I was recently casting some 14-point Caslon Old Style on my Monotype Composition Caster and I was finding that after casting a long run of some wider letters, the type was coming out with an interesting distortion:The top of the…
Category: Letterpress
An interesting type duplicating mould
Yesterday I was at the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum in Queenston Ontario. The museum is not open to the public right now, but members still meet there to work on organizing and cataloguing the collection, and I was in…
Monotype Computer Control: First Run
I have my 12-point Binny Old Style diecase set up, so last Saturday, I tried my first run with my laptop controlling my Monotype Composition Caster. The text is a little note to include when I ship type across the…
Finding Missing Composition Matrices
I have a Monotype diecase for Lanston 12-point #21EFG Binny Old Style which includes most French accents, but was missing question and exclamations marks in both roman and italic, as well as the small cap Z. I was quite pleased…
Video: First run of Monotype Compostion Caster Computer Control
I just posted a video on YouTube of the first run of my Monotype Composition Caster under control of my laptop computer. I have been working on the hardware and software for this interface on and off over several years,…
Wayzgoose 2021 Anthology
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced this year’s Grimsby Wayzgoose to a virtual event, an Anthology is still being produced. We made a 1-sheet/4-page submission for this on some paper handmade from recycled discards from a local artist. The pulp…
Giving up on Strip Casting (for now)
After several unsuccessful attempts at casting strip material on my Monotype Composition Caster, I’m giving up for a while. The problems I’ve been fighting with include: Unfused strip material, which easily breaks up into pieces Blowback through the nozzle seat…
Lanston Monotype Pump Cleaning
I recently tried to get strip casting working on my Monotype Composition Caster but gave up after several failures. One suspect was the pump; the strip-casting moulds use a different pump than composition and display casting, and I had never…
First try at strip casting
I have my Monotype composition caster converted to produce strip material—leading and rule—and this is my first try at running this setup. You can see the inauspicious results in my accompanying YouTube video. I am using a pump body which…
Trying out the New Nozzle and Strip Mould
I installed the nozzle I just made into the special strip-casting pump. This pump is a Lanston (American Monotype) pump and my caster is an English-made one, and one of the incompatibilities between these is the pump body size. Although…
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