the Papertrail – Page 37

It’s Not Dead Yet!

Posted on 2014/05/11 by kpmartin Posted in Fibre harvesting, Kevin, Past Events — No Comments ↓

This post was written on January 31st, but for some reason I forgot to actually publish it!

This year’s mulberry branch harvest has been sitting in a bucket of water to keep it fresh, but it has also been sitting at room temperature.

Clearly it doesn’t want to be made into paper! I will take the top parts of a few of the strongest-growing branches and put them in pots to try to get them to root, so I can increase the number of plants I have and hopefully get larger harvests in future years.

The rest of the branches will be set outside to stop any further growth. If I ever want to get this (and previous years’ crops) processed, I think I’ll just have to pick a date in advance and stick to it. If I do that I can also invite everyone to drop in if they want to see the process.

Adventures in Matrix Copying

Posted on 2014/05/10 by kpmartin Posted in Kevin, Matrix Making, Monotype Composition Caster — No Comments ↓

One thing I have wanted to try for a while was the duplication of a Lanston Monotype display matrix. It it probably not worth the trouble to copy an entire font of mats, but it would be useful for replacing the odd missing mat, assuming you can borrow the mat to be copied.

The idea is to use some sort of mould-making compound to take a cast of the original mat, then to electroform copper onto that cast.

The first step it to make this cast.

I purchased this molding rubber from a jeweler’s supply store (Lacy & Co.) in Toronto a couple of years ago for this purpose, then the project was shelved for lack of time. On review, the instructions turn out to be almost paranoid about avoiding the introduction of any moisture into the liquid resin, including directions not to use wooden stirring tools because of the moisture they could contain. They also seemed to imply that I had stored the compound beyond its shelf life (again, due to moisture leaking into the containers). Despite this I found that the product was still fine for use and produced good casts. It probably helped that this was stored in my basement, which has a very stable temperature and is reasonably dry.

As a container for making the cast, I built a small form out of rigid HDPE (polyethylene). The base is ¾″ thick (scraps from making our moulds and deckles) and the sides are strips of ⅜″ thick plastic (scraps from making the ribs for our ribbed moulds). The cavity is 1¼×1⅝″ which will give a ¼″ margin all around the matrix.

The form is held together with countersunk #10-32 machine screws leaving a flat top surface. I assembled the pieces with silicone cement in all the joints so there would be no leakage. I had never used this molding compound before and was unsure as to how runny it would be. The photo was taken before the excess silicone cement was cleaned off.

A smear of the silicone cement was also used to hold the mat in position, face-up, in the center of the cavity.

The instructions insist on measuring out the two components by weight, so using the measurements of the cavity and the information on the sheet I calculated that I should start with about 27g of part B (the large jar) and one tenth of that amount of part A. Part B had settled a bit and needed stirring. I measured out the correct amounts, mixed them, and filled the cavity. The mixed resin started out about as thick as pancake syrup but gradually thickened, and was pink like calamine lotion.

I used another piece of ¾″ HDPE to slide onto the top of the cavity and a weight to hold it down so my finished cast would have a flat back.

I allowed the resin to set for 24 hours (it can be set in as little as 90 minutes by warming it up).

When I removed the top plate this is what I found. A thin layer of resin had worked its way between the top plate and the sides leaving a flap that could easily be torn off. The excess resin at the bottom had to be cut off. I had positioned the top plate not completely cover the cavity so the excess could run back in if there was any shrinkage. After this first test I don’t think this precaution is required as there is no evidence of shrinkage.

After removing the cavity sides, the casting peeled off fairly easily and came cleanly off the mat (pulling a lot of dirt off it in the process).

This is the casting with most of the edges cleaned up. A bit of resin had leaked under the mat leaving that thin flap visible along the top edge.

The mould was rubbery and fairly soft, softer that a pencil eraser. By having a flat back, though, I could arrange that the mould was not distorted during the electroforming step.

The mould unfortunately contained a flaw caused by an air bubble. The two bubble cavities on the edge of the mat are a minor nuisance as the metal formed there could be filed off the mat. The real problem was the bubble at the lower end of the first ‘f’:

This flaw would be pretty much impossible to repair. In my next post I will show the results of a second attempt at making the mould.

Another Wayzgoose is History

Posted on 2014/04/28 by kpmartin Posted in Composition Casting, Grimsby Wayzgoose, Printing, Type Setting, Us — No Comments ↓

Last Saturday the 36^th annual Wayzgoose was held at the Grimsby Public Library and Art Gallery in Grimsby, Ontario. We were fortunate to have our sale table right next to the front door so we didn’t miss any visitors. Lily also made a new friend when the daughter of the folks at the next table showed up. Although our sales were only average this year, we had a great time seeing many of our friends in the book arts field, both those also selling at the fair and also those just visiting.

As promised earlier, here is a readable image of our submission for the Anthology:

It was also my birthday, and Audrey arranged to have a cake there waiting for the after-fair dinner:

Yes, as appropriate for a printers’ fair, the writing on the cake board is wrong-reading. I am impressed that the bakery understood the directions properly, since they were only given over the phone!

A Quiet Month

Posted on 2014/04/23 by kpmartin Posted in About this blog — No Comments ↓

I haven’t posted much this month as I’ve been too busy to spare the time for book arts work. Between preparing income tax returns (due in a week or so here and not yet completed), the Easter long weekend, spring garden cleanup, and getting ready for Wayzgoose this weekend, there has been just no time to work on anything in the shop.

Also, having reached my goal of a successful run of the composition caster, leaving me in a bit of a lull for things to do that are worth mentioning on the blog. I have several projects in mind, including trying to engrave a display mat using my mill and trying some setups for electroforming mats.

I have purchased a large lot of Monotype display matrices in the recent auction of the collection of the late Mike Anderson. Shipping them is pretty expensive because of the weight so I plan on picking them up in person, but I haven’t had time to do that yet. I will also have to purchase more boxes to store them in.

A New Pin Wrench

Posted on 2014/04/03 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin, Monotype Composition Caster — No Comments ↓

When I was fixing my Monotype caster to do some composition casting a few months ago, I broke the small pin wrench that I use for turning some of the adjustments on the caster. The wrench seemed to be too brittle because I was applying very little force to it when it broke, and the broken surface had the appearance of a brittle failure.

Rather than tracking down a replacement, which might have the same brittleness problem, I made my own.

I started with some ⅜″ round low carbon steel rod mounted in my lathe between a three-jaw chuck and a live center, cut off a skim layer to reveal clean metal, and used my knurling tool to form a grip area on the center of the blank. This process applies a lot of lateral pressure to the part, which is why I had a center supporting its right end.

Once the knurling was complete, I turned the end area of the work down just enough to remove the rough end of the knurling, then cut a freehand taper down to the desired tip diameter (0.100″). I smoothed off the taper and transition to the cylindrical sections with a file and used fine sandpaper to polish it up a bit. I stopped the lathe, cut off the end with a hacksaw leaving the right amount of tip length behind, and used the file and sandpaper to finish the tip.

I mounted the work in the lathe the opposite way, and did similar shaping on the other end, except that I did not cut off the tip.

This end should be angled a bit so the wrench can reach places where the pin hole is facing a tight place. I use an oxyacetylene torch to heat the metal partway up the taper so I could bend it without the tip itself bending. Once that was done I again used a hacksaw to cut off the end and a file and sandpaper to finish it. I soaked the wrench in Evap-O-Rust for a day or two to remove the oxidation from the torch work, cleaned it up with a brass brush and oiled it a bit to prevent rust.

This shows the finished wrench above the broken one. Dotted lines mark the missing pieces of the broken wrench. When I was using the torch to heat the metal for bending, I applied it a bit too concentrated and actually melted the metal a bit, leaving some small craters (arrows).

If I wanted to copy the wrench more closely, I should start with 5/16″ round rod, and get a pair of diamond knurling wheels for the knurling tool. The replacement is a bit bulkier, but for its main purpose when running the caster, adjusting the quad size (width of the type body) it works just fine! Because it is low-carbon steel I expect that if I abuse it by trying to apply too much torque with it, the tip will bend rather than snapping off.

Rubber feet for the Challenge Proof Press

Posted on 2014/03/23 by kpmartin Posted in Challenge MA15 Proof Press, Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin — No Comments ↓

Proof presses are subjected to a lot of sideways forces when used, caused by the carriage hitting its stops at either end of its stroke. These can be reduced by slowing down near the end of the stroke, but there are times when you’re in a hurry or just plain forget and the carriage hits its bumper springs with enough force to move the whole press along the floor a bit. After a while you may find that the press has moved halfway across the room!

To avoid this, you can place rubber pads under the legs of the press, and I believe this is actually recommended in the manual for the press. I added some pads to my proof press today. I used rubber floor matting ¼″ thick cut to 3½×7″ which is ½″ larger than the feet of the press in both directions. I cut two pieces for each foot (eight pieces in all) and used a spray contact adhesive to glue them back-to-back in pairs.

I jacked the press up with the pallet truck, sprayed more of the adhesive in the center of one surface of each pad, positioned them under the feet of the press and lowered the press onto them. They have a very trim appearance, showing ¼” of exposure all around each foot.

In addition to preventing the press from sliding on the floor, they also provide a little give in places where the floor is not quite flat, so the press is less likely to wobble on two opposite legs.

Putting a back on the Challenge Proof Press

Posted on 2014/03/23 by kpmartin Posted in Challenge MA15 Proof Press, Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin — No Comments ↓

When I got this press earlier this year, I printed off a nice copy of the instructions. Challenge Machinery still exists, and their web site is quite useful in that they seem to be trying their best to have manuals for their older products available there.

One thing I had noticed when looking at the parts diagrams is that there should be a back on the press, joining the two pedestal legs. The back not only closes off the shelf area under the press, but it also adds structural stiffening to its base. In its current condition, the press has a noticeable shake when the carriage reaches either end of its stroke with any speed faster than a crawl.

The Vandercook SP-15, of which this is a clone, has a cabinet base that is a single welded structure and so is quite rigid. The pedestal legs on the Challenge are nowhere near as stable.

Today I finished replacing the back on this press.

I started with a piece of 16 gauge steel sheet, cut to size by the supplier. I marked two of the screw holes by direct measurement and layout, drilled them, and used them to attach the back temporarily. Then I used a small felt-tip marker to mark the remaining holes from the front side of the press and drilled them as well.

This is the back screwed in place for a test fit. I had to enlarge a couple of the holes to get their screws in.

I removed the back again and painted both sides. I decided to skip trying to match the stippled green finish of the press and went for boring gray. There is also something to be said for using the paint I already have on hand. Once the paint was dry I reinstalled it and gave the carriage a few test runs. Things now seem a lot more rigid at the end of the carriage stroke.

Last week’s time suck

Posted on 2014/03/18 by kpmartin Posted in C&P Old Style 7×11, Grimsby Wayzgoose, Kevin, Printing, Type Casting, Type Setting — 1 Comment ↓

Last week was March Break, and Audrey and Lily flew to Calgary to visit Granny. I took the opportunity to do a few home improvement projects (replacing a bathroom sink, putting up a knife holder in the kitchen, and installing some under-cabinet lights).

I also spent what seemed to be an inordinate amount of time getting my contribution ready for the Grimsby Wayzgoose Anthology. The work was a single sheet that combined laser printing and letterpress. It took me two tries to get the laser printing (photocopying, actually) to come out straight on the sheet. It seems that the copier I was using was not quite able to feed the special paper straight so each new generation of copy was canted a bit more.

As for the letterpress work, I first tried setting it in the Binny Old Style 12 that I had in my typecase, but found that there were mixed alignments, so I dumped all that type and cast fresh.

When I went to set the colophon in Times Roman 10, I found that I did not have enough 10-point quads for all the short lines involved. So I fired up the caster again and cast a pile of em and en quads in 10 point.

I did not have a # sign in the Binny Old Style (to mention a face name, Modern #2), but I had a small superscript o (º) with which I intended to set “Nº 2” instead. I found I had no capital N’s (the original copy contained none so I had cast none) so I had to cast a few of those.

I did not have a / in Times Roman for a URL in the colophon, so I cast an 8-point / on a 10-point body (to match the rest of the type in the line) and fiddled the alignment and body width so it would look right.

All told, during the week, I think there was only one day that I did not have to fire up the caster for something.

The printing was to be done on my 7×11 C&P on 8.5×11″ paper to be folded in half to make a 4-page section for the Anthology. This C&P cannot normally be used to print a whole side of 8.5×11″ paper. With 1″ margins the type will fit the chase, but the lay pins would have to be below the bottom edge of the platen to position the printing on the sheet properly. Fortunately, none of the letterpress work had to be very near one edge of the sheet so I was able to do the job in just two runs through the press.

One of the chases I used was a bit sprung and needed shimming to make the type run straight across.

The paper I had chosen, some 120 gsm glossy stock that we had as scrap, turned out to be not so great for letterpress work. It did not take the ink as well as I would have liked, so close examination of the printing shows a bit of a stippling as the ink film split between the paper and type. Reducing the amount of inking helped a bit but then impression was touchier to adjust. I wanted kiss impression because the thin glossy paper would just end up embossed on the reverse by heavy impression.

Because of the poor absorption I also had to interleave all the sheets to prevent offset. It took me quite a while to get the right rhythm to feed the press and interleave the sheets as I removed them.

I used an oil-based ink, so it was dry enough after 12 hours to print the second side. Another 12 hours to dry and it was time to fold the sheets and number the copies. Even as I was bundling the copies to send to Grimsby for binding, I noticed some copies with ink smudges. I had to replace these out of a few spare copies and number them to match the smudged ones.

Altogether, starting with 150 sheets of paper, I ended up with 128 keepers (125 numbered and 3 artist’s proofs) and perhaps 5 more good copies which I will deface now that I don’t need any more spares. All the bad copies do not, however, go completely to waste. They end up in a bin which I draw on when I want to take a test print or want to run junk paper to clean up the ink when I’m done and it is time to clean the press. There are also 150 sheets from the first round of misaligned photocopying; all the text is on one half the sheet so I will cut them down and keep the smaller sheets for some future project.

This is the finished job. It is deliberately a low-quality photo; I will post a readable image after the Anthology is published. The bottom sections of the two first pages are laser printed.

Repairing the other Monotype nozzle

Posted on 2014/03/18 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Kevin, Monotype Composition Caster — No Comments ↓

While trying to do some composition casting recently, I concluded that the nozzle on my caster was worn or damaged, causing it to leak profusely, and the spare nozzle I had on hand was in even worse condition. I repaired one of them using my lathe, but it was not until today that I got the other one fixed up.

Worn nozzle. Note how outer diameter of tip is out of round.

Worn nozzle. Note how outer diameter of tip has a flat spot on the right side.

The nozzle that I had already repaired was not marked with any number, but the one I fixed today had a square body and was marked #18. This nozzle is supposed to be for use on American casters to cast composition under 9 points. After truing up the outside of the tip, I tried redrilling the hole and found that the drill went right in without cutting anything. It turns out that the hole is a few thousandths of an inch oversize and a bit out of round, probably from being cleared out with a hand drill too often.

The refinished nozzle tip. Note that the outer rim of the tip is now round, assuring leak-free operation. However, the hole is out of round and shows a ridge inside it. which may cause turbulent flow of the metal jet.

Although the refinished outer surface means the nozzle should once again seal properly under the mould, the rough hole might result in a less-than-ideal stream of type metal entering the mould.

I also checked the diameter of the hole from the base of the nozzle, and found that its diameter was about 0.129″ (exact measurement was difficult because of the coating of type metal and slag lining the hole). This means that the back hole has been drilled out, since it should be 0.096″ on a #18 nozzle. The redrilled hole means the nozzle is now actually a #22, to be used with American casters for casting composition type 9 points and over.

I should therefore finish the job by re-stamping the nozzle with its new number.

A Bit of Font Casting

Posted on 2014/03/06 by kpmartin Posted in Font Casting, Kevin, Monotype Composition Caster, Other people — No Comments ↓

I have a short project in the works, and since I don’t have a Monotype Keyboard or a computer interface for the caster, I have to fall back to hand setting some text. I have a few paragraphs that I want to set in 12 point Binny Old Style. I had some of this in my case that I had cast when I was first getting some experience with font casting, and due to some stupidity between then and now, the case had mixed alignments on the type. My first casting had been at the wrong vertical position on the type body, then I had cast more with the correct position. At some point I mixed these, probably from distributing some set text into the wrong case. But because the case was now mixed, any type I try to set ends up with dancing letters, and there are not enough of either alignment to do this project (not to mention separating them would be a nuisance).

So this evening I dumped all this type into my Monotype hellbox, and cast a fresh, properly aligned font based on the letter count of my project. There is a utility at Ian Schaefer’s web site for doing this counting. I printed off the count sheet for the project, wrote the matcase positions on the printout, and started casting. I would set the matcase position manually, and count pump strokes in my head, usually casting 10-20% more than the printout indicated. I also cast plenty of spacing. All through this I was also estimating when there was a full line on the galley so I could manually trip the galley cycle. Sometimes the line was a bit long so I would pull the extra types and set them aside, and use them later to fill slightly short lines.

The cast type on the galley before coming off the caster. The loose pieces on the left are pulled from lines that were too long.

$The new type distributed into a typecase. Some of the compartments are empty because the text I will be setting did not need those letters or figures. Upper left contains the fractions 1/2 and 1/4, and upper left contains a small superscript o so I can use "No" instead of "#" which was not in the matcase.$

The new type distributed into a typecase. Some of the compartments are empty because the text I will be setting did not need those letters or figures. Upper right contains the fractions ½ and ¼, and upper left contains a small superscript o so I can use “Nº” instead of “#” which was not in the matcase.

My counts called for an exclamation mark, but for some reason there were none in the matcase, so I might have to either steal one from another 12-point font or live without.

I will also have to remember that this is cast with a soft Linotype alloy, so I should not expect it to be as durable as it would be with a harder alloy.

This was cast using a 12-point American 3E composition mould, and I had very little trouble with the actual casting. A few of the very narrow characters started getting bleeding feet (something which I would expect more from the wide types) after casting 30 or 40 of them. What with all the time spent setting the matcase position this intermittent casting did not seem to need any cooling water for the mould, although using water might have prevented the bleeding feet.

Tagged with: Ian Schaefer