Hello,
Give Paul a shout at the Platen Press Museum here in Illinois (just google his site and you’ll find his email). I know he’s got a ton of galleys and a handful of composing sticks, it’s just a matter of what size and quantity you need, and if he’s got something handy at the moment. His prices are also very fair.
Hope that helps!
Jen
I say go for it! We either refinish or paint most of our type banks to clean them up and give the studio a cohesive look. Many printers do, and rehabbed ones will still have the same value, if not more. And honestly, type cases are a dime a dozen so you might as well do it!
-Jen
Are you mixing your color with opaque or transparent white ink? This is often a problem with an opaque base, so if you can mix to your PMS swatches with transparent instead, that will take care of it. Otherwise, allow for a large overrun in each run, as the problem fades as you go along.
Hope that helps.
You’ll need to have the paper duplexed, as you won’t find anything this thick. You can just print both sides on the 300, and then find someone to duplex it (our offset friends here in Chicago are capable so you can probably find someone close to you).
Hope that helps,
Jen @ Starshaped Press
Thanks for posting! Are you going to be there tonight? We’re going to make our best effort to get down. Hopefully we’ll see you there!
You might be able to find some help at http://www.myfonts.com, as they do have info about licensing, etc., as well as a community you could approach. I’m not sure if they’ll have info straight out, but you could probably track down the main folks and see if they can help you.Kudos to you for thinking about this issue!Jen
You might want to check around as well; I got mine from Paul at the Platen Press Museum here in IL and they were more like $35-$50 each (can’t remember exactly…). I have them with both serif and sans serif, and they work great for being used (they have a few nicks, etc.).There are a few tricks to working with them, including setting the number of numbers and zeroes, counting upwards or backwards, etc. I’d be happy to walk you through it when you get some.Jen
I find that my wood type ranges in height, probably due to wear and age; some are higher than the metal I use and some are lower. I can mix them pretty successfully though with a little care. I don’t mix large, fat faces of wood with tiny metal, but if you have some 8- or 10-line wood type it’s not so bad. Regardless of the press I’m on, I usually lock in bearers on either side of the forme to insure equal inking. Then I generally end up building up the wood type a bit. I do it by putting pieces of packing tape on the bottom side of just the letters that need a bit of uumph. Or, if you’re on a Vandy, you can just put super thin pieces of paper underneath them on the press.It’s also good to remember there’s a compromise in inking. I usually shoot to have the metal type print and ink as perfectly as possible, which often means that the wood type is a little underinked. I think this is fine because you’ll get a bit more of the character of the wood type, and the metal type will pull the weight for you in terms of readability. I think you get better results combining them when printing on a Vandy, though a C&P is definitely possible (if you’re using a smaller amount of wood type).Happy to help if you have any more questions- we’re doing a lot of mixing these days!
Keep it! You never know… we used to use ours all the time when I printed on chipboard a lot (for long runs), and there are some tips and tricks to getting it to work successfully for you. Even if you don’t plan on using it soon, it’s always good to have extra parts on hand!
I’m not sure how far he is from you, but you could check out Casey’s work:http://www.inkylipspress.com/He’s a super nice guy and does excellent work!Hope that helps,Jen
Hello,I’ve used these and found them wanting, but not for the problem you mentioned. I think they’re very frail and break easily, even when you’re inserting cards. And the ones I’ve used can’t be resealed if you have to reopen the card for any reason. Annoying! A great idea, but they just don’t seem up to snuff yet.
If you’ve scanned or gotten the images at at least 600dpi, and preferably as black and white bitmaps, you’ll be fine (though I only have experience with magnesium). If the res is too low or you don’t change them to black and white, then you’ll see a halftone screen in them, which isn’t so nice. Hope that helps!Jen
Hello,Are you belt driven or direct drive? Either way, check all the parts that connect. My presses are direct drive, and if there’s so much as a piece of masking tape on the flywheel, it’ll throw off the whole operation and it won’t spin. There’s also a chance that the brushes on the motor are worn and aren’t touching the copper wheel inside the motor (I know, my layman’s terms are atrocious). These aren’t actually brushes, per se, but a solid chunk that is held in place and must connect to the copper wheel on the inside. Sometimes when they’re worn you can adjust whatever mechanism is holding them in place to lower them a bit. I used to have this problem a lot, and I recall a bit of sparking when adjusting the brushes, but they’ve been good to go for some time now. Take a look and see if you have these in the motor (sometimes you have to lift up a cap, but they’re generally towards the outside edge). Motors need oil, too, so make sure you’re on top of that. Oh, and both of mine have an arm that comes up and out and is directly connected to my speed control. Because it’s just out in the open, it can get banged into by an errant knee (ouch), and then it completely throws off the speed control so that even when you’ve turned it up, it’s not enough. Kind of a Duh! moment, but it just happened to us last week after having an open house… someone must have bumped it out of place. In that case, you just have to move it by hand to a different position and readjust your speed control Motors are also motors, so if you can’t figure it out, you can probably find a small shop to take it to or that might come by to check it out.Hope that helps!Jen
Hello,Back in the day, we used to get this kind of stuff from: http://www.beveridgepaper.com/We used it for cd packaging, business cards and the like, as it’s thick like chipboard and comes in colors, though I’m not sure it would be great for anything that you might want to be archival. You could probably ask them about it and see what they say, but I remember it being a glorified construction paper/chipboard combination… great for fun projects, but maybe not something wedding-y?Oh, another thought would be to duplex a stock you like. We just had some success with this, just by using Studiotac and brayering it between two sheets. A bit time consuming, but I was really happy with the results, got to choose my paper, and thankfully didn’t need too much.Jen
