Signs of the Times

Bookbinding workshop is starting again. Most of my friends have dropped out due to the steep price increase, a sadness. However, a whole new crop of students will be using our equipment, so I took it upon myself to proof a bunch of safety placards.

The class has little safety training, but we use a manual paper trimmer,  a guillotine cutter, and cases full of type-- all without regular reminders of safe handling.  They are not printers, they are beginning bookbinders, so they don't even learn to set type into a composing stick, much less safe equipment use. I'm related to My Dad the Safety Nut, and it drives me crazy to see the students ignorantly handling things that could hurt them. Hence the placards.

I can't believe how many leave the trimmer blade up and just walk away.

Then there are those who lay their stuff on the guillotine cutter. . .

Font

Just a proof for you to look at, hoping for responses in re: my question about background letters.

It's a not-so-great shot of an iffy proof :)  Hope it conveys my intent.

Toolbox again

Just an excuse to post. My inking woes are solved. The rollers needed to be adjusted downward. That done, and inking was perfect. Before the adjustement, I had completed Tool #2 in the set, but there's no pic.

Tool #3 is half done! Color one went on press today, and I'm excited about the inking now. This tool, and its associated cut, is one of my favorites, because I use it every time I print.

Color two will be red: a smaller composing stick showing type lined up in it, and a drop cap H for the legend in Washington Text. Click to biggify-- I'm quite happy with it!

The height of irony: a problem with the camera's parallax makes the printing look UN straight!

Toolbox

Here is the first of my tool contributions for the Toolbox. The uneven look of the type is its rugged design: Pabst Oldstyle. Kids' art foam sheet mounted on a mag base printed the saw. Apologies that the cell phone shot doesn't display the Lettra paper effect.

Inking Issues

This post is mostly for friends from Letpress, the letterpress printers' listserv.

If you look carefully at the pic (double-click to biggify), you can see the areas which are not inking.

The last letter, s, in Pins, and the thimble at the bottom of the cut are simply not taking ink. The sad part is that they were inking perfectly all during makeready, and now they are simply not. At All.

As far as I can see, there was no contamination, no washup between makeready and printing, and no color change. I didn't even change packing.

Pressure is a little heavy; the cut sits a wee bit high, and I have had to add a sheet of typman under the type to bring it up, since I cannot remove anything from the cut.

I would love to get your thoughts on why this is happening when the proofs were all so good.