
Our second papermaking press
From some of the lessons I learned from our first press, I made a new one out of aluminum. I had the chance to practice my (horrible) skills at welding this metal, but ended up with a press that was…
Our first papermaking press
This is a press which I made for Audrey even before we bought the Papertrail; we have since stopped using it and sold it. The following details are drawn from memory so dimensions might not be exact. The cross-beams were…
A little more cleaning on the Monotype Pump
Finishing the new extended-stroke piston rod is taking a little longer than planned, so in the meantime I decided to clean the piston and pump body lever mechanism. This is what transmits the pump spring pressure to the pump proper.…
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