Back in June 2010, we all headed out to Prince Edward Island for the first East Coast Gathering of members of the Yahoo Papermaking group. Our gracious hostess was Linda McCausland who runs Heron Cove rental vacation house, where the…
Category: Equipment
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…
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…
Our Valley Beater
For beating some papermaking fibres, a Hollander beater is essential. One of the brands preferred by hand papermakers is the Valley Beater, originally made by Valley Iron Works, but still available new from Voith-Sulzer (last time I checked). They are…
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…
The big monster printing press
This press is our latest acquisition. It actually came from what are now the premises of KwartzLab, the former home of Pandora Press. This machine is a Thompson-British Automatic Platen Press, weighing in at about 1525kg (3360lbs). It fills the…
Our workhorse printing press
The press we do most of our work with is a Chandler and Price 7×11 Old Style. This is a hand-fed treadle-driven letterpress. When we got the press it was set up for motor drive, had an ink fountain, but…
Our smallest printing press
Our smallest printing press is a Kelsey Excelsior 5×8 Model U tabletop press. When we got it it was suffering from fire and water damage. Most of the paint was worn off, there was rust all over, and the rubber…
Papermaking presses
We have two presses which are used in papermaking to press excess water out of the sheets and also to make the sheets thinner and denser. The one we use regularly is actually a power hydraulic 30-ton arbor press assembled…
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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