We’re applying to demonstrate papermaking at the Waterloo Mini Maker Faire coming up June 15th at Kitchener City Hall. While writing up the application we found this photo of a sheet of paper being formed. You can see the waves from shaking the mould to even out the sheet, and the camera flash does some neat things to the dripping water and its shadow.
I can’t say we’re a shoe-in to be accepted, but we’ve been asked by at least two people organizing the Faire to apply.
For beating some papermaking fibres, a Hollander beater is essential. One of the brands preferred by hand papermakers is the Valley Beater, originally made by Valley Iron Works, but still available new from Voith-Sulzer (last time I checked). They are generally available used for 2 or 3 thousand dollars, but new ones are over $10,000. They were originally designed for use in the laboratories of commercial paper mills for testing pulp and determining how the main batch should be processed in the large production equipment. Because they were intended as a lab instrument they can essentially be kept running forever, although parts are becoming more expensive as well.
Most of these beaters have a painted cast iron tub, but ours has a bronze tub and the naked metal to show it off. We have it on casters so we can roll it out of the way when not needed.
From this end you can see the roll which drags the pulp under itself to bruise and scuff the fibres with minimal cutting.
Projecting from this side just a bit to the left of the main frame of the beater is a garden hose quick-connect with a valve to allow the beater to be filled though its flushing ports near the diaphragm
This side of the table has a metal box below containing the contactor (in a waterproof case) to operate the motor. Eventually the water connection will be here too with the control valve and a hose with sprayer will be coiled up, ready to help rinse out the tank at cleanup time.
This shows the diaphragm (which allows the gap the fibres run through to vary) along with the white plastic water lines connecting to the two flushing connections. The red bands are link belting running from the motor to the beater rather than a regular V belt.
Because the water supply lines go up to the tabletop, the area around the diaphragm cannot easily be emptied. I eventually plan to run the water line down into the box that already contains the motor switch and have the hose connection there. In this way one can disconnect the hose and drain the beater a little more fully. I will also add a short hose with a sprayer to help with rinsing out the beater tank when the time comes to clean up.
As part of my project to add a pump latch to my Monotype Composition Caster to allow casting of larger type, I decided to take apart the pump head so all the parts could be cleaned properly of decades of accumulated crud.
As it turns out I did more disassembly than I should have. In particular, the 19H family of parts contains a footnote in the parts manual:
The fitting of this part requires special skill and/or tools not normally in the possession of an operator. It is recommended that the ‘Monotype’ Area Technical Representative is contacted before ordering
The two heads a19H3 and 31H2, in addition to be held on by large nuts, are also press fits onto the ends of their respective shafts 19H and 31H1. Reassembling the 31H family is a simple matter of pressing the parts back together, but in the case of 19H, the head must be in the correct rotational alignment with the hole in 19H that holds the taper pin a19H2. I expect that in the factory, they press the head onto the shaft, slide on the lower crossblock (not shown, but it is that the taper pin holds in place), put everything in a fixture to hold the two crossblocks in proper alignment, and drill and fit the taper pin. I think the proper disassembly procedure is just to remove the taper pin, and remove 19H and a19H3 as an assembly.
I actually tried to remove the lower crossblock (the one held by the taper pin) but with the melting pot still in place it seemed impossible. At times I had it rotated in all directions but could not remove it. It was very reminiscent of the sofa stuck in the stairwell in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.
Other than getting that reassembled in proper alignment, I have to shorten a19H5 (which is already a home-made part), make a new spacer tube (b20H7) to raise the spring seat a20H12, and make a new c20H1 to replace b20H1, the new part being longer by the amount a20H12 is raised, so the spring length is unaltered. I will be estimating the dimensions of b20H7 from the illustration in the parts manual, although I will also search my parts collection for some mysterious tube that actually turns out to be the correct part.
Don’t worry, it all makes sense once it is assembled…
I have four guillotine knives, but I’m not even sure what brand or model they are for, nor whether they have been sharpened so much they aren’t useful any more. They are actually two pairs of essentially identical knives.
The first pair of knives is 28.3125” long by ⅜” thick by about 3” wide, and according to one of the carriers is ground to 22°. They are both branded “FASSCO Made in Germany F220 Schwedenstahl.” The 6 pairs of holes appear to be for ⅜” bolts and are 4.1375” apart with the first hole about 4½” from the left end and the last hole 3” from the right end.
The second pair of knives is 35” long by 7/16” thick by about 3¾” wide. There is no branding on these. The 7 pairs of holes appear to be for ½” bolts and are 5.521” apart with the first hole about ¾” from the left end and the last hole 1¼” from the right end. One of them has quite a bit of surface rust on its face but the back and bevel are fine.
All four of them probably need sharpening.
I’m asking $50 per pair for these, plus shipping. If you are interested, or even if you can identify what model of guillotine they are for, please e-mail me.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.