My Impression

So I wasn't entirely happy with how my Braden Sutphin ink was performing on paper. It just seemed a little...squishy. I read a lot of opinions on Briar Press, e-mailed some fellow printers, and tried to dig a little deeper into the whole "eco" ink debate. I'd like for my shop to be as eco-friendly as possible, as healthy for me as possible, AND have my prints look as rad as possible. I feel like the whole soy ink thing has been pretty firmly rejected at this point as being any more eco-friendly than traditional oil and rubber based letterpress inks. So I started thinking about the "vegetable based" idea some more and read that in the old days, all oil-based letterpress inks were made from vegetable and seed oils. It seems that these days most are made from petroleum oils instead, which is obviously not the friendliest. I read several people promoting the fact that Charbonnel etching inks are still made with linseed oil and a heavy pigment load, which makes them great for letterpress and a lot more like printing was "in the old days."

I also read that Charbonnel inks work well for large areas of coverage, which I'll definitely need for my various holiday card designs. As I mentioned before, I've decided to try out Somerset papers for these cards because they supposedly score/fold well. Today I did a quick test on my Pilot with s combination of Charbonnel inks and Somerset paper, and it did look really nice. The edges were crisp, even with a deep impression.


Speaking of impression, I've come to the conclusion that I just can't get a lot of it with my Pilot. It does a fine amount for small pieces like the one above, but a lot of my designs are fairly dense and I just can't get the pressure I need on my little table top guy. I've tried all sorts of packing materials, methods, and amounts...but when it comes down to it I just can't get enough pressure. I don't want to kill myself or crack the arm of my little guy, so I think I'll just have to stick to smaller designs (like business cards) on the Pilot. Luckily I've got my 8 x 12 C&P also, which so far has done great with impression over larger areas.

This was the first time I've actually PRINTED in over a month or so...I've been so busy doing backend planning and such. It felt really nice. Cleanup of Charbonnel using only vegetable oil went about like it had for all other inks - took a while, but worked pretty well in the end.

My holiday card designs are for sale on the Goode Green website, even though I haven't actually made any plates, bought any paper, bought any ink, OR tested any of the prints. Scary! This is me practicing jumping into something without overanalyzing and overpreparing, and seeing what happens. I DID spend forever pricing those suckers, though. Man is it complicated. Now I'm off to work some more on my website...cheerio!

Pulp & Press Soundtrack 9/16/09: "First Train Home" (Imogen Heap). Seriously dude...the Alice In Wonderland references that keep popping up in my life are uncanny.

must. kill.

OK, this blog entry is being posted a bit late - I wrote most of it, then went on vacation, yadda yadda. So I'm actually referring here to some printing I did a few weeks back:

I've had a frustrating couple of days in letterpress world. You might remember these calling cards I printed a few weeks ago, which came out decently but overall I wasn't thrilled with the level of impression the paper took. So, I decided to order in some 134# Aqua Cranes Palette paper, since the 100% cotton is supposed to do really nicely with letterpress. It really is tasty paper, and I was excited to try it out. So on Friday I prepped my Pilot with the same calling card plate and mixed a nice deep green color. I pretty much ran into every problem across the board: not enough impression, uneven inking, un-crisp printing, too much ink, not enough ink, etc. It was just one of those days. So, I decided to just pretend it didn't happen and instead try again on my big 8 x 12 tonight.

Unfortunately, things didn't go much better. I'll start with Problem #1: Uneven Print, and excuse the crap photo but I'm too tired to do any better:

See how the print is heavier on either side, like the "www" and "m"s in "com"? It gets lighter/crisper in the middle, but the edges just look really...squishy. I thought maybe it was just an uneven impression problem, so I spent a long time doing some serious makeready - cutting out individual letters from packing to try and compensate. The weird thing is, this exact same problem was happening in the exact same places on the plate when I tried the print on my Pilot at home.
Question: Could this mean that the plate itself is uneven?

As soon as it started to look okay, I ran into Problem #2: Uneven Inking. Basically it seemed like a lot more ink was being laid down on one side of the plate than the other. There's a circular graphic at the top of the card, and it was really apparent that one side of the circle was printing more heavily than the other. Looking at the back of the cards, it didn't seem like the impression itself was uneven (indicating uneven platen pressure), so I thought it must have been the roller just laying down more ink on one side. I tried taping up the rails to raise the rollers on just the bottom of the chase, which only sort of worked. Since I don't have a picture, I'll do my best approximation via Illustrator:


Question: Is it common for uneven inking to occur vertically like this? How can I compensate for this?

This brings me to Problem #3: Un-Crisp Printing. Once again, I'll do my best to illustrate this problem without a photo. The left side is what the graphic should look like, and the right side is how it has been coming out:


As you can see, there are some fine details in the flowers that should remain unprinted. Instead, the flowers are completely filling in with ink. I noticed that the problem got worse the longer I printed, so I'm wondering if maybe the ink was heating up and getting too squishy. I thought maybe the problem was simply too much ink, but when I removed some from the press all I got was a mottled print - incomplete coverage indicating too little ink but the lines were STILL filling in. The only thing I can think here is that I need to dry up the ink a little. I ordered some drier from Braden Sutphin the other day and will give it a try - but does anyone know if I'm on the right track here? I'm pretty out of ideas, and I know that a crisp print CAN happen along with a deep impression.
Question: Is ink consistency to blame when ink amount has been ruled out and fine details are still filling in?

::sigh::

I Think I'm Starting To Get The Hang...

...of platen presses. I'm learning the ins and out of jiggering with taping the rails, moving the gauge pins, adjusting the packing, and ink distribution. I'm sure there are still many more tricks to discover, but for now I'm happy that things are getting easier instead of harder. Today I did a custom run of a bunch of "Yay!" Peggins cards for Beth, who as a teacher has many graduates to whom to send congratulatory cards this summer.

Registration for this 2 color run was a little tricky, as you can see the filling for the Peggins' bodies can't be the slightest bit off or you can see it sticking out of the blue line. Luckily, I tend to make what seems at the time to be an absurd amount of extras for makeready. With one color jobs or two color jobs with crop marks for registration, the makeready to product ratio is a bit better, but with this one I ended up with about 70 good cards out of the 110 I started with. This means I've got a few extra that I've put up for sale in my Etsy shop - hop to it if you want one! The cards are a bright blossom color with white and blue printing, and they come paired with a chartreuse envelope. Adorable, if I do say so myself.

I had planned on stopping there with the Pilot for today, and going into work on my 8 x 12 for some really cute custom note cards for Page. They're #10 size, just like the Tea Menus from last week, so I need the 8 x 12 bed and base size. However, it has been insanely thunderstorming all day and I didn't fancy wading out to the car with all my inks and paper. So, those cards will have to wait until tomorrow (sorry Page!), but I can't wait to see them printed. The colors are going to rock. So, instead I opted to stay home and print another job on the Pilot - some coasters from my "Dead Things" series. Since I had already printed up some of the prehistoric beast stationery, I decided to continue with him on the coasters.

I wasn't able to get a very deep impression on these, but I think that's OK. I get afraid when I have to pull down too hard on the Pilot's arm that it's going to crack, plus this coaster stock is really thick and stiff. I think the black print on the surface with just a touch of impression looks mighty dandy, and as soon as I take pictures in their final packaging I'll put those up for sale too. Now that I'm out of things to procrastinate with, I guess I'll clean my press. AGAIN. I'm seriously considering videoing a "Get Great Arms With Letterpress" exercise series - left arm does the arm pulling/wheel turning, and right arm does the scrubbing.

Pulp & Press Soundtrack 6/19/09: "Do You Feel Loved" (U2).

Somebody Stop Me!

Another custom job finished tonight - this time some A2 stationery on 100% recycled "Eco White" paper with jet black ink.

Since the press was still mostly set up from the previous job on Friday, I barely had to do any makeready. I can't decide whether I like printing pre-cut or crop marks jobs better - they both have their advantages and disadvantages. I like that I don't have to worry about alignment with crop marks (post-cut) jobs, as long as they're one color. However, I'm always worried that I'm not cutting things exactly the same way afterwards. With pre-cut paper I have to spend a bit more time making sure everything is straight and spaced properly, but one that's done they're all ready to go without anything to do afterwards.

After I finished the stationery, I baked a bunch of these Hazelnut Rosemary Jam Cookies for my upcoming high tea party, which are to die for. Now I've just got to clean the press and I can finally relax for the night. A run of 100+ stationery cards in about an hour? In the timeless words of Flava Flav, "Yeeaaahhh boooy!"

First Custom Job

As I mentioned last post, I'm currently working on several custom jobs. Today I set about printing, and I'm pretty happy with the results of this calling card:

It's referred to as a "calling card" both because of the simple amount of information, and because it's slightly bigger than a regular business card at 2.5" x 3.5". I had been wanting to try out French Paper's Muscleonte paper (140#), and since Barbara wanted an aqua color this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I was curious to see if the extra heavy weight would take an impression well, but it seems it was a little too "muscular." I finally got a decent impression after adding a lot of packing, but I probably won't use this paper again.

As for ink, I finally dove in and bought some Earth Pride from Braden Sutphin last week on a recommendation from a fellow letterpresser. It's vegetable based, contains less than 5% V.O.C.s, and comes in all the regular Pantone colors, unlike Van Son's VS Zero which I was previously excited about. I decided it would just be too difficult to try and mix colors using only the CMYK of VS Zero, but since I bought some I may test out some of the solid colors at some point. Overall, I'm really happy with the Earth Pride. It doesn't really smell like much, which makes my headache-prone sinuses very happy. It's a little on the soft side, but not unworkable. It definitely forms a crust in the can and isn't meant to be left "open" on the press for extended periods of time, but neither of those things really bother me. Cleanup was really quite easy using only vegetable oil. I'll probably continue to experiment with other inks, but for now I'm pretty happy with what I've got.

As long as I had all the packing and everything set up on the press, I decided to go ahead and test print using some of my hand made papers recycled from junk mail. At some point I'd love to be using all my own paper, and after this exciting test I think it will just be a matter of figuring out how to produce sheets with consistent thickness. My various papers took impression much better than the French Paper, and I think the textural elements look really snazzy:

I was a little afraid of ink bleed on the hand made papers, but as you can see the print stayed really crisp. This means that either the papers rock, the inks rock, or the combination of the two rocks! I'm really excited to see that it worked, because I was starting to think that printing on my own papers wouldn't be feasible. WOO!!

Note to self: Rubber bands are your friends, until they're not.
I've realized that it's pretty necessary to use a rubber band across the grippers of the Pilot, because I rarely use a sheet of paper big enough to be held on by the grippers. This was working well, as I had the rubber band positioned perfectly across the middle of the card where there was no printing. Until about the last 25 cards or so, I was getting pretty frustrated by an indentation in the cards I was sure was due to some uneven packing under the tmypan. Then the rubber band slipped a little and actually blocked out part of the print, and I realized it had been sitting right where the impression was happening.

I moved said rubber band higher up on the card so it just barely hit some of the crop marks, and all of my problems were solved. No more random impression, no more uneven print. I got a decent amount of prints done once I had fixed the problem, but I wish I had noticed it sooner. I can't wait until I've been doing this for a bit longer and I have all these things stored up in my brain. Someday my prints will be perfect...or closer anyway. I find that in general, letterpress is a really good lesson in imperfection for me. And with that - I'm off...maybe more printing this weekend!

Pulp & Press Soundtrack 6/5/09: Depeche Mode (Hole To Feed).

And So It Begins...

The water based inks don't come in Pantone mixable colors, so I decided just to pick 4 basic colors to test with. There could be some issues with post-drying smearage, if the prints are handled by anyone with "sweaty hands," so I didn't want to invest too much in a lot of the stuff just yet.





I finally sent in my Dead Things artwork for film and plates, and picked it all up from The Evanston Print & Paper Shop today! They look great of course. I cut up one of the beast bones stationery for test printing on my Pilot, and stuck it to my brand new Boxcar base. I did a quick first lockup in the chase, but realized after it was in the press that it needed to be shifted so that the base and plate were in the upper right hand corner. I'm still not quite used to the idea of printing with a platen press where I'll need to use gague pins to hold my paper in place, as I've got much more "real" experience on a Vandercook. I'm taking things really slowly because I do NOT want to dent my base.

Anyway, so finally I got the lock looking good so that the gague pins could sit in the lower left hand corner of the tympan paper and not hit the base, which is in the upper right hand corner of the chase. I started to realize it was going to be hard to get everything exact with this particular print because I've only got about 1/4" between the print end and the edge of the page. Also at 5.5" x 8.5", this size paper is really pushing what the Pilot can do - so this stationery might be better left for my 8 x 12.

Regardless of whether I continue with this big print or test something smaller, I've still got to figure out how to prevent my grippers from smashing into the base. Supposedly I ought to be able to turn the little cranks to loosen the gripper arms and adjust them, but they're in a really awkward position and extremely tight. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to loosen them, so I posted on Briar Press and will hopefully get some suggestions.

Brad suggested that it also seems like my new rollers may be a bit oversized. They're even being lifted off the rails as they pass over the chase, so I may have to investigate taping up the rails to prevent over-inking and roller sticking. Oh, the troubleshooting begins!

In more successful news, the other day I went about trying to make some paper that remained consistent in color and thickness. I decided to stick with mostly black and white junk mail like credit card offers (though they are fewer these days...), and it actually tured out pretty well. After following some drying advice from a group of paper makers, my press bar / sponge time was greatly reduced and I came out with fairly flat, nice sheets.

My favorite thing about recycling paper is that if you don't blend it up TOO much, you're left with a few letters scattered here and there.

A Fresh Start

Today I spent most of my time cleaning and reorganizing my office/studio, which really needed to be done. I've been attempting a massive purge of unused craft supplies in order to create more empty surfaces upon which to work. I'm pretty much done, and as you can see my closet now closely resembles the one in The Berenstein Bears And The Messy Room. This book clearly marked me as a child, and I blame all my perfectionist tendencies on it.

My letterpress and paper making studio area is small, but working for now. I've got the most basic (and cheapest) table from Ikea holding the Pilot, drying rack, and composing area. Below is boxey storage for paper, furniture, paper making supplies, and other stuff. Above I've just installed a nifty wall shelf unit that's very functional but also cool looking. I use it to store design related books, letterpress bits and bobs, and a few objets d'art.

On another side of the room I've got another desk (this one nicer, from Crate and Barrel) that holds my paper drying press and paper cutter. I intended for the Ikea table to also be where I could make paper, but now that I see the arrangement I might be a little nervous about getting so much water so close to my cast iron press. So, actual paper making may be relegated to the dining room until I can get a "real" studio.

And speaking of other spaces, today I received a text message picture of my 8 x 12 C&P, which has now been officially moved into it's "home" in the warehouse at my design job. It looks like from the picture that it's near a big window, which will be nice and maybe not make me feel too "warehoused." Storage above and to the sides - now I've just got to get Paul Aken to come help me get it up and running. Very exciting!!



Next order of business: I got my new rollers in from Roll Crafters. They were very nice and helpful on the phone, and a few weeks back I shipped them my existing rollers so they could use the cores and see the trucks before making new rollers. They finally arrived this week, and boy did they do a job with the shipping packaging! It took me a solid 10 minutes to unwrap the layers of cardboard, which were literally screwed into end blocks of wood, which themselves had holes drilled in them to keep the rollers steady. I certainly appreciate them making sure they wouldn't get damaged during shipping. The first picture is what the rollers looked like when I finally got them out of the box, with my trucks taped to the ends. Next is after I popped them out of the wood blocks, and finally after I unwrapped the paper around them. Beauties!

I did a quick ink and print just to test them out, with the same type I had locked up earlier. I'll definitely have to do a bit of troubleshooting - there were a few issues with the rollers inking the furniture in the chase, and the whole process being a little sticky. I think I initially may have had the rollers in the wrong graboids (technical term) so after switching them things seemed a little smoother. This was after I had already cleaned the press, though, so I didn't test them again yet.

I can't remember if this was happening with the old rollers, but they seem to get stuck at the bottom of the chase before the arm is all the way back up. I can push the arm up, but I feel like they should be able to continue all the way to the bottom by themselves. I'll probably ask Paul when I see him.



Here's right where they get stuck:

And here's where they end up when the arm is all the way up:

The trucks appear to be mostly in line with the pieces they roll against, though slightly off. I wonder if this has something to do with it.




All in all, a very productive day...and I can't wait to start pressing my "Dead Things" onto these nifty coasters I just received. I'm waiting on my Akua water based inks to arrive to test those out - though they mentioned there could be some concern with the inks smearing from "sweaty hands." Obviously not the best choice for coasters, but I'll try them on some note cards and gift tags. I've also recently been told that rubber inks can be cleaned with crisco and vegetable oil, so that might be an option too. WOO!

A Quick Note

My new base from Boxcar arrived! Man, they did it fast too. I went with the size they recommended for Pilot presses - 8.5" x 5". However, now that I'm looking at it with my press I realize I probably should have measured the distance between my grippers because it's only 8". Maybe there's something I'm missing here and it will work out - but I do NOT want to dent my base. Oh well...I suppose if it doesn't fit in the Pilot I can always use it with the big C&P.

Actually, now that I'm looking more closely at the grippers it looks like they're probably adjustable - just held on by bolts. Hopefully I can move them so I can use this size base! It would be just perfect for a flattened out A2 size card (4-1/4" x 11"), provided I don't do a full vertical bleed on both sides at once. Most of my cards just have the Tweedle Press logo centered on the back anyway.

Tomorrow I'm planning to call Roll Crafters to see about getting some new rollers for both the Pilot and the 8 x 12. I've pretty much decided on rubber, on advice both from some folks at Briar Press and Akua Water Based Inks . These inks are supposedly non toxic, and can apparently be cleaned off using vegetable oil (instead of water which could rust the press). I'm going to give them a try to see if they work well. This Friday will be my first official day that I begin taking off from my "real job" (aka the one that pays me) to work on Tweedle Press and Chicago Locavores, so I'm psyched!

It's Official...

...My Pilot does print. Not that I doubted it would, but it was awesome to actually do it myself. Just a quick slap of black ink and some old rollers that need replacing. Here is the line of type locked up in the Pilot:


And here it is:


Too much ink, too much impression, too much everything...but I love it.

The Pilot Is Home!

More details and pictures to come, but here's a shot of the new beauty in it's spot in my office/studio. I didn't realize it was going to be and Old Style Pilot, so it's MUCH prettier than I had hoped and I just love it! I also acquired a whole slew of other necessary elements, and will probably try and run my first print this week. YAY!

Ian and I managed to get it inside from my car (all 200 pounds of it...my knees are not amused) without too much difficulty; luckily we live on the first floor and so there is only 1 mini-staircase to get up to our door. Oh, it's so pretty. Sigh. Now I'm off to try and find a serial number so I can see how old it is...

What To Buy Before Printing With A C&P Pilot

OK, I've been doing research into the additional items I'll need to purchase along with my new presses in order to actually print on them. I'm hoping some of the smaller items will come included, but it's possible I may have to hunt down everything myself. I'll start with the C&P Pilot, because that's the one I'll likely have first since it won't require any special shipping arrangements (it "only" weighs about 200 pounds). If everything goes well I could be bringing it home this weekend!

I found this awesome Operating Instructions and Parts List for Chandler & Price Pilot Press on the Dolce Press website (thanks guys!) which has helped a lot.

Needs For The C&P Pilot Letterpress

1. I've been told that it needs new rollers. I've done a little research, and come up with these options for where to buy them:

NA Graphics (Colorado) C&P Pilot 6 1/2x10 Form Roller, new core, rubber, $101.20 C&P Pilot 6 1/2x10 Form Roller, new core, vinylith, $87.30 So, I guess I'll need to find out if the rollers need new cores as well - I'm inclined to just buy new everything, but I suppose I should try to save money where I can. The prices on the NA Graphics website are "estimated," so I'd probably have to call them to get actual pricing.

American Printing Equipment (New York) 6-1/2 x 10 Pilot Press Letterpress Rubber Rollers Set/2 with Steel Core, $145 Definitely seems more expensive than NA Graphics, but I guess I may not have the real NA Graphics price yet.

Republic Roller Corporation (Michigan)
These guys are listed on Briar Press, and it's always good to find suppliers in the next state over. I'll probably give them a call to see if they have what I need and how much it would cost.

There also 10+ other listings on Briar Press for people supposedly selling rollers, so if I don't have any luck with the ones I've listed I can always check for more there. There's a good guide on rollers too.

2. Tympan Paper: according to this discussion on Briar Press, there are a lot of alternatives. However, due to my love of rules I may opt to at least start out with the real thing before I start experimenting. It looks like I can get the correct size from American Printing Equipment.

3. Gauge Pins: these little buggers are one of the main reasons I've been reluctant to buy a platen press at all. I'm sure my relationship with them will evolve, as I really haven't done too much platen printing compared to the amount I've done on Vandercooks. I just feel like there's no possible way gauge pins can reliably hold the paper in place for proper registration because they're just so tiny, yet I know it must be possible. So, I suppose I'll just have to get over it. I'm hoping to acquire a few of these with the purchase of the presses. If not, it appears they're readily available and not too expensive.

4. Furniture: even though I'll likely be doing most or all of my printing using polymer plates, I'll still need some furniture to lock up the Boxcar base in the chase. Probably only a few pieces - but I do really like the big furniture cabinets so I'll probably just go ahead and get one. Plus, I can see myself buying some type eventually, and you never know when you might find a perfect woodcut you want to print with.

5. Speaking of Boxcar bases, I'll be needing one (or several) of those. I dealt with Boxcar one before when I had them make some plates for me, which were kind of expensive but they were really nice and helpful. Dang these things are expensive! Looks like they recommend a 5 x 8.5 for a Pilot ($175) and a 6 x 9 for an 8 x 12 C&P. That page I just linked to also has a lot of good general information about using Boxcar bases with platen presses. I'll definitely be poring over that. The Boxcar Printing Manual also has a lot of good tips.

6. Roller gauge(s): I hadn't really thought of these, mainly because up until now I have pretty much judged roller height based on how prints look. I suppose it would probably be a good idea to grab one, though, plus they're pretty cool looking and not that expensive. Also, the Boxcar base letterpress starter packs come with one anyway, which sounds like a good deal.

7. Ink: I'll probably go with rubber based ink to start off with, but will likely end up experimenting at some point. These starter ink packs from Boxcar sound pretty cool, so I'll probably end up getting one of them. There is an interesting (and at times unnecessary aggressive, as internet discussions tend to be) thread over on Briar Press about ink alternatives and possible effects of various toxic letterpress substances. This is definitely of interest to me, as I will likely be having my own minis in the not too distant future. Someone mentions that water based inks work well for them on their Pilot, so maybe I'll investigate even though I'm not sure they're meant for use with polymer plates.

8. Cleaning supplies: another area in which to consider possible non-toxic-ness, and one in which I'll certainly have to experiment based on the types of ink I end up using. I'll also need to procure some of those nifty rags all letterpress studios seem to have, as well as figure out how to get them cleaned. I'll probably be asking my friends over at The Evanston Print And Paper Shop for suggestions on this one.

OK - that's all I've got for now. Is there anything else I'll need to start printing on my Pilot? I'm assuming, of course, that all the parts will be working and I won't have to do any major repairs or replacements. I'd like to clean and restore the press to it's best possible working condition, so I suppose there may be a few other things I'll need to get (oil?) to keep it happily maintained.