Platen Press Workshop 2

Continue from the Platen Press Workshop day 1 post… Here is my day 2!

We learned how to operate a floor-model, which I’d been so wanting to learn. It can be dangerous so I was a bit nervous, but you know, I got the hang of it real soon and I printed without losing any of my fingers :) It was so fun, too, I loved it!

For the second day project, I decided to hand typeset a gift tag by using ornaments — as soon as I saw these manicules (the fingers), I was inspired.

It took me for a while to do this! Such a tedious work. More respect for the real printers who always do this.

Adding spaces…

Lock it up on the chase…

and put the chase back into the press.

The Center has 2 floor model platen presses and I used this guy:

Adjusting, adjusting…

and print away!

I printed vertical ones and then, re-set the types and printed horizontal ones, too. These will be used for my clients and customers, I think! :)

It was a great workshop, thank you so much, Center for Book Arts!!

Platen Press Workshop 1

As I mentioned, I took a platen press workshop over at the center for book arts all 2 days last weekend instead of Halloween fun and it was so worth it. I enjoyed it so much! I’ve been letterpress printing for 2 years now, but I have only been working with Vandercook so I’ve been wanted to learn how to operate platen presses properly (they are so different!).

This is my day 1.

The Printing Room:

They have drawers and drawers of metal types. After learning about the platen press, how to oil them etc. we set the metal types for a small business card size project.

I picked Spartan Black…

Pick up letters one by one… (the California Job Case sheet always comes in handy.)

“HELLO” letters all set!

and locking up in the chase…

On the 1st day, we learned how to operate the table top press — this is Chandler & Price.

Learned how to set the gauge pins…

adjust impressions and such…

and print!

The tabletop presses are so small so it’s perfect to print small things such as business cards. You won’t get the strong impression like Vandercook gives, but it prints great!

To be continued to day 2…

Hello, Busyness

Hello there, busyness. You come visit me often, but this weekend + this morning + this week, you are not kidding me around…

So please hang tight, Heartfish readers, I’ll have some fun report from my letterpress workshop I attended this weekend soon :) I hope you all had a nice fun Halloween weekend!! I had a “busyness” visit so I couldn’t do anything Halloween related this year… boo. Oh well… next year!

xo Hijiri