the Papertrail – Page 18

Typewriters at the Bound Book Arts Fair

Posted on 2018/12/11 by kpmartin Posted in BOUND Book Arts Fair, Kevin, Past Events — 2 Comments ↓

Last Sunday we had a sale table at the 2018 BOUND Book Arts Fair, and in addition to all the vendors there Martin Howard, a collector of antique typewriters, had some of his collection on display. Martin has a web site showing his collection, and he was featured in the recent documentary film California Typewriter.

Someone had asked me about casting some number signs so they could put hashtags in their letterpress work. I had mentioned this to another vendor at the fair (I think it was Nick Kennedy from Trip Print Press), and we mused on why this particular letter might have been chosen for its use in social media. It really has no mnemonic value, unlike @ which can be sensibly read as “at” within an e-mail address. I pointed out, essentially, that it was chosen “because it was there” on the computer keyboard, where its presence originates in older machinery like Teletypes and modern (so to speak) typewriters. We were curious about what special characters older typewriters might have had, and conveniently enough, we had a small selection to examine.

Some of Martin’s typewriters on display had @ and/or # on them, but when we came to look at this typewriter we noticed something interesting that even Martin had not noticed before. Read more ›

Tagged with: Martin Howard, typewriter

BOUND Book Arts Fair next weekend in Toronto!

Posted on 2018/12/01 by kpmartin Posted in BOUND Book Arts Fair, Past Events, Us — No Comments ↓

How time flies, 2018 is almost over! Next Sunday, December 9^th 2018, we’ll be at the BOUND Book Arts Fair, held at the Arts & Letters Club, 14 Elm Street in downtown Toronto. That’s just two short blocks north of the intersection of Yonge & Dundas, so if you’re taking the TTC subway, you want the Dundas station on line 1.

It looks like there will be almost 40 vendors there, selling prints, cards, handmade books, printed ephemera, and other things print-related. Space is tight for vendors and we’ll be focusing on our handmade and marbled papers, although we might have other things (such as bookbinding materials) not immediately on display, so when you see us, ask for what you’re looking for!

The show runs from 11am to 5pm, and admission is free.

New Drying System Size

Posted on 2018/10/22 by kpmartin Posted in Things we sell — 1 Comment ↓

Almost 30 years ago, when our drying system was first designed, the pulp we were getting from the pulp mills was in sheets around 27×36″ and the drying system was made to these dimensions so the pulp sheets could be used as blotters.

Each pulp mill seems to have its own size of pulp sheet and the mill that produced the 27×36″ sheets no longer processes cotton linters. We haven’t been able to purchase this size of pulp sheets for several years now, and we are getting close to running out of the 2^nd cut cotton linters of this size, even though we have been reserving them for use in drying systems only.

As of this writing we have about 30 cardboard sheets (plus about 20 with slight edge damage), and perhaps 120 sheets of linters in this size.

As a result, the time has come to change the size of our drying system to match the new pulp sheet size (and hope this doesn’t change again soon), which is about 30″ wide and 31″ long.

This is unfortunately too wide to fit existing drying boxes people may have made to use with the old size.

Other alternatives would be to go with 27×31″, which is the same width as the old system so there would be some degree of backwards compatibility, but this would mean we would have to cut 3″ off the width of all the pulp sheets we sell for drying systems. This would be time-consuming for us, and could potentially leave us with a glut of 2^nd cut cotton linters pulp in the form of strips that won’t work for the drying system.

So our choice of new drying system size is a little up in the air, even more so after the thought I put into writing this post…

Kitchener DIY Festival, October 19^th, 2018

Posted on 2018/10/19 by kpmartin Posted in Kitchener DIY Festival, Past Events, Sheet forming, Us — No Comments ↓

This is a really last-minute notice, but tomorrow, Saturday October 18th 2018, the Kitchener Public Library will be hosting their fourth annual DIY Festival. This will take place from 1pm to 4pm at the main downtown branch, 85 Queen Street North in Kitchener. Admission is free.

We’ll be demonstrating hand papermaking, so come by, make a sheet, and take home a sheet made by someone earlier in the day.

Yes! Another Press!

Posted on 2018/10/12 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Mystery Parts, Printing presses, Us — 2 Comments ↓

We recently acquired a Vandercook 320 in somewhat rough shape.

Serial number 6679. This says it is a “Number 320” although all the literature seems to refer to a “320G”

I plan on fixing it up and we will probably sell it because it is bigger than what we need (we think). Alternatively we might sell our Challenge MA-15 instead.

BOUND Book Arts Fair, December 9^th in Toronto

Posted on 2018/10/08 by kpmartin Posted in BOUND Book Arts Fair, Past Events, Us — No Comments ↓

The BOUND Book Arts Fair will celebrate its first anniversary on Sunday, December 9^th 2018 from 11am to 5pm, at the Arts & Letters Club, 14 Elm Street (near Yonge & Dundas) in Toronto. The fair will be bigger than the inaugural one last year because there will be a second room available at the Club, providing space for 26 vendors in all.

We’ll have a table at this fair, selling handmade paper, marbling, and a small selection of bookbinding supplies.

Howard Iron Works Print Expo & Fair

Posted on 2018/10/07 by kpmartin Posted in Howard Iron Works Print Expo & Fair, Past Events, Us — 2 Comments ↓

Last Saturday was the inaugural Howard Iron Works Print Expo & Fair, where we had a table selling our paper and second-hand books on topics relating to the book arts. The show was hosted by Howard Iron Works, a restorer and museum of old printing equipment affiliated with Howard Graphics.

The tables for the fair were set up in the workshop, which had just undergone two days of cleaning and was spotless. I guess we aren’t the only people who are motivated to clean by the threat of company coming!

Setup time in the workshop before the fair. Our table is the first on the right, just behind the green lathe. Photo by Liana Howard.

Audrey minding our table and her mug of tea

2018 ATF Conference Wrap-up

Posted on 2018/09/16 by kpmartin Posted in American Typecasting Fellowship, Kevin, Past Events, Type Casting — No Comments ↓

Sunday August 26^th was the wrap-up day for the conference. In the afternoon there was a barbecue and open house hosted by Patrick Reagh Printers in Sebastopol, about an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. Unfortunately my flight home departed early in the afternoon, so I had to pass on this event.

I spent the morning talking with various other attendees who were waiting in the hotel lobby for their respective rides, either a shared car to the barbecue or the hotel’s airport shuttle. There were originally plans for a shuttle van or bus to the BBQ but I think too many people had too many different departure times for this to be practical.

Packing was a bit tricky, since I had a package of type and a Monotype mould in its case, and also a stack of paper keepsakes to put in my suitcase. Fortunately the dirty laundry provided padding to separate these, and the only real casualty was the ATF “constitution” poster, which got a bit crumpled at the edges.

Just to tie everything together, here is a list of my posts about this conference trip: