Nnooooo, indeed. Lettra is incredibly thirsty. It can really soak up letterpress ink, so I can only imagine what it does with watercolor … terrifying.

I tried to recommend this, but the bride’s grandmother was hand painting full-color watercolor flowers for each of her 5 pieces. Yeaaaaaaah. So, that complicated things.

I actually found a local printer in town who has done offset printing on Lettra Digital (and Savoy Digital, my preference), which is about 90lb instead of the standard 110lb. They wanted to test the paper, though, because like you mentioned, long runs often get terrible results. Luckily, I only need about 150 prints (200 would be preferred, but my bride only needs 90 invite suites total), so at least I’m not printing too much. Our hope is to gang up all the work on a single 12×18 or 19×13 sheet and then cut after, which also made me happy that they included cutting in the estimate. It turned out to be only $250 to get all 5 pieces printed. Not too bad, in my opinion.

That said, I sent a quote and samples and haven’t heard anything back from the bride … soooooo … hmm.

Um, yeah. That’s a great deal, indeed. Thanks for sharing their name! I’m totally going to get in touch now.

This is really great, Danielle. Thank you so much for sharing! I now really want to pick up a halftone test plate myself and see what different results I get on my presses. The links on your blog post were also really inspiring. 

I went to the website of Concord Engraving and it said they’re under construction? Is their website just not … updated? 

How’s your experimenting going? 

Sold! (As of today.) Thanks for asking! I’ll delete this thread.

Are you asking about multiple colors and halftones or single colors and halftones? 

I just took a letterpress intensive last week and we talked some about halftone printing; I can always send my professor an email if you’d like. He’s got some experience with halftones and letterpress, even showing us a 4-color postcard he printed for an event. It was nice.

When you start adding multiple colors and using halftones, you have to rotate the angles of each subsequent color halftone in order to prevent a moire pattern. I believe the usual rotations used my silkscreen printers can apply to letterpress.

100LPI may also be “too fine,” even if it’s recommended. I believe 80-85LPI may produce a pretty decent, consistent result, but that may depend on what kind of plates you’re printing with.

Anyway, let me know what your more specific questions are and if no one else chimes in here, I’m happy to hit up my instructor at the Book Arts Center here in C’ville and see what answers I can get for you. (Hello, fellow Virginian! 🙂 )

You’re printing your hand-carved blocks using a letterpress printing press? That counts as letterpress to me! 🙂

Still available! Get this adorable thing out of my studio!

Lemon juice + vinegar = natural, easy rust cleaner. It’s the best.

Then, of course, oil that baby up and put it to use. 

I don’t see the need to take the press apart unless is’t really nasty. 

Thanks! That’s helpful. With a tabletop hand press, you won’t get as deep an impression as you could with a platen stand-alone press. I have never used an Adana, but I know the mechanism for closing the platen is different than my C&P Pilot. 

I definitely think experimenting with packing (I think you want hard packing for a crisp, deep impression) is a good place to go now that you’ve already dampened some paper. It depends on the surface area of your business cards. I have switched from printing 2-up on my Pilot to 1-up and now get a much better impression. I have even done some nice knock-out text.

However, the more inked area I’m printing, the less impression I can get because the pressure is spread out. Does that make sense?

Here are some examples. It’s somewhat hard to see, but I do not have as much bite into the paper as perhaps is preferred by some people. My Pilot is an Old Style, however, and I’m not about to break it:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/niftysmith/13168613545/in/photostream/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/niftysmith/12972978954/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/niftysmith/13808125113/

I get the best impression when printing simple text:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/niftysmith/12972977964/

All of the above examples are on 600gsm Lettra, but I have never tried dampening the paper.’

I’m guessing since the area of your Adana is a bit smaller than my Pilot, you’ll have even less wiggle room to get a good impression. I believe that with care, a deep bite is still possible, but you truly have to weigh the risk of damaging your press over making a nice print. 

So, if dampening helps, go for it. If adjusting the packing helps, do both! 

Really hoping to get this lovely press out of our basement and of use to someone. Again, definitely a bit more open on the price. Let me know if you’re looking for a Pilot. Perhaps my caveats make things sound worse than they are …? 

What kind of press are you using? What size is your printed area? You won’t get much of an impression depth if you’re printing a large area on a small press. Usually you’re limited to about 1/4-1/3 of your base size in order to get a decent print, especially if you want an impression. 

I have only dampened Lettra in order to get better inking results (such as for a knock-out print with white text and an inked background). It has improved impression depth a little, but I find playing with my packing yields the best results in terms of impression depth.

Let us know what you’re working with and we can troubleshoot from there!

Wow! A Ludlow! I have never seen one in person, only on Youtube. How exciting!

Did you get an answer or did you end up doing it yourself?

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