Category: Letterpress

Sorting Donated Linotype Matrices

The Mackenzie Printery & Newspaper Museum recently received a donation of type, spacing, and Linotype/Intertype matrices from Steve Ecker, I believe of Smithville, Ontario. While other volunteers at the museum started sorting the type and spacing into appropriate cases, I

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A Cool-down Drool on the Monotype

I have recently taken another Monotype mould out of mothballs to use for casting a font of 6-point type. This is one of the moulds I got from Rich Hopkins’ tertiary storage, i.e. his garage. I had cleaned off the

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Monotype 14-point Display Fonts #1 and #2

I recently cast several fonts of type in Monotype  #329 Sans Serif Light. This included 12-point from composition matrices and 14-point from display matrices. As with a few other Monotype faces, this one is available as display matrices in two

A Good Casting Day

After much thought about my problem with second shot, and with little help from any manuals, I’ve got my caster to behave properly. The second shot problem was caused by an incorrect adjustment in the pump crosshead and linkage area.

Another Bad Casting day

Yesterday, I tried to cast another font of 12-point Caslon Old Style (Lanston 12-337E). The computer and pneumatics worked flawlessly, but the type kept misbehaving in the type channel. The caster seemed to be doing something known as a “second

A Little Monotype Alignment Conundrum

I recently cast a font of 12-337E Caslon Old Style from a 15×15 matcase using my Monotype computer interface. Upon rummaging around I also found that I had loose cellular matrices for the quaints in this font. That would be

Wayzgoose 2022 Anthology

Well, it won’t be ready for distribution for several months, but this year’s Wayzgoose Anthology is on its way to the bookbinder. This year our contribution is a bit of a farewell to Rhona Wenger, who just retired from the

Towards a better casting day

After analyzing the problems from my bad casting day, I’ve managed, with some success, to address all the problems (numbered to match the previous post): I disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled the mould, and checked the carrying frame height on the

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

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