Printing Experiments Part 2: Converting an Etching Press for Type

Last week, my blog post discussed using the Adana Letterpress, courtesy of UBCO, for printing my book, and after some deliberation I came to the conclusion that the small printing surface that the Adana has would take too long to print my 24 page book of poetry. So this week, I am going to talk about how to convert an etching press into a flat bed letter press.

This is one of the UBCO etching presses.

The way that an etching press works is the heavy metal cylinder roles back and forth over the printing material to make an impression. The impressing surface lays on the flat bed that moves underneath the cylinder, then the material that is going to take the impression sits on top of that covered with padding that is most often made out of thick felt sheets. These felt sheets are intended to protect the metal cylinder and form around the paper and impressing material (in our case lead type) making a nice even impression.

The felt packing is really important because, when printing, I want to make sure that I am not damaging either the press cylinder or the lead type. If the cylinder is sitting too low it will crush the type, so the brass nobs at the top that control the distance between the bed of the press and the cylinder need to be just right.

In order for us to use the etching press, we first needed to find a tray that is the right height for the lead type to sit in. Luckily, Briar had a couple of these such trays hanging around for us to use. Next, we found and cut a wood board to the right size so that the tray with the type in it can sit down into the flat bed. It looks like this.

After that we were pretty much done and ready to set type using the same kind of system that we used in order to set type in the Adana, utilizing the sides of the metal board just as we used the chase in the Adana, to brace the type, furniture, and slugs.

After my adventures playing with the Adana Letterpress and the lead type that UBC Okanagan has at its disposal, I have come to the sad conclusion that we may not actually have enough lead type to print more than a half page of text. The problem here is that after a while you start running out of letters, and while it would be both fun and interesting to just start substituting letters (e's for x's or some such thing) to make it work, that is not really the effect I am going for.

Luckily after talking to the UBC Okanagan faculty about this particular hiccup the school is looking into buying a whole bunch more stock of lead type, furniture and drawers to use in print making! I can't tell you how exciting this is -- especially since I will hopefully be continuing on with more printmaking in September. All that said, we are still currently at a loss for type and the type that the school is buying is going to take about a month to get here. Which means that it won't be here in time for me to finish this current project.

All that said, the moral of the story is that I will now be filling the text block using screen printing. Which in the long run should take less time and will let me add sketches as well to the body of the work. It's all very exciting. Below is a sample of the first screen prints that I have done. These fish are going to be used as cover art.