Category: Letterpress

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.

New Monotype Pump Spring Rod (sort of)

After realizing that I could not make a new pump rod for my Monotype caster on my lathe (the lathe bed was not long enough), I considered several ways to get around this problem. As it turns out the solution

Monotype Pump Latch R&R Completed

The reconditioning of the pump latch for my Monotype caster is now complete. I found some donors for the missing screws in my parts stock. There were two of the actual latch trigger assemblies there (but not the rest of

So much for a part being easy to make…

I thought the new spring rod I have to make for my Monotype pump would be relatively easy to do, after all, it is just a length of 5/8″ round rod threaded at both ends. The problem is that my

Monotype Pump Head reassembled—now on to new parts

The pump head on my Monotype Composition caster is now back together, except for the pump springs and related parts, which I have to replace with home-made ones to accommodate the pump latch mechanism. The parts to be made or

Monotype Pump Latch R&R – Threaded hole repair done

After determining that I had a way to drill the necessary holes without any new tooling, the repair of the threaded holes on the Latch Abutment (58H1) is finished. Even with the holes properly center-punched, I had a little trouble

Monotype paint colour matching—Nailed it!

My use of a photo editor to measure the hue and saturation of the paint colours paid off. I had inferred that I had to add to my new paint a mix of two parts red and one part blue.

Colour-matching Monotype Parts

In my projects to refurbish my Monotype pump and install a latch mechanism, I am now at the stage of needing to repaint some parts, and I am finding it to be a tricky job. For one thing, In can’t

Crossheads reinstalled on Monotype pump head

The two press-fit parts that I probably should never have disassembled on my Monotype caster pump head are now back together again. As mentioned in my previous post I had already reassembled the Pump Body Spring Rod 31H1 and its

Monotype pump head parts cleaning completed

All the parts for the pump head on my Monotype Composition caster are now clean and mostly shiny. There are two cotter (split) pins which I did not bother cleaning since I plan on replacing them. The lower crosshead 19H1,

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