the Papertrail – Page 33

Steamed Stems Results

Posted on 2014/11/16 by kpmartin Posted in Fibre harvesting, Past Events, Us — 2 Comments ↓

Yesterday, we held our Steaming Stems session with mixed results.

The weather was great: It was right around the freezing point, and the morning was bright and sunny. Later it clouded over but there were still a few sunny breaks. Light winds meant working outside would not be bone-chilling. This contrasts with Cleveland, where the Morgan Conservatory had to postpone their kozo harvest because of heavy snow over the past few days.

The first disappointment was that no one dropped in to visit. I guess there aren’t many paper makers close enough to us to make the trip. The fact that we’re terrible at publicity doesn’t help either…

Our first (small) problem was that our propane tanks both had a lump of sod frozen to their bases and would not stand upright.

I found this out early enough that by laying them on their sides in the sun, the sod was thawed and could be knocked off by the time I needed the propane.

Our cooking pot was made up of a large stainless steel stock pot with lid, a grille on legs to keep the stems out of the water, and an extension pipe to make the pot tall enough for the stems.

I had made the grille the same morning by welding together some scraps of expanded steel mesh and round steel rod.

The extension pipe is made from two sections of 6″ round heating duct joined lengthwise to make a 12″ tube. Because of the geometry of the locking seams I had to add a few pop rivets to hold it together. This turned out to be a perfect fit in the pot.

The harvesting and stem preparation was pretty straightforward:

I used long-handle pruners to cut the stems off the plants. The stem that has leaves on it had died in the fall because an animal had eaten all the bark around its base.

The cut stems from both plants, ready for cooking prep.

I'm using a smaller pair of pruners to trim all the side branches off the main stems. This will allow the stems to be bundles up to fit them in the steamer. Some of the larger side branches were also cooked. Normally, I try to reduce the number of side branches by removing suckers through the growing season, but this year they got away from me.

I’m using a smaller pair of pruners to trim all the side branches off the main stems. This will allow the stems to be bundled up to fit them in the steamer. Some of the larger side branches were also cooked.
Normally, I try to reduce the number of side branches by removing suckers through the growing season, but this year they got away from me.

Here's all of this year's harvest, including both the stems just cut and also the stems that died early in the year.

Here’s all of this year’s harvest, including both the stems just cut and also the stems that died earlier in the year.

We moved inside to cut the stems to a length that would fit the steaming pot.

The stems to steam, from four different years (L-R): 2014 (4.9kg green), 2013 (2.45kg dry), 2012 (1.25kg dry) and unknown previous year (1kg dry). As it turned out the last bundle was not used because it did not fit into the pot.

The cooking setup included a propane cooking ring with a shield to keep the wind away. The pot was filled with tap water up to the level of the grille.

I should have cut the stems a bit shorter. The extension pipe slid further into the cooking pot than I had expected, so the overall height of the pot was shorter than I had planned for. A bit of aluminum foil came to the rescue, though, making a cover that sealed well to keep the steam in.

We let the stems cook for a few hours, checking them occasionally to ensure the flame had not blown out and that there was enough water in the pot.

In the meantime we had lunch and did some yard work.

This is where things started to get a bit worrisome. Although the pot seemed to be cooking fine, with a steady stream of steam coming out from the edges of the foil lid, there did not seem to be much change in the appearance of the stems. After four hours of cooking the top ends of the stems did not appear substantially different than when they went in. Nevertheless I turned off the burner and took the bundles of stems into the workshop.

Once I had them in the shop and cut open the bundle, I tried peeling a few stems. They really didn’t seem to peel any easier than they did before cooking. You could start peeling a strip of bark, but the strip would become narrower and shallower (leaving the deeper bark layers on the stem) until it broke off.

The only places that seemed affected by the cooking were the very bottoms of the stems, where they might have been in, or at least splashed by, the boiling water.

Altogether, the whole effort appears to be an unqualified failure. I’m left to consider what might have gone wrong:

Mulberry and kozo are not the same plant; the chemicals that bind the bark to the stem are different enough that steaming loosens the bark on one and not the other.
Four hours is not enough steaming time.
Despite appearances, the steamer was not developing full heat inside. All the applied heat was being lost with steam condensing on the walls of the pot and the steam never displaced all the air out of the pot.
I need to cut the stems shorter, or modify the pot extension so it does not slide so far into the pot.

There isn’t much I could do about the first problem, except to replace my mulberry plants with true kozo. The observation about the bases of the stems being cooked suggests that I should try boiling the stems rather than steaming them. I will probably try cutting some of the stems shorter to fit the pot and boiling them in the next few weeks.

If the third issue is the problem, I could add some sort of insulation blanket to the sides of the pot. It would have to be a fireproof material because of exposure to the burner flames near the bottom. A welding blanket might do the trick. It retrospect, I have an infrared thermometer that I could have used to measure the side temperature of the pot to see if heat loss is a problem.

The 30th Annual OCADU Book Arts Fair

Posted on 2014/11/12 by kpmartin Posted in OCADU Book Arts Fair, Past Events, Us — No Comments ↓

On Saturday, November 29^th 2014, OCAD University’s Printmaking Department will hold its 30th annual Book Arts Fair in the Great Hall at 100 McCaul Street in downtown Toronto. The show is open from 10am to 5pm and the folks there will be showing and selling their wares, which include handmade books, paper, prints and small press publications. Admission is by pay-what-you-can donation ($5 is suggested).

As in the past 15 years or so, the Papertrail will have a table or two selling some of our bookbinding supplies, handmade paper, and marbled paper.

More photos and additional information are available at the Fair’s Facebook page.

A Busy Day on the Road

Posted on 2014/10/23 by kpmartin Posted in Bookbinding, Kevin, Letterpress, Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum, Other people, Type Casting — No Comments ↓

I spent last Thursday traveling around the Niagara area and south of Hamilton, doing various book arts things.

My first stop was the Annual General Meeting of the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum in Queenston. This group has been having some organizational problems for the past few years, but it looks like they may have found their way out of the woods again and the outlook at the meeting seemed positive. There were only about a dozen people there, and all but myself and one other person seemed to be board members, making for a slightly odd atmosphere. One would hope that at a general meeting, the regular members would outnumber the board!

At the end of the meeting several more people arrived for a dedication ceremony. Don Black has donated a couple of pieces of equipment to the museum: a Ludlow cabinet filled with No.11 (Goudy) matrices, and a Pilot tabletop press. These were dedicated to the memory of Donn Purdy and Bill Poole, both of whom were important in keeping letterpress alive as a craft in the area. In addition to Don, Ruth, and Craig Black, there were relatives of Donn and Bill (whose names I have unfortunately forgotten), plus various other letterpress folks from the Toronto and Niagara area including Nicholas Kennedy (Trip Print Press) and Gordon Sisler.

After the ceremony, everyone hung around to chat for a while and look at the collection. I had not been to the museum for about ten years, and I found that there seemed to be a lot more equipment than on my last visit, especially in the basement.

My next stop, after gas for the car and lunch for myself, was Van Huizen Bookbinding in Saint Catharine’s, to replenish our stock of bookcloth. Tony was a bit busy that afternoon so I didn’t have much time to talk, but I bought a few metres of over a dozen colours of bookcloth. We still have to get these unl0aded from the car, organize them onto our own shelves and refresh our sample sheets.

My third stop was to pick up some stereotype mats I found on Kijiji, but the evening before I had forgot to finalize the place and time to meet the seller. All I knew was that it was in the area of Caledonia (southwest of Hamilton) and I probably had some e-mail with the proper location. Unfortunately I had failed to bring along sufficient electronica (as Audrey calls it). I had the (dumb) cell phone and our laptop with its power brick (its battery is dead), but for some reason the GPS wasn’t in the car. Many of the coffee shops and fast food restaurants offer free Wi-Fi, but it turns out that most of them don’t provide any power outlets, making the laptop useless. I tried calling Audrey on the cell phone but there was no answer. So I headed out purely based on my memory of the area, and eventually I stopped for tea at the Tim Hortons in Cayuga and behold! Outlets at some of the tables! I went online for a map and found I was quite close to my destination, and that I had an e-mail from the seller giving directions. It turned out that Cayuga was actually the closest town to his location.

I drove to this guy’s farm, where he had one barn converted to a workshop. Most of it was filled with mothballed machine tools, but it also contained some letterpress equipment for his adult son to use until he can afford some work space in Toronto. While I was there his son was working on cleaning up a Heidelberg Windmill. He showed me around and we chatted for a while, then I went though his stereo mats and picked out some that I found particularly interesting. I didn’t have enough cash, so I drove back to Cayuga in a sudden downpour, found an ATM and back to the farm to pick up and pay for the mats.

In case anyone is interested, he still has a gas-fired stereotype caster for sale. In the shop this came from he says there is also a Miehle flatbed cylinder press, which he estimates to weigh about 4 tons.

On the way home I managed to muddle my way through the rain and dark to Brantford, where I ate dinner. Once I found Highway 24 I was in familiar territory and headed home. Next time I’ll be sure I have the GPS!

Steaming Mulberry Stems

Posted on 2014/10/14 by kpmartin Posted in Branson Banana Bash, Fibre harvesting, Gardening, Our own courses and workshops, Past Events, Us — 2 Comments ↓

It seems that last year’s intent to steam the bark off our mulberry stems for making paper did not amount to any action. There are some things that just don’t happen if all you plan is to do it when you get around to it.

So this year, I’ve chosen Saturday, November 15th, as the day we’ll be processing this year’s crop along with any stems we can find in storage from previous years. No excuses this time!

Anyone who is interested is invited to drop by to see, or even help with, this process.

The proposed schedule is as follows:

10am: Start setup. Harvest this year’s crop of stems and gather previous year’s stems from storage
11am: Get steamer up to heat while preparing the stems for steaming
noon: Steaming should be started by now, so lunch break
1pm: Start stripping and cleaning the bark. I expect the fresh stems will be ready for stripping first
5pm: Done cleanup

You’ll notice a lot of time between starting the stripping and finishing the cleanup. If we have a good crowd this should give plenty of time for talking about paper making, marbling, letterpress, or anything else that strikes our fancy.

That schedule is pretty flexible and is expected to drift a bit depending on weather and how much talking we do. The harvesting and steaming will be outside but the rest of the activities will be in our shop, out of the November chill.

The last time I did something like this was at the original Branson Banana Bash in November 2009. Then we were harvesting and steaming Mimi Aumann’s kozo stems. Things will be a bit different this time since we are using mulberry plants which, although related to kozo, are definitely a distinct species. This will be a bit of an experiment to see how mulberry behaves, and also how stored stems from previous years work.

We will have some light refreshments and snacks so if you think you might attend, e-mail or phone us (519-884-7123) so we know how much provisions we need. But even if you can’t call ahead, drop by anyway!

The local Maker Club

Posted on 2014/10/09 by kpmartin Posted in Kevin, Lily, Personal — No Comments ↓

Aside from my peripheral involvement at KwartzLab, I have also recently been going to meetings of the local Maker Club with Lily. These meetings are held regularly at THEMUSEUM in downtown Kitchener on the second Wednesday of each month, but there was also a special project meeting last weekend.

The regular meeting last night had a hallowe’en theme, of course. The kids made “spiders” by stitching two cloth gloves together with stuffing inside and decorations outside. We kept the thumbs on our gloves, so Lily’s spider has mouth parts as well. There was also a second project, to make a mask from cutout card stock. The standard pattern was a bit large for Lily and I had to spend some time adjusting the shapes so we only had time to get partway through that one.

On the weekend, we made a simple gumball dispenser from pine boards and a canning jar. The kids got to use (with the help of a parent) power tools including a scroll saw, belt sander, drill, hole saws, and a power screwdriver. To dispense the gum, just give the disc a full turn and the gum will fall out of the hole. Everything was decorated with acrylic paint, except the disk where markers were used instead to avoid jamming the insides with paint.

Over the weekend, 41 gumball machines were made during four crafting sessions.

Refurbishing the Sigwalt Press

Posted on 2014/10/02 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin, Sigwalt Chicago No 11 — 2 Comments ↓

The Sigwalt press we recently bought was dirty, the paint was chipped and worn thin in places, and there were a few spots of rust as well. It also had no roller trucks and the gripper spring was bent out of shape.

The roller trucks were easy to make on the lathe from round steel stock. They are ¾″ diameter (to match the rollers) and have a ¼″ centre hole. They are just a little under ½″ thick, to use up the space between the saddles and the ends of the covering.

Rather than just clean this press superficially, I took it (almost) completely apart and refinished it. There was no fancy detailing to worry about covering or duplicating so it was just a matter of cleaning and painting the parts. Disassembly was fairly easy: most of the parts are held together by ¼″ rods which can be easily tapped out with a small hammer and pin punch. All but one of the rods have a chisel gash near one end; the burr gives the rod enough grip in its hole to keep it in place when the press is used. One exception is the gripper rod, which is held captive by the gripper cam being trapped between two bumps on the platen frame. A pin holds the gripper cam to its rod.

There were also four retainer rings to remove. These were just heavy wire formed into a small hoop which is crimped into a groove on the rod. I used a screwdriver to pry them open enough to slide them off the end of their shafts.

This press uses a rubber disc to provide some tension to hold the bed in place against the impression screws. The old disc was hard as rock, but I found a rubber bumper that was ⅜″ thick and 1″ diameter to replace it.

Everything except the grippers (which are brass) and the two nickel-plated parts went into a degreasing bath, following by a rust-removing bath. There were two small casting flaws which had been filled (probably at the factory) but the filler came off as I cleaned the parts. I refilled these with some “steel” epoxy putty. I blended some gloss black rust paint with a bit of matte to cut the shine a little, and repainted all the cast parts. That got me to this stage, pretty much ready for reassembly.

Pretty much ready to reassemble. What’s not disassembled? The newly-made trucks are on the form rollers, the pin that drives the form roller yoke is still in place, and so is the pawl that rotates the ink plate, along with its pin and spring. The gripper spring (just below the left end of the form rollers) still needs to be bent back into shape.

Once the spring was re-shaped, everything was ready to reassemble. The first time I put in the gripper pawl and shaft I had forgotten the grippers themselves, so I had to take that apart a bit to get the grippers on. Other than that, things went together as easily as they came apart. One of the rods wasn’t holding in place well enough, so I struck its gash again with a chisel to raise the burr a bit. The retaining rings could easily be crimped back into place by squeezing them with pliers.

With everything together and well oiled, but still no chase, here’s the result.

I will be making a chase from some ⅜×⅝″ cold-rolled steel. The little wedges on the sides which catch on bumps inside the rails on either side of the bed will probably have to be hand-tuned to hold the chase in the right position on the bed.

One of my new Monotype books

Posted on 2014/09/24 by kpmartin Posted in Composition Caster, Kevin, Other people — 1 Comment ↓

One of the books I recently acquired from Don Black has the rather bland title Function and Operation of the 15-17 Casting Machine but after reading this book, I see how the subtitles reveal its true importance: Including Supplementary Equipment and A Supplement to “Casting Machine Adjustments” Published 1930.

As the subtitles suggest, this book, published in April of 1959, covers more than just the 15×17 matcase and adds to the 1930 Casting Machine Adjustments information on equipment added since that date. It describes how the equipment operates and provides adjustment instructions, using references where available to plates in the 1955 Plate Book—’Monotype’ Typesetting Machine—the Composition Type-Caster. The topics covered include:

the 15×17 matcase
quadding and centering
Patton spacing attachment, which uses the J+H air combination rather than special low-quad matrices to cast low quads.
Varidrive with Rockford clutch

I think that anyone who has an American composition caster and a copy of Casting Machine Adjustments should also have a copy of this book. Because I feel this document is so important, I have scanned it and posted it as a PDF file with searchable text. I have not had a chance to review and correct the searchable text yet.

Lanston did not spend much on the production of this book. The body text looks somewhat like it was typewritten except that it uses a variable-pitch typeface. The paper is plain flat white, and the cover is an instant blotter for grease and fades easily. It does not have the durability of either Casting Machine Adjustments or Plate Book; that and the understated title explain the relative rarity of this book.

I have two copies: one in excellent condition, and the other with fading on the cover. Considering the good condition, large type, and lack of added notes, the relatively coarse 300dpi scans I used were more than sufficient for preserving and disseminating the information from this book.

Tagged with: Don Black

Papertrail at Heart and Hand Festival 2014

Posted on 2014/09/20 by kpmartin Posted in Heart & Hand Festival, Marbling, Past Events, Us — No Comments ↓

Next Saturday, September 27^th from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Joseph Schneider Haus in Kitchener will be holding its annual Heart and Hand Festival as part of Culture Days.

This event will be part indoors and part outdoors, and will go on rain or shine. It features artisans and craftspeople displaying and often working on projects that hearken to the days before automation and mechanized manufacturing. Previous years have featured various trades including blacksmith, luthier, fletcher, potter, and printer, as well as home crafts like needlework and egg decorating.

As in previous years, we will be there demonstrating paper marbling, and we will have marbled paper available for sale.

Quick Roller Diameter Gauge

Posted on 2014/09/20 by kpmartin Posted in Challenge MA15 Proof Press, Kevin, Printing, Useful gadgets and ideas — 1 Comment ↓

In letterpress printing it is often necessary to check the diameter of various rollers in the press. In general the rollers that transfer ink eventually to the forme have to be of a consistent diameter so that the ink is spread evenly. In many cases the rollers must be of a specific diameter to match gearing or roller trucks as well.

One often uses calipers to measure the diameter of the rollers, although there are a couple of drawbacks to these. One is that not everyone has them handy when they want to measure a roller. The other is that, especially with softer rollers, there is some skill involved in measuring the true diameter without compressing the roller and getting a low reading.

I’ve made up a ruler that you can print on something flexible like paper, Tyvek, or overhead transparency. Once you cut it out, you can wrap it around the roller and it directly reads the diameter in inches or centimetres. This is available as two PDF files, one that fits on a 8½×11″ (letter) or A4 sheet and measures rollers up to 3″ or 7.5cm, and the other that fits on a 8½×14″ (legal) sheet and measures rollers up to 4″ or 10cm.

To use these, print one out with no scaling as it is critical that the printout be of the exact size. There are a couple of dark green reference distances that you can measure the ensure that the size is correct. Cut out the outer outline of the ruler.

The ruler is used by wrapping it around the roller, and there are two ways of cutting its head to help align the overlapped section. There is a red line that can be cut as a slit to pass the end through (this only really works with transparent material so the scale can be read properly), or you can cut the two short green lines and fold up on the purple lines to form a pair of guide tabs.

The short ruler cut out with the nicks and folded-up guide tabs.

To use the ruler, wrap it around the roller you want to measure. If you cut the red slit, pass the free end of the ruler up through the slit so it lays on top of the head at the zero marks. If you have the guide tabs, just drop the free end between the tabs and wrap it a little further. Ensure that the ruler is wrapped straight around the roller and not at an angle, and pull it snug. If it is wrapped straight, the free end should line up with the first wrap along its entire length.

You can read the diameter directly at the zero position by estimating the fractional distance between the black lines. For a more precise measurement, look for the blue line that lines up best with one (any) of the black lines on the free end. Add the distance marked on the blue line to the direct measurement at zero position (without estimating between lines). As with any vernier, you should do both the estimated measurement and the vernier one so you aren’t off by a whole graduation.

Measuring near the centre of one of the form rollers on my Challenge MA-15. This shows how to do both the direct estimated reading and also the vernier measurement. In this case, the two measurements, 2.492″ and 63.25mm, differ by one tenth of a percent.

The rollers on my Challenge press flare out at the ends, so I took two more measurements: one about an inch from the end and one right at the end. The latter was more difficult to do because the taper in the roller was fighting my effort to hold the ruler snug and straight. The metric reading here would be quite suspect because that edge of the ruler is slack.

An inch from the end, the roller is up to 2.51″ diameter

At the very end, the roller is up to 2.532″ diameter, about 3 points larger than near the centre.

How accurate is this? Most modern printers turn out to be fairly accurate at their scaling, and any printing errors can be caught using the check distance. I checked one on a metal cylinder, which I also measured with a micrometer, and found that the diameter was high by about the thickness of the paper strip, a systematic error that one might expect to see.

Paper can change size a bit with humidity changes, so you should use this ruler in the same conditions as when it was printed. If your paper has been in a very humid environment, the printed sheet may come out short when laser printed because the fuser in the printer heats the paper and dries it, causing it to shrink a bit. Returning it to its humid environment should expand it to its proper size. Tyvek and overheads are not susceptible to this, but with Tyvek the only printing form that really works is inkjet printing with non-water-based inks.

Another possible source of error would be stretching. Temporary stretching while snugging the ruler around the roller is probably not an issue, since little tension is applied. A greater concern might be permanent stretching which can happen any time the ruler is handled so you shouldn’t leave it lying around where you can absentmindedly play with it while talking on the phone.

New (to me) Monotype documents

Posted on 2014/09/16 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin, Other people, Type Casting — 3 Comments ↓

Late last week I picked up a pile of Monotype manuals and other publications from Don Black. These were generally duplicates to ones he already has.

Many of these documents are ones I already have as well, although some are in better condition that my current copy. A stack of Monotype Recorder and Monotype Technical Bulletins fill many of the gaps in my own collection. A couple of the new documents were real gems too.

Stapled books in 8 1/2×11 format. The green one in the upper left was particularly interesting to me.

Stapled books in 8½×11 format. The dark blue one at bottom center was particularly interesting to me.

Books in 5×7 format or thereabouts.

Multiple copies of various parts books such as Lanston’s 1955 Plate Book and other manuals.

Two or three specimen books, plus a stack of periodicals. The metal-backed binding holds an extensive specimen set of specials such as braces, figures, symbols, and borders.

The dark blue book in the first photo, entitled Function and Operation of the 15-17 Casting Machine is also subtitled A Supplement to “Casting Machine Adjustments” Published 1930 and covers topics other than just the 15×17 matcase.

It also describes the ribbon-driven low-quad control used on American casters. This is recognized by the presence of a pneumatic control box on the caster table, near the middle of the rear edge next to the specialized lower jaw tongs bellcrank, and is illustrated on pages 70 and 71 of the 1955 Plate Book. In this description it is called the Patton Spacing attachment, named after its developer Wade Hampton Patton, who began working for Lanston in 1946. There is a good description of its operation, where it uses the J+H combination punch to signal the mould and force a low quad. There is no direct equivalent for English casters, but it appears to me that it can be accomplished using the Duplex Mould/Dual Type valving with a standard mould installed. In this case the combination punch N+0.0075 (or perhaps its absence) would signal the mould for a low quad.

The other gem in this book is the description of what they call the Rockford Clutch drive system, named after the company which produced the actual clutch part. This is the drive system on my caster, which up until now I have seen nowhere else! The standard drive engagement system shifts a flat drive belt from a loose pulley to one that is fast on the caster’s drive shaft. The Rockford mechanism instead uses a friction clutch activated by axial pressure on a countershaft.

Other books that will be useful to me include the ones concerning lead and rule casting. These include Directions for Changing from Type Casting to Lead & Rule Casting and a very rough but still legible detailed description of the actual mould and its parts and maintenance.

‘Monotype’ Attachments, Accessories, and Moulds’ is useful in giving some correspondence between serial numbers and features for the English casters.

It will take a while, but once I have these integrated into my library I should have a list of spares if anyone else is interested in any of them.