The last few weeks I have had the absolute pleasure of working with lead type at UBC Okanagan's campus. UBCO is home to both Briar Craig (from whom I was able to post snippets of an excellent conversation we had in an earlier blog post) and an Adana model M0120-M0125 printing press.
But before I could really get started with using this little beauty I had to go about organizing some of the new type that I was thinking of using (Neon Century Schoolbook 12pt) into a type drawer. There are different ways of organizing your standard type drawers. One of the most common arrangements is the "California Type Case" that is set up as follows:
So, I went about organizing the new set of type into a drawer. Interestingly, word "Neon" in the title of this font is an indicator of the specific typesetters that designed the font -- in this case the Chicago Typesetters. The word neon was added to the title to avoid copyright infringement on type of similar design. Our print shop at UBCO has both Neon Century Schoolbook and Neon Helvetica (both in medium 12pt as well as a set of Neon Helvetica 24 pt).
Once this was done I could start setting type. At this point a typesetter starts to set the type using a composing stick. Like this:
On the bottom, ledge part of the composing stick the typesetter first needs to put down a "slug". The slug is a piece of lead that the type is set onto. It acts as the spaces between lines and stops the letters from falling all over the place when you move the type off of the composing stick and into the chase. The chase is a metal square that the type is set into and tightened using block of strong wood (like oak).
Setting the type and getting it to stay in the chase takes a long time, and this particular model of letter press can only do about a half letter size page of text. Which is fantastic, if you have a lot of time -- like a lot of time. It takes about 4-6 hours to set a page of type, and proof it. It takes another fair chunk of time to get the machine properly set to print consistently, through the use of rigging up bits of paper and other little shims and things to get all of the letters to print, and finally, printing your finished copies. That's the easy part, once you have done all that set up, printing on the final sheets of paper is a breeze... providing you get everything all inked up properly.
For my test run, I decided to print one of the poems from the book I am publishing for this project, called String Men. Here's a sneak peak!
After creating the mock up for this project, I have organized my twelve poems so that I will be printing a text-block comprised of 24 pages. A 24 page text block breaks down to 12, 2-page plates, with 2 plates on each sheet of paper. Which means that the text block will consist of 6 sheets of paper. This is a huge endeavor for a little press. Setting one day per page and printing one day per page means, 2 days for each page. Meaning the shortest possible print time is 48 days. Based on this, the next thing that I am going to try is to convert the print studio etching press into a flat bed press.
Stay tuned for Printing Experiments Part 2: Converting an Etching Press!
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