Trucks Rolling, But Not The Rollers

Hi all,

We recently acquired a Kelsey Victor via a Briar Press ad. The press was in great condition and has been in regular use. We finally got to do a run with it this past weekend, and encountered some roller issues. The roller trucks weren’t traveling over the rails well. We determined that our rails were worn, and taped them until all four corners measured 3/32″ per a few recommendations in posts at Briar.

The trucks now roll well over the rails, but the rollers themselves aren’t rolling. To be clearer, they will roll over the ink table, but once on the rails the rollers don’t move well?they skim over the plate with only an occasional haphazard rotation, leaving the plate unevenly inked. We end up with a piece that has splotchy ink in some places and not others, but an even impression everywhere.

Any thoughts on what could be causing the rollers not to roll? I realized after we’d already cleaned up and gone to bed for the night (as I was mulling this over in my head, unable to sleep), that perhaps our roller saddles need to be cleaned. As the press is new to us, this hadn’t occurred to me. Any thoughts on that?

Also, we’ve got a lot of horizontal give in the rollers. They move from left to right within the saddles quite a bit. How normal is that?

Thanks for any help,

Ashley

Update:

We seemed to have solved our issue, so I thought I’d respond in case someone else needs this info down the line.

To give our rollers some traction with the trucks (so that they’d roll together instead of just the trucks rolling and not the rollers), we did a trick we found on Briar: We took a piece of sewing thread and looped it around the roller core. Then we slid the trucks on over the thread, leaving a bit of thread on either end so that we could see it and make sure it was still there. Worked like a charm! The rollers immediately began to roll with the trucks over the rails. The post on Briar said to use string, but our trucks didn’t have that much space, so sewing thread was what fit for us.

We still haven’t fixed the sliding that we have from left to right, but I’ve read that this can be solved with some washers. Right now it’s not negatively affecting our printing.

Hope this helps someone in the future,

Ashley

[Author]

Posts