In a post about two years ago concerning our then-newly-acquired Kelsey press I mentioned that I had made my own composition rollers for it. Someone had inquired about how I made these, and it has taken me this long to…
Category: Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance
Refurbishing the Sigwalt Press
The Sigwalt press we recently bought was dirty, the paint was chipped and worn thin in places, and there were a few spots of rust as well. It also had no roller trucks and the gripper spring was bent out…
New (to me) Monotype documents
Late last week I picked up a pile of Monotype manuals and other publications from Don Black. These were generally duplicates to ones he already has. Many of these documents are ones I already have as well, although some are…
Tagged with: Don Black
Storage box for brasses and coppers
In setting type for letterpress, very thin spaces are sometimes required to fill in a line to match the length of adjacent ones so that everything is held tight when locked into the chase. The spaces are known as brasses…
Things from the parts heap at Firefly Press
These are a few of the things I scrounged from the parts heap at Firefly Press in Boston on the departure day from the recent ATF conference. The first is a bit of an oddity. I’ve never seen it in…
Tagged with: Firefly Press
More Spring-Making
Over the past few months, Jason Dewinetz at Greenboathouse Press has been working on getting his Supercaster running, but he was having trouble casting 14 point type from American-style display matrices. He was finding that he had to run his…
Another composition caster rule repaired
One of the items I picked up at the swap meet of the recent ATF conference was a brand-new-old-stock Rule Guide Pin (c39F1) for the Monotype Composition Caster. This not only let me verify the dimensions I had from my…
Our New Baby!
Through a Kijiji ad, we found that the Goodwill store in London ON had a small press for sale. We finally had to chance to go have a look at it (it helped that the London Lee Valley store was…
Monotype Galley Fence Repair
The Monotype caster has a part called a fence which separates the accumulating line of type from previous lines already pushed onto the galley. This fence has a guide pin at the rear end which fits into a hole in…
Determining the evaporation rate in my basement workshop
One of the things I noted when trying to electroform a Monotype matrix last May was that by the time I put that project on hold, half of my plating electrolyte had vanished. I was using an open tank so…
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