Category: Type Casting

Solving caster communications the expensive way

During my Bad Casting Day, I was having problems with the communications between my caster computer interface and the 14-year-old Windows laptop I was using to drive it. They connect using a USB cable, and I thought electrical noise might

More updated caster pneumatics

One of the conclusions of my Bad Casting Day was that I needed better regulation of the pressure of the compressed air which controls the caster operation. The caster has about 30 pins about 3/8″ (1cm) in diameter which must

A slightly better casting day

After the really bad casting day a few weeks ago, almost anything would be an improvement. I had taken steps to resolve some of the problems, and here is the result:

A Bad Casting Day

Yesterday I made a try at casting a font of 12-point Caslon Old Style using composition mats and the computer interface for the caster.The results were less than stellar. A whole bunch of things went wrong:

Thoughts on Making Lanston Matrix Blanks

There are times where it would be nice to be able to make my own Lanston-style display matrices to use on my Monotype Composition caster. Often I find that matrices made by other casting aficionados were made by cannibalizing a

Relabeling Those Pesky Caslon Matrices

I recently found a pair of mis-labeled matrices in my set of 18-point Caslon Old Style, and although I could just leave a note in the storage box, I thought it would be better to just correct the markings on

More on that ‘st’ (de câlisse) matrix

My previous casting of 18-point Caslon Old Style had enough defects that I ended up re-casting it. A couple of the problems are described herein. After calculating all the adjustments to cast the ‘st’ ligature from the non-factory-made matrix, I

Exploding Mould Blade Operating Rods!

During my recent casting run of 18-point Caslon Old Style I found that there were enough problems with the font that I decided to just recast it entirely. I had solved all my alignment, set-width, and substandard matrix problems, so

Casting #337 Caslon Old Style 18pt

This is the first time I have cast this particular font, and although it mostly went well, I had one sort that miscast. The problem first showed up on a carbon-paper proof of the type:The ‘st’ ligature seemed to be

Line Length Gauge Collection

I was cleaning up the workshop a bit last week and ran across a small project which had fallen by the wayside. As part of all the Monotype parts I had collected, there was a random assortment of line length

Top