the Papertrail – Page 54

The big monster printing press

Posted on 2013/04/21 by kpmartin Posted in Printing, Thompson British Platen Press — 2 Comments ↓

This press is our latest acquisition. It actually came from what are now the premises of KwartzLab, the former home of Pandora Press. This machine is a Thompson-British Automatic Platen Press, weighing in at about 1525kg (3360lbs).

It fills the same niche as the Heidelberg “Windmill” Platen press, but uses a different feed mechanism. Instead of the Heidelberg’s rotary feed/delivery arms that give it its nickname, the Thompson uses orthogonal motion to feed the paper. A sucker bar draws each sheet from supply stack directly in front of the platen and pulls it straight down onto the lays which do the fine positioning of the sheet. A separate gripper bar grabs the edge of the sheet after printing, draws it sideways and places it on the delivery stack. Because there is no rotary motion, it should be able to handle long skinny sheets better than the Heidelberg.

Here are more of its specifications:

Maximum Sheet Size	10¼”×15¼” (260×387mm)
Minimum Sheet Size	1½”×2¼” (38×57mm)
Maximum Print Area	10¼”×15″ (260×381mm)
Minimum margins	6pt bottom, 12pt right side
Maximum Speed	4,500 impressions per hour
Dimensions	5’9″×4′ (1.8×1.5m)
Floor Load	30 cwt (1524kg)
Power	1.7hp (1.2Kw)
Price (1931)	£275

This particular press was purchased in 1949 by a newspaper and printer in Grand Valley, Ontario. The newspaper is long gone but the company continues as Landsborough Printing Limited.

We still have the press on a pallet, and have moved it close enough to an appropriate outlet to run the machine for a few minutes. However, before using it for real work, we have to move it to its final place, remove it from the pallet (right now it rocks back and forth on the pallet as it runs), clean the ink fountain, and find a way to clean the ink train more quickly.

Our workhorse printing press

Posted on 2013/04/20 by kpmartin Posted in C&P Old Style 7×11, Printing — No Comments ↓

Since this photo was taken, I have added a treadle, removed the ink fountain, and cleaned things up a bit.

The press we do most of our work with is a Chandler and Price 7×11 Old Style.

This is a hand-fed treadle-driven letterpress. When we got the press it was set up for motor drive, had an ink fountain, but no arm or pawl for rotating the ink disk. It has three form rollers which were relatively hard material. Since then I have pretty much determined that two of the rollers are urethane rubber since they are slowly exuding a brown goo from either end where the compound meets the core.

I made an arm and pawl to rotate the ink disk, added a treadle so I can run it at my own relaxed pace, and put it on a special dolly that allows me to move it around the shop without making it 5 inches taller. Because of the unfortunate leg spacing on the press I have yet to figure some sort of undercarriage to add so I could just move it around with my pallet jack.

Because of the relaxed pace I also removed the ink fountain which, for the size of print runs I usually do, would be just a big cleaning chore. Actually, because of all the hardened ink already on it, it already is a cleaning chore, stashed away in a box somewhere in the shop.

I also purchased a new set of composition rollers from Tarheel Roller & Brayer Company on cores I made myself, and also made trucks to match, so now it produces mighty fine print quality.

Our smallest printing press

Posted on 2013/04/20 by kpmartin Posted in Kelsey Excelsior 5×7 Model U, Printing — 1 Comment ↓

Our smallest printing press is a Kelsey Excelsior 5×8 Model U tabletop press.

When we got it, the press had surface rust everywhere and paint almost gone. The rollers where melted/scorched/hardened into the cardboard box that held them.

When we got it it was suffering from fire and water damage. Most of the paint was worn off, there was rust all over, and the rubber form rollers were partly melted and partly turned rock-hard. Fortunately all the parts were there.

After disassembly, rust removal (using Evapo-Rust), old paint removal, repainting, reassembly, and lubrication we ended up with a nice press that works quite well.

Since these photos were taken I have made a set of composition rollers for the press. It was my first attempt using composition material, and had to reconcile the various old recipes that can be found online. The material was incompletely melted so the finished rollers have hard lumps in them but still do a decent job of inking the form.

All cleaned, painted, and lubricated, all that is left is to make some form rollers for it.

The other problem still to be addressed is that the roller trucks have no notch to engage the dog on the core (shaft) so there is a tendency for the rollers to slide rather than rolling over the form.

It would also be nice to attach the press to a nice wide base plate with rubber feet so it does not slide around in use. Perhaps I can also arrange for this base to form the bottom for a carrying case to make it easy to take the press on the road. The case could also hold all the accessories required to run the press.

…and Calligraphy too!

Posted on 2013/04/18 by kpmartin Posted in Calligraphy, Kevin — No Comments ↓

A few weeks ago Lily’s kindergarten class held a muffin sale, but she was home sick the day they were supposed to make the sign for their muffins. So I pulled out a fountain pen and a sheet of hand-made paper and tried my hand at a little calligraphy. I’m clearly no expert, but not a bad effort considering how rarely I do this. This particular sheet of paper is made from old business cheques that we re-pulped; if you look carefully you can see pieces of letters from the original printing on the cheques.

Papermaking presses

Posted on 2013/04/17 by kpmartin Posted in Papermaking, Presses — 2 Comments ↓

We have two presses which are used in papermaking to press excess water out of the sheets and also to make the sheets thinner and denser.

The one we use regularly is actually a power hydraulic 30-ton arbor press assembled upside-down. The upper platen is raised by a cable winch to make enough room to insert the post, then lowered as far as it will go under its own weight. The heavy pins are put in the lowest holes that are clear, and we hoist the platen back up against the pins. Then the hydraulics are used to raise the lower platen, which accomplishes the actual pressing.

There is a tray with a spout on the lower platen which allows us to collect all the water in a pail so the floor stays dry. We normally put this tray on the papermaking table and stack the post right in it, so it also acts to catch the water that weeps from the post as it gets taller.

Finally, a hydraulic pressure gauge allows us to determine how hard the paper is being pressed. The platen is about 21×25″ so with a full-size post the press can produce a pressure of about 115PSI. For smaller posts the pressure can be much higher but we avoid that so we don’t crush the center of the wood face of the platen.

The other press which we use when we are on the road is a 12×15″ manual 6-ton press built out of aluminum. The upper and lower platens are hollow boxes with internal ribs all welded together. The upper cross-beam is an I-beam made by welding flat plate together. On this press, you place your post on the lower platen, then put on the upper platen, the jack, and the cross-beam. Four bolts are put in to attach the cross-beam at its lowest possible position. The piston of the jack can be screwed out to take up the slack. Then you just pump the jack until you think things are pressed enough. With a full 12×15″ post this press can only produce about 66PSI. Because of the aluminum construction it is possible to pick this press up with a single hand, although it is certainly easier to move around when broken down into its pieces. This press unfortunately has no catch tray so the water goes wherever its wants to.

An evening at KwartzLab

Posted on 2013/04/16 by kpmartin Posted in KwartzLab — No Comments ↓

One local group that I am associated with is called KwartzLab. This is the local “maker group” in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Essentially it is a group of members who rent premises and keep tools and equipment there for use by all the members to, well, make stuff. Such organizations were originally known as “hacker spaces” but then the media managed to poison the term “hacker” with negative connotations.

I was careful to say I’m “associated” with the the group because I am not actually a member. I have more than enough working space and tools at home so the membership dues are not worth my while. However, every Tuesday night from 7-10pm is their open night, where everyone is welcome to come by, have a look around, and, assuming they are competent to use to tools, actually do some work. I regularly attend these open nights and generally find something to work on.

The group recently moved to a new location (at the corner of Kent Avenue and Charles Street for the locals) and although they still don’t have everything set up, the facilities are generally useable. Along with various woodworking, metalworking, and electronics equipment they have a laser cutter and several 3D printers including a Makerbot, at least one RepRap Mendel, and two Stratasys FDM 2000 units recently purchased from the University of Waterloo surplus sale.

I spent this evening with a couple of others poking at the Stratasys printers to figure out their ins and outs. We have some manuals for them, but they seem to be incomplete, and they refer to an older version of the software so there is a lot of guesswork involved.

We have been involved in some of their special events, such as a marbling workshop & trucking pumpkins around for their “Hacky Hallowe’en” event. Now we are considering whether we should do something, perhaps a papermaking demonstration, for the upcoming Mini Maker Faire they are hosting.

Missing WordPress account notification e-mails

Posted on 2013/04/16 by kpmartin Posted in About this blog — No Comments ↓

I’ve spent several days now trying to get notification e-mails to go out when a new blog user is created.

Finally got it working. I’m posting this in the hopes that anyone with the same problem will be able to find this before going down all the other false leads I found.

For the record, we are running on a Apache server under OpenBSD with php5.3. For improved security the scripts that run in response to web requests run in a subtree of the server’s file system colloquially known as a “jail” but implemented using OpenBSD’s ‘chroot’ facility.

A Sampler of our Marbling

Posted on 2013/04/15 by kpmartin Posted in For Sale, Kevin, Lily, Marbling — No Comments ↓

Someone asked me about our marbling on handmade paper so rather than try to describe patterns and colours in an e-mail or by phone I though I should just take a photo of all the marbling we have on handmade paper. I figured other people might be interested too, and it is about time I actually post something closer to our core business, so here are the photos for all to see.

I just spread the sheets on the floor and took photos so the quality is rather crude, but this gives some idea of the sort of marbling we can do.

Our inventory on commercially-made paper is much larger (and is mostly on 18×24″ sheets).

Some of our marbling on 12×18″ handmade paper.

Some of our marbling on 8½×11″, 5×7″, and 3½×5″ handmade paper.

Monotype Pump Enhancements

Posted on 2013/04/14 by kpmartin Posted in Equipment Acquisition, Repair, and Maintenance, Monotype Composition Caster, Other people — 2 Comments ↓

This is a capital M in 36 point cut in half to show the huge air bubble in the body of the type.

My Monotype Composition Caster is a British-made one, with a serial number indicating fairly late manufacture (1960’s) so it should in theory be fitted will all the latest bells and whistles. But for some reason it is missing the pump modifications that are required for casting larger size display type. As a result when I try casting 36-point type I end up with hollow type whose face caves in after only a few impressions. Properly cast type of this size would have thicker solid walls and its core would be a froth of small bubbles.

There are three main requirements to casting sufficiently solid type:

The molten type metal is injected into the casting mould by a single stroke of a piston pump, and this stroke must be able to pump enough metal to fill the type.
The pump stroke must be fast enough that the mould fills before the metal in the injecting nozzle solidifies, stopping any further flow. Fast injection also replaces the large single air bubble with a froth of smaller bubbles, which is much stronger.
The final pump pressure must be high enough to compress the bubbles to a small size. There is little chance for the air that starts in the mould cavity to escape, so the only way to reduce the bubble size is to compress the bubbles using several atmospheres of pressure.

My caster had the high-strength spring required for item (3), but did not have the extended-stroke pump required for (1) or the pump latch required for (2). As a result I am now working on installing these two items on my caster. This is proving to need a combination of scavenged parts and home-made parts.

Lily’s first sheet of paper

Posted on 2013/04/13 by kpmartin Posted in Branson Banana Bash, Lily, Sheet forming — No Comments ↓

Back in November 2009, when Lily was only about 2½ years old, we attended the Branson Banana Bash organized by Mimi Aumann. It was a chilly few days in the Ozarks in November, where we tried various methods for pulping banana leaf stems to make paper, and also helping Mimi with her kozo harvest and processing.

That was when Lily made her first sheet of paper, using a mould made by Brian Queen and a matching deckle I added which makes paper about the size of a business card. The pulp was coarse, and Lily’s technique was a bit rough, so the sheet is too, but we kept it and it recently turned up to remind me to make this post.