In my last post about the Monotype piston rod I am making to provide a lengthened pump stroke about the only work completed was the ends of the piece. Since that time I have proceeded through the following stages: The…
Category: Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance
Monotype Parts Stock
As part of fitting the pump latch mechanism onto my Monotype caster, there are a couple of missing parts that I might have to make. Making them should be easy since they are geometrically very simple, but I would have…
Cleaning the Thompson ink fountain (Part 2)
After spending a few hours across several evenings, I have the ink fountain from our Thompson press cleaned off and fully disassembled. It took several treatments with the paint stripper to get everything clean. There was no way to distinguish…
Fixing a Vandercook SP-15 washup unit
The Vandercook SP-15 proof press at the Book Arts Guild of Richmond Hill is equipped with a washup unit. This is essentially a blade that wipes the ink off one of the rollers in the ink train and a tray…
Tagged with: Vandercook SP-15
Some work on the high-volume Monotype pump
I now have a hunk of steel mounted on my lathe that will eventually turn into a home-made long-stroke piston rod (part code hw17H) for increasing the volume capacity of the pump on the Monotype composition caster. There is still…
Springs have sprung
Last year at the American Typecasting Fellowshsip Conference Jason Dewinetz mentioned that he had a Ludlow Supersurfacer with a broken clamp spring. The Supersurfacer is used to smooth off the surface of slugs cast on a Ludlow, which is essentially…
Cleaning the Thompson ink fountain
Most of the dirt on our Thompson platen press is a mix of dust, lint, and oil which can be removed with a soft brush and a vacuum cleaner. However, the ink fountain suffers from years of encrustation of dried…
Monotype pump head disassembled
As part of my project to add a pump latch to my Monotype Composition Caster to allow casting of larger type, I decided to take apart the pump head so all the parts could be cleaned properly of decades of…
Monotype Pump Enhancements
My Monotype Composition Caster is a British-made one, with a serial number indicating fairly late manufacture (1960’s) so it should in theory be fitted will all the latest bells and whistles. But for some reason it is missing the pump…
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