the Papertrail – Page 34

Mulberry damage

Posted on 2014/09/15 by kpmartin Posted in Fauna, Fibre harvesting, Gardening — No Comments ↓

This weekend while mowing the lawn I found that several branches of my mulberry bush had bent flat onto the ground. Some still appeared healthy but others were wilted.

It would seem that some animal had eaten all the bark from the bottom few inches of these branches. The inner wood was enough, for a while, to keep the branches standing and alive, but eventually some fungus set in and weakened the wood. This, combined with stormy weather, bent the branches down to the ground. On many, the wood just bent, but on others—the wilted ones—the wood snapped.

I’m not sure which critter I should blame for this. The first that comes to mind would be a rabbit, although there seems to be plenty of food for them elsewhere.

The scene of the crime withe the broken branches cut and pulled aside.

The scene of the crime with the broken branches cut and pulled aside.

The damaged ends. The black is the normal darkening of the exposed inner bark, while the patches of white are early fungus growth.

The fallen branches have been cut off and I’ll store them to be processed for making paper along with the regular winter harvest.

Storage box for brasses and coppers

Posted on 2014/09/09 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin, Type Setting — No Comments ↓

In setting type for letterpress, very thin spaces are sometimes required to fill in a line to match the length of adjacent ones so that everything is held tight when locked into the chase. The spaces are known as brasses (about one point thick) and coppers (about half a point thick). They are cut to be the same height as low spaces and a width to match the body size of the type being set.

Generally they are only used for the occasional line whose length cannot be corrected by replacing existing spaces with slightly wider ones so not many are required. Trying to keep them in the type cases with the rest of the spacing tends to get them lost at the bottom of the compartment which they have to share with other spacing. Instead, we would like to keep them in a separate box which can be pulled out when necessary.

Up until now our thin spaces have been mixed in with the larger spaces in the type cases, or sitting unsorted and generally unusable in a cup. A few weeks ago we found some plastic storage cases in the clearance section at the Lee Valley store in London and bought three of each size. Each case has some fixed partitions and a supply of moveable dividers. With the dividers, the larger boxes can be (almost) divided into 18 compartments of pretty much the same size, which seems ideal for storing brasses and coppers in 9 different sizes. Here is the result, with some of the spacing already sorted from that cup:

I applied some white silicone cement to the bottom of each moveable partition so the spaces could not slip under them from one compartment to the next. The ends of the partitions are serrated to the spacing can’t slip through that way. The lid is labelled using a grease pencil (china marker). Unfortunately there is no site for a partition at center bottom because of the cover latch so the 30-point spacing is currently mixed brasses and coppers but I should be able to make a partition to fit.

Normally the box would stay flat, but in case someone feels the urge to tuck it under their arm to carry it, I’ll have to take measures to prevent the spaces from slipping between the partition tops and the cover. A thin layer of foam would do it, but that removes the appeal of being able to see the contents with the cover closed.

Things from the parts heap at Firefly Press

Posted on 2014/09/07 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin, Type Casting — No Comments ↓

These are a few of the things I scrounged from the parts heap at Firefly Press in Boston on the departure day from the recent ATF conference.

The first is a bit of an oddity. I’ve never seen it in any parts manual and I don’t know anyone who has ever seen one, but my comp caster uses it as part of its drive clutch:

The triangular frame is attached to and rotates with the driven countershaft. The brass slip ring does not rotate but is moved along the shaft by the operating lever. At each corner of the triangle there is a lever and roller which converts the linear motion of the slip ring into pressure on a friction clutch, causing the output gear to rotate with the shaft. The output gear in turn engages with a gear on the main shaft of the caster. This part was caked with dried grease but is now moderately clean, and I will keep it as a spare for my drive clutch.

Next is a set of expansion quoins:

There are one two-inch, two three-inch, and one four-inch quoin. The three larger ones are branded Morgan & Wilcox, but the smallest one shows no brand markings. They can expand from the nominal size to almost twice that either by pulling them open or rotating the central screw using a tommy bar. These have been cleaned, de-rusted, and oiled for their photo, and will be useful for locking up our Challenge proof press against a deadbar. I will have to think about whether they can be trusted for use in our Thompson Auto Platen press, and the chases on our other presses are small enough not to need these.

The other big find was some parts for doing lead and rule casting on the Monotype composition caster:

The contraption at the upper left of the photo clamps to the arm that normally drives the centering pin when type is being cast and instead opens and closes the side clamp on the lead & rule mould. This clamps tight against the end of the previously cast strip for casting then opens up a bit to allow the new section of strip to be pushed lengthwise before casting more. At the bottom of the photo is the micrometer wedge stand for strip casting which controls exactly how long a section of strip is cast at each cycle. This in turn fine-tunes the length of the cut strip material as this is always a multiple of the casting length. On the right is a special pump body (with piston) for lead and rule casting. Here is a view from the top comparing a regular pump (left) with the lead and rule pump (right):

The nozzle location is different to match the location of the nozzle cone hole on the lead and rule moulds.

The micrometer wedge stand has been cleaned and oiled, but the other two parts are still in as-received condition. I am still missing the linkage which uses the type carrier cam arm to drive the lead and rule mould blade, but I’m confident that I can make my own mechanism to do this. The only crucial factors are to get the right stroke length and an appropriate strength of spring box.

In addition to the above, I found plenty of lesser goodies, including a handful of dead nozzles that I plan to refinish to spec (or as close as I can get), some sorts composition mats, and odd parts for matcases.

I’d like to thank the folks at Firefly Press for letting the ATF’ers rummage through their parts.

Tagged with: Firefly Press

More Spring-Making

Posted on 2014/09/05 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin, Other people — No Comments ↓

Over the past few months, Jason Dewinetz at Greenboathouse Press has been working on getting his Supercaster running, but he was having trouble casting 14 point type from American-style display matrices. He was finding that he had to run his caster abnormally slow for the size of the type to get consistent alignment. Type cast at higher speeds, when proofed, looked like it was dancing along the base line.

There is one spring on the caster bridge which keeps the matrix holder positioned as it lifts to release a cast type and presses down again to seal the top of the mould cavity. Jason suspects that this spring is abnormally weak on his caster, allowing the matrix to clamp to the mould out of alignment.

He sent me this spare bridge from his caster so I could try to make some stronger springs to replace the original one. The spring in question is circled in the photo.

The knob on the right moves the plate in the middle of the photo right or left, moving the matrix and ultimately controlling the vertical alignment. The end of the lever on the left can be rotated to move the latch jaw up or down (in the photo, fore and aft on the actual caster) to control the horizontal alignment. The spring forces the jaw on the lever to press on the side of the matrix holder, keeping it tight against the plate.

I used a scale to measure the strength of this spring, and when the lever end is parallel to the plate, the jaw is placing about 7.5 pounds of force against the side of the matrix holder.

I removed and measured the spring, and set about to make a few springs that might be a bit stronger. Using thicker wire to make a spring will make it stiffer, but it also increases the fully-compressed length of the spring as well as the stress in the wire. If a compression spring is overstressed it will be permanently shortened. To reduce the stress, it is necessary to use more coils in the spring but this further increases the fully-compressed length. If this spring can’t compress enough, it may not be possible to open the lever enough to insert or remove the matrix holder.

After setting up the lathe for spring winding it was not too difficult to make several springs using different wire sizes and different coil counts, so I ultimately made 6 springs, which I colour-coded using paint markers for easy identification:

I measured the force at the latch jaw for each of these and found values varying between 12 and 25 pounds of force, but three of the springs prevent the latch from opening as far as it normally would and so might prevent insertion and removal of the matrix holder.

Using a stronger spring here might have some detrimental effects, for instance increasing the wear on the surfaces that slide as the matrix holder rises and drops on each casting cycle. I also have some suspicion that the cause of the misaligned type lies elsewhere since I see no reason for the matrix holder to move any way but straight up and down, but if a stronger spring here corrects the problem by counteracting any jitter, that might be the way to go. At least Jason can try out these springs to see if they make any difference, either correcting the problem, or demonstrating that the original spring is fine.

By the way, to the Supercaster experts out there, neither Jason nor I actually know what type of matrix holder this bridge is for. The shape of the latch jaw tooth is very rounded, as opposed the to gear-tooth shape of the one on the bridge for the American-style display matrices. So if anyone out there knows what type of matrix holder this is for, give me a shout!

Tagged with: Greenboathouse Press, Jason Dewinetz, Monotype Supercaster

Electroformed Matrix: the Reveal

Posted on 2014/09/04 by kpmartin Posted in Kevin, Matrix Making, Monotype Composition Caster — No Comments ↓

During a lull at the recent ATF conference, I took the opportunity to remove the matrix I had electroformed from its rubber mould and pass it around.

The original matrix, the defective rubber mould, and the new matrix still attached to its rubber mould.

The matrix copy appears to have excellent detail.

Unfortunately, the matrix copy is not flat. Its front surface is domed and when placed face-down it rocks back and forth. I had thought this might be caused by the force required to peel it off its mould, but a subsequent attempt to flatten it demonstrates that it is not flexible enough for that to have occurred. The matrix was well adhered to its mould, so it would appear that the rubber mould must have also been in a dished shape.

I’m not sure what caused this. One possibility is that the rubber swelled a bit from water absorption on its back surface, while the front surface, sealed by the copper plating, retained its dimensions. Another possibility is that the copper plated under tension, gradually warping the piece and pulling the rubber with it.

The next task is to trim off most of the metal flash, and try to flatten the face of the mat using brute force. Once it is flattened I will fill the rear cavity (molten zinc has been suggested for this purpose) and finish machining the back.

Another composition caster rule repaired

Posted on 2014/08/25 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin, Monotype Composition Caster, Other people — No Comments ↓

One of the items I picked up at the swap meet of the recent ATF conference was a brand-new-old-stock Rule Guide Pin (c39F1) for the Monotype Composition Caster.

This not only let me verify the dimensions I had from my first rule repair, but it also gave me the pin to repair another broken rule. At the conference Rich Hopkins had (at my prior request) provided me with a collection of broken rules to repair, and I also picked one up at Firefly Press. It turned out that most of the dimensions I had determined earlier were only a couple of thousandths of an inch off. The only one that was way off was the spacing between the holes, where I was off by about 0.022″ which explained why I had to do some filing to make my first repair fit.

To make my own rivets I put a plain nail in my lathe and carefully turned it down to just under 0.093″ to fit the holes in the pin and rule.

I made a guess at how long the rivets had to be, cut the tiny rod using wire cutters and turned the ends square and flat on the lathe. I drilled a 0.093″ hole in a ¼″-thick steel plate, inserted each rivet blank in turn and struck it with a hammer several times to form a rivet head. I assembled the guide pin, rule, and two rivets and peened the plain ends of the rivets to hold everything together.

I had to support the guide pin on the ¼″ plate because of the step between the pin proper and its head. I filed the rivets smooth so the type could exit the type channel without snagging on them, and the assembled rule was ready for a test fitting on my caster.

I had already straightened the rule a bit, but the test fitting revealed that the rule had a bit of a twist as well, which I corrected by twisting it the opposite way using pliers, and now it moved smoothly up and down on my caster.

This leaves me with three more rules to repair (some are going back to Rich). I now have the correct dimensions to make my own guide pins with integrated rivets. The only other hitch is that the remaining rules still have the head of the broken guide pin riveted in place. This has to be removed without damaging the rivet holes in the rule.

Tagged with: Firefly Press, Rich Hopkins

Back from the ATF conference

Posted on 2014/08/25 by kpmartin Posted in American Typecasting Fellowship, Conferences and Meet-ups, Kevin, Other people, Type Casting — No Comments ↓

The American Typecasting Fellowship conference was held this year in and around Salem NH from August 13th to the 17th, and I think it would be safe to say that a good time was had by all attending.

The conference was hosted this year by Frank Romano, who has a long background in printing, starting in the declining days of hot metal, through phototypesetting, and into the modern era of digital printing. Frank had never even attended an ATF conference, so he was a bit lost as to how some of the organization should be done. This led to a bit of confusion setting up the swap meet, but on the plus side, he provided us with fantastic meals.

Thursday was spent at the Museum of Printing in North Andover MA (of which Frank is the president), where we had a series of presentations and plenty of opportunity to view the museum’s collection of letterpress and hot metal equipment. Stan Nelson was showing off his hand moulds, as well as demonstrating their use. In the evening we had a barbecue on their front lawn, with burgers, sausages, salad, beans, and excellent corn-on-the-cob.

Barbecue on the lawn at the Museum of Printing

On Friday, we had the swap meet and auction. Amongst the vendors there were Letterpress Things with a long table filled with goodies and Skyline Type’s sampling of new type and ornaments. During a lull at this venue, I passed around the mat I had tried to electroform, and peeled it from its rubber master for the big reveal.

A stitched panorama of the swap meet

Saturday was spent at Frank Romano’s private library of printing-related books and artifacts. As on Thursday, the day was a mix of presentations and perusal of the collection.

Xxxx showing some of his Cherokee type casting items at the Romano Library.

Ed Rayher discussing his Cherokee type casting project at the Romano Library.

More of the Romano Library, with Sky Shipley looking though an old specimen book

On both the 13th and the 17th, John Kristenesen was hosting an open house at Firefly Press in Boston. There he has a Super Caster, Thompson, Composition Caster, and Linotype along with several presses and a heap of parts. Visitors from ATF were welcome to scrounge through some of the parts collection and matrix fonts for freebies.

At the conference I got some Monotype comp caster parts of interest to me, including a brand new Rule Guide Pin c39F1 at the swap meet, and at Firefly, some parts for the Lead & Rule attachment, particularly the Mould Blade Micrometer Wedge assembly (X51B), and the special pump body (Xu23H) required for the moulds used. I also found at Firefly four expanding quoins used to replace stacks of furniture in sparsely-filled chases and a part for the oddball clutch on my composition caster. More information on these goodies will follow once they have been cleaned up for their portraits.

Tagged with: Firefly Press, Frank Romano, Museum of Printing, Rich Hopkins

Our New Baby!

Posted on 2014/08/24 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Printing, Sigwalt Chicago No 11, Us — 2 Comments ↓

Through a Kijiji ad, we found that the Goodwill store in London ON had a small press for sale. We finally had to chance to go have a look at it (it helped that the London Lee Valley store was having a clearance sale), and we bought it:

Daaawwww! Isn’t it cute? It is a Sigwalt Chicago No. 11 press, with chase inside dimensions 2½×3⅞″—if it actually had a chase. It is also missing its form roller trucks, but other than that is is complete and appears to be in working order. The rollers themselves seem to be in good condition, and I can make trucks for them easily. I can also make a chase but that is a little more work. In particular, getting the lugs that hold the chase on the bed just right might be a bit fussy.

According to the manual I downloaded, this press originally cost $12.00 (year unknown), including some type, furniture, ink, bronzing powder and storage box.

When I have a chance I will take it apart to give it a good cleaning and oiling. If I feel ambitious I might even make a case for it so we can take it to shows easily.

That Goodwill store was unlike any I had ever seen before. Other than the gems like this press which they put aside to sell through Kijiji, they just have a large room with rows of large bins on wheels. Every few minutes they take all the bins in a row into the back room and bring out replacements. At that time it looks like a flock of vultures swooping in to pick all the good stuff. They sell everything by weight, and these people, who spend hours there, probably run second-hand or antique shops and they are looking for items they feel they can sell at a profit. I have to wonder if Goodwill is getting a fair share of the value of what they sell, but with the volume they go through, this seems like the only practical way to handle things.

Brake repairs on the car

Posted on 2014/08/10 by kpmartin Posted in Kevin, Vehicles — No Comments ↓

When I was younger I did a lot of the service myself on my old Valiant. This car was made when the early rounds of pollution controls were added so the engine was still relatively simple to service. After that, though, vehicles became more complex to service, and I had better things to do with my time so I migrated over to having a repair shop do most of the work. Finding a shop that I liked and trusted helped a lot too.

Lately, however, I’ve been finding that repairs are getting pretty expensive. Both my car and my truck are over ten years old, so they are getting to that stage where repairs can get a little more involved.

A few months ago the rear brakes on our car started to make a horrible scraping/screeching noise when applied. I had also been getting the ABS warning light showing occasionally. A quick inspection confirmed that new rear brake pads were required. I had already spent quite a bit on some other vehicle repairs, so I decided to replace the pads myself. For the benefit of anyone searching the internet for car repair tips, our car is a 2001 VW Golf GLS with 2L gasoline engine, produced for the Canadian market. I know of at least one part, the exhaust flex pipe, which seems to require the aftermarket part designated for 2002 models rather than that for 2001s.

I had no trouble removing the calipers to get at the pads, but this is the first time I had serviced rear disk brakes, which include the parking brake mechanism. In order to make room for the new thick pads, the pistons had to be retracted back into the caliper, but the parking brake mechanism meant that the they could not just be pushed straight back in. A special tool is required which not only pushes on the piston but also turns it, essentially screwing it back onto the parking brake actuator system. Fortunately these tools are readily available and soon I had everything reassembled with the brakes working nice and quiet again.

Over the ensuing months, the brakes developed a substantial pulsation. This was not a smooth pulsation, but a quite abrupt clunking as the wheel rotated (with accompanying pulsations felt at the pedal). We would be leaving on a long car trip soon, so I had to have another look at the brakes.

By jacking up first one rear wheel then the other, and gently applying the parking brake, I identified which side had the problem. It was the same side that had the metal-on-metal contact from a completely worn pad before I replaced the pads. I removed the wheel and the caliper, and this time I also removed the brake disk. The rear face of the disk had apparently developed a scale of corrosion before the pads were replaced, and now most of the scale had come off, leaving two patches of scale making the disk thicker in those places. The scale was perhaps half a millimetre thick. I chipped off the rest of the scale using the crude approach of banging on it with the head of the lug wrench. The rest of the scale came off pretty easily. I also use compressed air to blow out dust and metal filings from the ABS wheel speed sensor. With everything reassembled, we now get nice smooth stops again.

I was hoping that cleaning the speed sensor would get rid of the ABS warning light but it has not. I think I’ll have to fork out some money to get the local VW dealer to read the diagnostic codes from the ABS controller so I have a better idea what it is complaining about. One other thing I noticed while doing this second repair is that the rubber dust boot on the piston was torn, probably damaged during the piston retraction of the first repair. I suspect that before retracting the pistons I should have loosened and lubricated the groove where the boot engages in the piston so the boot would not twist along with the piston. I guess I should fix these before winter, but that work is more involved because the piston must be removed, which then entails bleeding the air out of the hydraulic system.

Monotype Galley Fence Repair

Posted on 2014/08/10 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin, Monotype Composition Caster — 1 Comment ↓

The Monotype caster has a part called a fence which separates the accumulating line of type from previous lines already pushed onto the galley. This fence has a guide pin at the rear end which fits into a hole in the right type channel block to keep the fence in position as it is raised and lowered as part of the sequence of motions that push a completed line of type onto the galley.

Normally this pin gets pretty light duty, but it can be broken if the matcase is improperly inserted into the caster and the ribbon calls for casting a matrix in the first (NI) column and one of the near-bottom rows (14 or 15). The matrix positioning mechanism will push the matcase into this pin, shearing it off and bending the rule. Generally the caster jams and stalls at that point, and getting it unjammed can be quite a job. Once things are unjammed, the fence can be replaced and you can get on with casting, this time with the matcase properly engaged in the positioning lugs.

The fence itself is generally springy enough to recover its straightness, unless too much force was applies while trying to unjam things. Even if it remains slightly bowed, it can be straightened. The problem is replacing the guide pin, a part not readily available. The stub of the broken pin will will remain on the end of the fence, held in place by two small rivets, whose heads have been ground down flush making them quite hard to spot. These rivets can be drilled out, preferably from the back side so only the broken stub of the pin and not the fence itself is damaged if the drill wanders off course a bit. The holes in the fence are tapered and drilling into them could lose most of the taper.

I had a broken fence at this stage, with the pin stub and rivets removed, which I found while helping Rich Hopkins clean out his shed a bit when I was visiting in May. I decided to repair it to see how much trouble it would be.

I made the replacement pin in a single piece, with a couple of projecting pegs instead of separate rivets. I started with a length of ¼″ square keystock, and used the lathe to turn the round pin, keeping some of the original square shape to form a head that would attach to the fence. I turned the pin off center in the keystock so all of the excess metal in the head would be on one side of the pin. I also used the lathe to cut both the pin and the head to the correct length. Then I clamped the part in the vise on my mill, and used a CNC milling program to cut away most of the excess metal on the head, leaving two pegs in the correct positions to match the rivet holes in the fence. A bit of a miscue on the height of the part meant that I also milled a thin shaving off the top of my milling vise.

As it turned out the pegs didn’t quite have the right spacing between them and would not both fit together into the holes on the fence. I used a small file on one of the pegs to reduce its diameter on one side until they fit into the fence and the head of the pin seated fully against the fence. Then I placed the end of the fence on an anvil and use the ball side of a ball-pein hammer to flatten down the pegs, forming rivet heads in the tapered holes of the fence. I filed the excess rivet heads off until they were flush with the surface of the fence, so that type would not snag or get damaged as it slides by this point on the fence.

Rear and front views of the repaired fence (above) and a used factory original (below).

Altogether the repair looks good and feels solid. Once I do this on a couple more fences I should have the peg spacing adjusted properly so no filing is required. Then I can make several of these pins available for other caster owners who need their fences mended.