Making Really Red Paper

I just found these photos from a papermaking session from the summer of 2019 and thought I might post them.

We had recently emptied a mini-keg of red 112 aqueous pigment, and we were left with a dirty keg. We decided to put a batch of pulp into the keg and swish it around to use up the pigment stuck to the sides.

It turned out there was way more pigment than we expected, and we ended up with a batch of really red paper. With that much pigment, getting 100% retention is nearly impossible, so there was red everywhere. The shop looked like a murder scene (and Audrey was “caught red-handed”)!

The paper ended up being a nice saturated Christmas-y red (photos would not do it justice).

We actually used the drain water and vat water to pigment another batch of paper which ended up almost as red.

Now, after several re-uses and rinses, we can finally use the felts without getting some pink staining in the paper.

Lanston Monotype Wedge Substitutions

Based on the data from Alembic Press’s Monotype information, there are a few normal wedges that are interchangeable. So far, this is just theoretical, so I haven’t tried this. And of course, any errors in my source data will reflect as errors here as well (as will confusion on my part).

First, the following are completely equivalent:

S5 S718
S284 S77
S235B S236B

Furthermore, if you have Unit Shift available but are only using 15-row matcases, you can use Unit Shift to find the correct width from the next narrower row position for the following wedges:

Original Wedge Substitute(s)
S5 S77 S176 S284
S27 S5 S718
S29 S135
S34 S135
S77 S176
S119 S5 S77 S176 S284 S718
S150 S5 S27 S119 S718
S166 S22 S176
S176 S22
S266 S77 S176 S284 S301 S303
S283 S5 S77 S176 S266 S284 S718
S284 S176
S297 S595 S604
S298 S294
S299 S22 S176
S300 S294 S298
S302 S459
S303 S301
S314 S316
S320 S298 S300
S459 S297 S595 S604
S521 S22 S176
S606 S108 S604
S614 S200
S718 S77 S176 S284

So, for instance, if the arrangement calls for an S119 wedge, and you want to use S5 instead, when you need to cast from row 5 of the matcase (width 8 units on S119, but 9 units on S5), you instead code for row 4 with Unit Shift engaged. This will move the wedge to position 4 (width 8 units on S5 wedge) but the matcase to row position 5 selecting the correct matrix. I think this will all happen automatically if you are using the CompCat software to drive the caster and tell it you have an S5 wedge installed when you generate the ribbon file. Note that if you ribbon codes for row 15 with Unit Shift selected, the matcase may crash against the left hand side of the bridge (so don’t do that).

Finally, again using Unit Shift, you can also adjust (lengthen) the front drawbar so that the rows in the matrix case get their regular width when Unit Shift is selected for the cast, and without Unit Shift selected, you get the width from the next larger row. Note, though, that if your ribbon codes for row 1 with no Unit Shift, the matcase may crash against the right side of the bridge (again, so don’t do that).

Original Wedge Substitute(s)
S5 S27 S119 S124
S22 S176
S77 S5 S119 S124 S718
S119 S124
S200 S541 S614
S266 S283
S284 S5 S119 S124 S718
S294 S298
S297 S459
S300 S320
S301 S266 S303
S303 S266
S316 S314
S426 S283
S431 S22
S459 S302
S604 S297 S459 S595
S606 S299
S660 S606
S718 S27 S119 S124
S721 S301

This is the reverse of the first effect; To get this when using CompCat you must make up a 16-row MCA with the first row empty and the remaining rows shifted down one from their normal positions, and you must have the individual mats coded with their proper widths as if using the original wedge and a 15-row matcase.

Making a Vandercook 320 carriage stop

As part of getting a Vandercook 320 proof press into working condition, I had to make a carriage stop/bumper block. One of the original ones was missing from the press. Another of the stops was held on with only one screw, the other having snapped off.

I have posted a video of making this on YouTube.

Since installing the carriage stops, I have also adjusted the timing of the impression drum. On this press this can be done by rolling the carriage completely off one end of the press, having removed the stops and arranged for something to catch the carriage, which weighs perhaps 2-300 lbs (100-150kg), and rolling it back on engaging the drum gear in a new position.

I chose to use the other method available: I removed the two pins that the print drum bearing plates pivot on when shifting from trip to print position. This allowed me to use a piece of wood as a lever to raise the drum to clear the gear racks and lower it down again at a new position.

I adjusted it so the leading edge of the drum, where the gripper bar is, lines up with the headbar on the press bed as it rolls over that area. I was a bit surprised to find that the parked position of the drum has the gripper edge straight up (at “12 o’clock”) as the angled feedboard design of this press made me expect the parked position to be similarly angled.

The next job is to re-install the inking mechanism on the carriage, and also the inkplate and headbar on the press bed.

Wallet-sized Ontario COVID Vaccination Certificate (fixed)

I recently posted on how to make a wallet-sized version of the Ontario COVID vaccination certificate, but my original post contained incorrect code and so did not produce valid QR codes.

This has now been fixed and the original post now contains the correct code to do the work.

Shame on me for posting improperly-tested code.

Wallet-sized Ontario COVID Vaccination Certificate

The province of Ontario is now issuing COVID vaccinations certificates with QR codes on them, which you can carry with you to obtain admission to various public gathering places. You can also show the certificate on your phone, but having it on paper is useful in various circumstances:

  • You don’t own a phone
  • You don’t have your phone with you
  • The phone’s battery is dead
  • Pulling out a wallet card along with your photo ID is faster than pulling up the certificate on your phone and pulling out photo ID anyway

Unfortunately, none of the sharp minds at our provincial government have realized that if someone wants to carry around a paper certificate, it would be much easier if it were wallet-sized rather than a full letter-size sheet of paper. Not to mention that the QR code is placed point blank on a fold in the paper, likely making the code unreadable, for pretty much any normal way of folding the paper.

I have made a wallet-sized version (3.56×2.24″ or 9.05×5.69cm) of my certificate. The front contains all the information of the original certificate except the QR code, with piles of white space removed, and the QR code is on the back. The actual text on the front is half the size of the original text and is still easily readable, and the QR code is about the same size as it would appear on the screen of a phone. All that is missing is the “page 1 of 2” annotation and, of course, page 2 which contains no useful information whatsoever.

Since we have 3 in our family, I decided to automate the slicing and dicing operation that generates the front and back images. I am using an image-processing tool called ImageMagick to do this, along with the following script that contains all the slicing operations.

 -units PixelsPerInch
 ( +clone
  -crop 1419x1419+536+1828
  -threshold 50%
  -resize 2425x2425
  -gravity center -extent 4274x2688
  -density 1200x1200
  -write back.png
 )
 -delete 1
 -gravity NorthWest
 ( +clone -crop +0+6270 -repage +0+6120 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +0+5875 -repage +0+5800 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +0+5500 -repage +0+4625 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +0+4200 -repage +0+4075 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +0+3680 -repage +0+3630 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +0+3580 -repage +0+3530 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +0+3380 -repage +0+1540 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +0+660 -repage +0+575 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +0+430 -repage +0+345 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +0+288 -repage +0+0 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +4785+0 -repage +4660+0 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +460+0 -repage +335+0 ) -flatten
 ( +clone -crop +288+0 -repage +0+0 ) -flatten
 -crop 4274x2688+0+0 +repage -density 1200x1200
 -write front.png

I’m not claiming this is the most efficient script to do this; in particular, cutting out all the slices and flattening them all at once would likely be faster than doing a cut-and-flatten for each strip to slice away.

To make a wallet card, the steps are as follows:

  1. Download and install ImageMagick
  2. Save the above script to a file
  3. Open the PDF certificate file in a PDF viewer.
  4. Extract/export the first page of the certificate as a 600×600DPI image file, which should be 5100×6600 pixels since the page size is 8½×11″. Use an uncompressed, non-lossy image format like PNG.
  5. In a command/shell window, run the command:
    magick imageFile -script scriptFile
    

    where magick is the name of the command installed with ImageMagick, imageFile is the name of the image saved in step 4, and scriptfile is the name of the script file saved in step 2.

  6. The script will create files front.png and back.png in your current folder.
  7. Print these back-to-back on heavy paper, cut out, and laminate if desired. You have to make sure the program you use to print the image files prints at 100% zoom, and that the two images actually end up back-to-back. I found that specifying that the image should be centered, and running the same sheet through the printer twice (once for each image), flipped over the second time, worked well. You could also print on separate sheets and glue them back-to-back.
  8. For more certificates, repeat steps 3-7.

That leaves a bunch of details for you to figure out, like how you export an image from your PDF viewer, making sure the ‘magick’ command is in your command search path, figuring how this all maps to a Unix or Mac system (I was using Windows), doing this all in a separate new folder to make cleaning up easy, etc…

Update!

This original script I posted here didn’t work in general because the directives in the script were made to work only for 97×97 codes (what I found in my own certificate) but not all the QR codes are 97×97 bits. I have found that my daughter’s code is 93×93, and although my wife’s is 97×97 my phone’s QR code reader couldn’t scan it at all. The latter was an unrelated problem having to do with the resize operation I was using trying to do smoothing as it worked, leading to some pixels in the resize code being wrong.

But the script as posted above now works on 3 out of 3 certificates that it has been tested on.

Another press spotted in a movie

Last night I was watching Terry Gilliam’s 1995 movie 12 Monkeys and in one scene I noticed one of my presses in the background. Well, of course not actually my press, but the same model.

During the first scene inside the revolutionaries’ shop, in the background you can see a Challenge MA-15 (or perhaps a similar model) proof press, with its factory speckle-green paint job. I think it would have been a long slog using that to print their propaganda leaflets! Perhaps in the story background the location had been a print shop that closed down before this group decided to use it, and some of the printing equipment was still there, particularly the “obsolete” letterpress stuff that the print shop would not have been able to sell off.

Howard Iron Works (Virtual) Print Expo 2021

After skipping a year due to COVID-19, the Howard Iron Works Print Expo returns this year in virtual form.

They will have events and workshops live-streamed on the weekend of October 1st and 2nd, all hosted at the Howard Iron Works Printing Museum in Oakville, Ontario.

The events include:

  • A museum tour each day, hosted by Nick Howard
  • A letterpress workshop, hosted by Joe Borges
  • A bookbinding workshop, hosted by Stuart Hill
  • A relief printing workshop, hosted by Marvyn Rivett
  • A stone lithography workshop, hosted by Otis Tamasauskas & George Walker
  • A live-streamed interview between Roxana Spicer, Jeff Winch, and George Walker, regarding their upcoming film The Woodwriter, The Wordless Art of George A. Walker.

Everything is free but you must reserve your spot for each live stream.

For more details and to book your spot(s), please visit the museum’s website.

Updated Catalogue

We’ve just updated our catalogue. A few typos were fixed, but the main changes are that we are discontinuing our fax number, and there are a few price increases:

We have first cut cotton linters pulp in stock again, but the price has increased to $12.00 per kilogram. Second cut cotton linters pulp has also increased to $12.00/kg. Our usual quantity discounts still apply.

The conical stainless steel strainers have also increased in price to $60.00 for the small (8 inch) and $95.00 for the large (12 inch).

You can download our updated catalogue from the usual places: Our home page and the Getting Our Catalogue page. You may have to Refresh these in your browser to get the latest catalogue links.

Niagara Falls attractions—hits and misses

We just came home from an overnight trip to Niagara Falls. The Falls and river gorge are breathtaking sights in themselves, but you eventually tire of them and start looking for other activities. This weekend was also particularly hot, and there was a lot of walking, so the things we often found ourselves seeking were shade, air conditioning, and a place to sit.

In this vein the first thing I would recommend is getting a day pass for the WeGo bus ($9 for an adult good for 24 hours from first use). In addition to saving on a lot of walking this fulfills both the air conditioning and (usually) place-to-sit requirements. Just don’t wait too long to purchase your passes: we found that after 5pm the Niagara Parks kiosks closed, making it harder to find a place to purchase the passes. Apparently many of the hotels sell them, but we purchased ours at the Secret Garden Gift Shop just a little off the main drag. Parking is expensive ($10/hour, max $30/day, no in/out privileges at the lots run by Niagara Parks) so once you’re parked you want to make a full day of it. Other than walking and the bus you can also rent bicycles, scooters, and three-wheel vehicles from various places (but then you have to park these somewhere too!).

The main place for tourist attractions is Clifton Hill, a two-block-long road which runs from Victoria Avenue down to the Niagara Parkway, pretty much just opposite the American Falls. This street is very busy, and is packed with restaurants, hotels, and carnival-like attractions. Unfortunately, though not unexpectedly, we found that most of these attractions felt overpriced, if you consider the cost of admission and the amount of time it takes to visit. The restaurants also seemed expensive for just a quick meal; there was a Wendy’s but we had eaten Wendy’s on the trip down the day before.

We ended up finding places away from Clifton Hill to eat: Friday dinner at Phở Ginger in Niagara Falls on Victoria Avenue just half a block from Clifton Hill, Saturday breakfast at a regular Tim Horton’s at the corner of Murray and Stanley streets, Saturday lunch at Big Hungry Moose food court on the Niagara Parkway just on the north edge of town, and a cooling ice cream break at Reg’s Candy Kitchen along the Parkway under the Rainbow Bridge Canada Customs plaza, where Reg has been making fudge and other candies for decades (Reg, still there stirring his kettle of fudge, told us how long but I forget now).

The attractions that we went to (other than the Falls themselves, of course), generally in descending order by enjoyment and perceived value-for-money, were:

  • Bird Kingdom, a large indoor aviary (actually several separate aviaries, at least two of them are walk-in ones) with hundred of birds of various species. We all enjoyed this, plenty of birds to see and the large multi-level aviary is really nice. There was also a short section on the history of the building itself, but we rushed through this because we (and more relevantly, people behind us) just wanted to get to the birds!
  • Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Aud and Lily visited here while I spent the morning at the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum in nearby Queenston, and they both say it was interesting and worthwhile.
  • Niagara Speedway multi-level go-kart track, Lily’s first time driving anything other than a few minutes on our riding mower.
  • Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks: though interesting this pales in comparison with Madame Tussaud’s in New York both in size and quality. The figures looked fairly good but I found that some of them needed work in the hair department. For instance, Sean Connery in his James Bond persona has just plain and rather long combed hair rather than the shorter and slicked-over cut that he had in the movies.
  • mirror maze at Big Top Amazing Mirror and Laser Maze (not the similar Crystal Caves nor the mirror maze at Niagara Falls Funzone). This actually consists of two hexagon-pattern mirror mazes joined by a square-pattern curtain maze and some other joining features. The mirror mazes were accurately built (insofar as the apparent hallways created by the reflections remained straight off into the distance) and kept very clean (we were given gloves, partly for COVID purposes but also to keep the mirrors clean) but I found them to be disappointingly simple mazes. They would have been more challenging if they had contained some glass (non-mirrored) panels and some looped passages. Without such features you could easily tell you had entered a dead-end because you saw your own reflection in all directions except the one you came from.

There are combination passes for some of these which can save a bit of money, but you really have to know ahead of time what you might want to visit if you buy one of these. If you don’t use all the attractions the pass is good for you’re pretty much better off buying admission to the individual attractions.

One attraction that we did not visit but I think we should have is the Niagara Parks Power Station, one of the many hydro-electric generating stations in area, which no longer generates power but has just this summer been opened as a sort of museum. This plant was built in 1905 as the first major development of electrical generation on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, and still contains all of the now disused machinery. The building itself reflects the grand architectural style of the day and so adds to the interest.

This was one of the first attractions that we looked into, and unfortunately I balked at the admission cost ($20 per person), but now that I’m more familiar with what most of the other attractions cost, that doesn’t seem so expensive.

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 the area so I dropped in.

One item I saw there turned out to be a mould for duplicating a piece of type. This would be used by letterpress shops in a pinch when they are short a letter or two from a font, or need an extra copy of some dingbat.

The general idea is that the type to be duplicated is placed in the mould, then molten type metal is poured in to form a cast of the face of the type, which will act as a temporary matrix. The original type is removed, then the matrix is reinserted into the mould, and more molten type metal is added as one would cast type with a hand mould.

The quality of the duplicated type is not so great because there isn’t any pressure to force the molten metal into fine details—you can’t even do the “jerk” one does with a regular handmould to try to force the metal into the details. As a result thin strokes and fine serifs end up thinner than they should.

Despite the poor quality, it is better than no type at all. I would expect than once the shop is done with the forme and is dissing the type, these duplicates would immediately go to the hellbox rather than get mixed in with the good type.

The mould closed up around a piece of type, ready for casting the temporary matrix.

In this particular duplicating mould, two levers adjust to the height and width of the type, up to about 2 inches square, and a couple of screws can lock the mould to that setting. The unit is hinged to flip the mould to cast the actual copy of the type, and another handle operates a blade that cuts off the casting gate. The base has two holes to accept flat-head screws to attach it to a workbench; you could use it unmounted but attaching it to a bench would make the levers, especially the gate-cutter, easier to operate.

The mould flipped into its type-casting position. This shows the mouth where the metal would be poured and the lever and blade that cuts off the gate after the metal has hardened.

This mould has a bit of rust and a lot of dust so it needs a good cleaning and lubrication to make it workable again.

One aspect that I’m not sure about is what holds the temporary matrix from sliding out when the mould is inverted to cast the type. It is possible that the cavity where the matrix is cast has some groove or ledge that I didn’t see which would retain the matrix, or perhaps the handles and levers allow enough pressure to retain the matrix by friction alone. The fact that it does not have to withstand any significant pressure probably helps a lot.

This particular device only has a bit of labeling on it: “PATENTED made in germany [sic]” and “3288” (likely a serial number). If anyone has any more information on this particular device, please tell me and I can pass it on back to the Museum.

Update:

Patrick Goosens has pointed out that this is called a Typofix, and David MacMillan’s website has some information on it, including a somewhat messy scan of the instruction sheet. It is used pretty much as I surmised. There are apparently some sort of locating features to keep the matrix properly positioned. Both the type to be duplicated and the resulting matrix must be coated with soot so they come clean from the metal cast against them.

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