Ink

What’s your favorite source for printing ink. Been using small cans of Dan Smith for my Kelsey, but now need larger quantity for the C&P projects.

I’ve used Oldham Ink for 10 years, great customer service. Tell them Inky Lips Press was the referral and your using the ink for letterpress printing.

Ask for Kurt or Deborah

4333 Cambridge Rd
Fort Worth TX 76155
United States

Thanks for the tip Casey! I’ll check them out for sure!

I buy mine from VanSon – http://www.vansonink.com/pages/Letterpress.html

Hi Katie,

You can also check out our ink company named Letterpressink.com. We have quarter pound and one pound cans in rubber base. 

If you use coupon code: Letterpress Love, Then you can get 10% off. 

If you need five pound cans I can get you pricing. They are not listed on the site yet. 

Happy Printing! 

Thank you,
Pete 

Old City Press & Co. 
Pete@oldcitypress.com

Thanks Pete! I’ll check ya out!

Thanks for the link Jessica

Hey Katie, We can help you out with any ink needs you might have. We are a full service ink company offering true letterpress inks in tubes, tins or cans. We’ve been inkmen for over 20 years, we can formulate for specific needs and do custom PMS blends on a daily basis. Please email or call us and check out our website.  http://www.southern-ink.com  Thanks!

Charley Harden

Southern Ink Company 

charden@logixonline.com                

So great to see these other ink providers! Thanks for letting us know you’re out there.

A question – is anyone offering smaller amounts of glow-in-the-dark ink for letterpress (for a smaller price?). All I’ve found so far are large cans of offset glow-in-the-dark that’s just too expensive for this little shop.

Hi Charley,

I checked out your site. It doesn’t say whether the letterpress inks are oil or rubber based. 

can you let me know?

thanks,

sam

Hey Sam,  Our inks are vegetable based (linseed, soy, etc). We formulate them for letterpress to stay open like a rubber base or acrylic ink with no added driers or waxes and with a heavier body. In all honesty, most “oil base” inks nowadays are vegetable based; true petroleum oil base inks are far less common. Hope this helps!

 Thank you,  Charley 

Hey Jessica, thank you for having this forum, it’s cool!  Glow in the dark inks are such a specialty item, I don’t stock them but let me talk to my manufacturer and see what I can come up with. It might be that it’s only available in offset but we could probably modify it to make it more letterpress user friendly if we have to.

Thank you, Charley

I use both rubber based and oil based inks, depending on what I’m printing and what I need from the ink. It was a long time ago, so I’m not sure where I heard this, but I thought that offset inks could also be used on letterpress presses. Maybe you can confirm or deny this, Charley, when you look into it. Thank you so much!

That’s exactly right. I have large offset commercial printers that also have letterpress in their shops and a lot of them do run an offset ink on that equipment. That being said, what we like to tell people is that with our inks you get the best of both worlds, stays open on the press like a rubberbase but dries like an oilbase (on typical stocks). Offset inks typically have additives not required for a letterpress ink, to keep them from taking on water for example. On a side note, I have some glow in the dark pigment coming, give me a bit to get it made into ink and maybe you could test it for us?

An ink that stays open on the press like a rubberbase but dries like an oilbase sounds too good to be true! I’d be happy to test your ink. Please send me a sample to:

Jessica White
29 Rosemary Rd.
Asheville, NC 28806

I’ll post results here.

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