Ink Bearers

I'm not altogether happy with this setup but it got me through the job. I followed the instructions over on the Poco website for using a brass bar snugged into a slot on one side of my boxcar base. Unfortunately, the roller I have, which cost quite a lot, wouldn't span all the way to the other side of the base so I used double stick tape and combined two leading strips and just laid them on the boxcar base alongside of the polymer plate. I had trouble with the strip sticking to the tacky roller and lifting up so I devised a little masking tape sleeve into which the end of the strip would slip which reduced but didn't completely eliminate the problem. I stuck a shorter piece of masking tape face to face with a longer piece so I had a non sticky tunnel with sticky ends to tape it in place

My first inking strip was shorter and hard to handle since the whole thing would get inky. I made a second longer strip that hangs off the end of the base resulting in a clean "handle" for removing the strip before running the press. By the end of the printing session, the leading had a slight bend at the point where the boxcar base ends so that may become a problem. I'm thinking of trying to cast a wide roller myself.

Here's my apprentice (aka husband) taking the print out of the registration guides. If you look closely you might see the clear mylar "frisket" drooping below his left hand.

I saw a recipe for composition roller material in a post on Briar Press and tried it out. I made a lovely flat plate (for monoprinting), so now, once I get over the memory of the smell, I hope to try to make a roller. Just haven't figured out how to do the handle. One idea was to use an old ball bearing wooden roller and cast around that. (Lynn Starun)

Determined to get the Most from my Poco!

Hi Group,

I've had my Poco about two years. It took a while to sort out some missing bits (the stops) and get it working smoothly. Boy, it sure does love some lubrication on those gears. I wonder what product everyone likes best for that? My husband thinks I should switch from generic grease to his teflon bicycle chain lubricant.

I got a metal plate the thickness of a galley and the full size of the bed so it's now type high. I'm using Yupo as my tympan--it's durable and wipes clean. So far I've printed some book arts kinds of things with metal type and linoleum blocks and that worked pretty well but I realized registration was a big issue. A friend has a proof press and thinks I should just register on the cylinder but my experiments didn't seem to work. Since it prints from both directions I couldn't just rig up a registration device like a Vandercook would have.

I liked Neil Giroux's idea but didn't have the metal working skills to make that and didn't like the business of hanging it from the ceiling. I'm in a warehouse with a VERY high ceiling and I'm 4'11". After some thought, and looking at any other tympan/friskets I could find, I decided it would be good to have it open across the bed. Hinges need to be small and I thought of those piano hinges I saw at Home Depot. I do some bookmaking and have lots of binder board so I attached a piece to the piano hinge which can then be locked up in with the furniture. One minor drawback is that the piano hinge is a little too short but I can hold it at the right height for the hinge and if I tighten the quoins it will stay at the right height. There are two sizes of piano hinge and I used the narrower one. I make the holes with a Japanese hole punch.

The first prototype was without a frisket. I just cut a hole in the binder board where the type or image was and made registration stops on top of the binder board. I'm printing a wedding invitation right now using a boxcar base and polymer and realized the binder board alone wouldn't be a good idea. So I used some heavy mylar as an underlayer and added it to the hinge instead of making another hinge. It worked but it was a little awkward to use-kind of like opening a two page book. I cut out the print areas from the mylar and put register stops on the binder board.

I'm wondering if I can find a better material than the binder board because it's a little too thick. I like the piano hinge because it is very reliable in that is doesn't shift or wiggle. I use very short flat bolts/nuts. They are sold in the hardware store with a sort of matching sleeve and are what you might use on a photo album and I think it was called a "post". It has a very low profile head and I replaced the sleeve part with the thinnest nut I could find.

One thought I've had would be to use a some kind of sheet metal for the tympan frame/frisket frame with the center cut out so that it would not need corner hardware. I actually wondered if a hinge of duct tape would work. I really like those carbon fiber hinges I saw on the blog. Will the epoxy be strong enough to hold the frame together?

I should mention that my poco was sandblasted by the previous owner and used as a display piece.

Well, that quite enough for one post. I posted on Briar Press (Poco stops and other issues) and if you scroll down there are some more photos.

http://www.briarpress.org/15410

http://www.briarpress.org/17061

(Lynn Starun)

Wood type

Yesterday, the neighbor's grandson came visiting. Marya locked up some of our new wooden type and tried it out.

It worked fine.

Infinity Cards

Inspired by this blog posting and a font of Bradley Combination Ornaments, I printed some Infinity Cards.

I printed them on two sides and tried to get good registration. Here's the lockup for the first side.

To achieve registration, I followed ideas from Rummonds and hung the paper on points (basically thumbtacks poked through the tympan). To get the points in the right place, we begin by including a pair these specially machined point guides in the initial lockup. They are 36 points in diameter, made from stainless steel. After the lockup is prepared, we press the tympan down, so that the points guides pierce the tympan slightly, marking the location for the points. Then the point guides are removed and the holes where they were are filled with a 36-point brass, tilted over. This scheme makes a space so the points aren't smashed into furniture or spacing material when the bed is cranked through.

Here's the form inked up. See any mistakes? I didn't. The broad red stripes on either side are the roller bearers. I remove them before printing.

Here're several finished.

A closer shot.

Here's the flip side.

And here are a couple of details.

For a third pass, I locked up a pair of scoring rules to crease the paper where I'll want to fold it.

Note the crease impressed vertically. Towards the bottom left, you can see one of the points.

Here I've trimmed off the edges that had the holes for the points and chopped each piece into four strips. These fours stacks are (mis)organized for glueing.

Here's the result.

And now the mistakes become apparent :-( I can glue the rest of the stacks correctly, but there's no correcting the imposition errors.

Despite the errors, it was still fun. Next time, I'll do it in multiple colors.

Tympan and Frisket made of Steel

I have taken a different approach to materials and construction. I have constructed frames for a tympan and frisket using craft steel and metal L-brackets purchased at Ace Hardware. I have attached the frames to a large chase that I wedge into the bed of my Poco No. 1 press.

I have tried to build up the top of my typmpan frame with pressboard to bring the tympan closer to type high.

hinges

The problem of hinges for the tympan and frisket frames continues to bother me. There's just not a lot of room to work. But yesterday morning, I remembered that I had built the perfect hinges before. Even written up a web page on the subject. Behold!

I think these will solve most of my problems.

Preston

New tympan-frisket assembly, progress

The tympan framework is done and I built the frisket frame in exactly the same fashion, just a bit smaller so it nestles inside. Here are some pictures showing what tympan frame looks like, along with some details of the corners.

Here's the entire thing, upside down.

Here's a corner, from the bottom. The CF cloth makes it a little rippled on this side, but the other side (where it's glued) is quite smooth. Hmmm, that's wrong. I should have put glue on the rippled side and left the smooth side up.

And here's what it looks like from the top.

The bars are 1/8" thick and the L brackets are 1/8" thick, so the corners will fit between the cylinder and the 5/8" furniture.

Preston

Iron handpress, with pictures

I wrote earlier about our trip to pick up an iron handpress in Portland. Here are a few pictures.

There were actually 2 trips to Portland. The 1st expedition was taken aback by the size of the press and returned to Seattle with the (relatively) small parts plus renewed determination. The 2nd expedition had more people, a big truck, and a lot more tools. Here's a picture of the press frame after we got it into the truck.

And here's a picture of (most of) the crew, feeling pretty relieved that this stage went so well.

Left to right, there's Carl, Marya, Steamer, Preston, and Neil.

The next day, we delivered the beast to the library at University of Washington. We had a lot more people and things again went smoothly. Here we're wheeling it through the hallway, using a pair of safe dollies. Highly recommended.

After a fair amount of shoving, we got it positioned in the classroom. Here we are again, pretty happy about it.

Next, we had to reassemble all the parts. Luckily, Carl knows his way around these things. It was also lucky we had a large crew; cast iron is heavy.

Finally, here's a picture of Carl and Sandra, gloating over the result.

New Tympan-Frisket Assembly

On my website, I write extensively about my 1st attempt. It turned out pretty well and Marya and I have been able to print all sorts of things with it, including multi-color and double-sided jobs. Nevertheless, I'm dissatisfied. The oak bars are 3/4" wide, so we end up losing 3" from the usable length and width of the bed, a pretty high percentage. It's also hard to duplicate, requiring some woodworking for the oak and metalwork for the hinges.

I had the idea of using carbon-fiber pulltrusions, since I knew they were quite stiff, available in convenient sizes, and pretty easy to glue together. I buy them from a company called CST.

My first attempt was unsuccessful. I built the tympan frame using bars 1/8" thick by 3/8" wide, using simple lap joints to fasten the corners together. The area for the glue joint (3/8" x 3/8") was too small and the glue (epoxy) joints broke.

While I could use wider bits of CF to increase the glueable area, one of my main motivations is to recover usable area in the bed of the press; wider bars would defeat that goal. I discussed the problem with a friend of mine, Howard Rush, who can build anything. He came up with the idea of using L brackets to hold the corners together. Not only that, he helped me build them!

First, we needed some raw material. We built a plate of CF-epoxy, 1/8" thick and about 5" square (a similar plate can be ordered from CST, but we wanted to get to work right away).

Next, we laid out the 8 required L brackets on a sheet of paper and glued it (with 3M 77 spray glue) onto the plate.

Following the outlines, we cut out the individual bits, sanding them to neaten up the edges. We used Howard's table saw with a diamond blade, but it would be possible to use a Dremel tool with an abrasive cutoff wheel (aka Dangerous Disk!). By the way, I also used the Dremel tool to cut the bar to length.

Here are the pieces of the tympan frame, ready to go together. Before glueing, we sanded all the mating surfaces, then cleaned them with MEK to remove and dust, oil, etc. that might interfere with the glue bond.

We layed it out on a slightly oversized scrap of shelving, then worked for a while to ensure all the corners were square before glueing.

We held the bars in place with hand clamps and remembered to add some teflon (wax paper would be ok) to prevent glue from sticking to the shelving.

Next we mixed up a batch of high-zoot epoxy (Loctite Hysol 9430), weighing the 2 parts carefully, and brushed a thin coat on the mating surfaces. Finally, we clamped the L brackets in place, lightly (too tightly will squeeze out the epoxy). A slippery job, but it turned out ok.

Finally, we let it dry for a week (until I had a chance to visit again).

Next, we need to build the frisket frame. Same process, just sized a bit smaller.

Preston

Introduction

Hi folks,

I thought I should introduce myself. I'm a newbie in letterpress and currently restoring (or at least trying to restore) a Poco#0 press.

For the longest time I could not understand how the tympan/frisket thing works on a Poco (ps. I kept looking at Neil Giroux's photos without understanding it). Until I saw Preston's website with an explanation.

Also, there is book called "Printing on the Iron Handpress" by Rummonds that explains how the tympan/frisket works in the traditional iron handpress. Great book, worth every penny.

Anyways, I look forward to learning more about the Poco.

Regards.

[TH]

new hand press

Well sort of...

Marya, Neil, and I went down to Portland with Carl Monford this weekend to retrieve an old Reliance hand press that Carl was donating to the University of Washington. A huge old thing, but we were able to move it quite easily using a pair of "safe dollies" (normally used for moving heavy steel safes (the sort you keep money in)).

Not really related to Pocos, but it was a good expedition.

Preston

fancy registration

In his blog, here, Phillip Gallo describes a way to manage registration for irregularly shaped paper, paper without straight edges for easy alignment. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it'll work a treat.

Preston

Joining up

The aim here is a team blog, with lots of people contributing. If you'd like to contribute, send me a note (preston DOT briggs AT gmail DOT com) and I'll add you to the list of contributers.

Preston

New tympan-frisket assembly

I've started building a new tympan-frisket assembly for our press. The basic idea is the same, but I'm using bars of carbon-fiber & epoxy instead of oak. The CF is very stiff, so I expect to be able to use narrower pieces (3/8" instead of 3/4"), wasting less of the bed area. It won't look as nice as the oak, but perhaps looks aren't everything.

Other parts, knife hinges and so forth, worked out well the first time and will be the same.

I'll add some pictures when I make enough progress to be interesting.

Preston

Packing for Poco Press

Thanks Preston for setting this blog.

Hopefully it could be a single source of info

for Poco Press fans.

Currently I'm trying to restore and learn to

use a Poco Press #0. I was wondering how much

packing is used for a Poco?

I tried looking for answers online, but without luck.

Thanks.

[TH]

Starting

Thomas Hardjono found my web site (Poco Loco) and suggested I add a group blog so Poco fans throughout the world can unite with a common voice! Or perhaps just talk among ourselves, ask questions, find answers, etc.

So, here's a start. I'll make a link from the main website, invite Thomas and Neil, and see what develops.

Preston