I Heart Letterpress

I loves me some letterpress so I was super excited to finally take a letterpress class this weekend. The class was offered by the Center for Book Arts and called Polymer and the Platen Press. Our amazing instructor was Amber McMillan.

I’ve had a Kelsey press for a couple of years but I’ve never had any idea how to use it. After this class I am ready! Now I just need to spend a few hundred dollars on other supplies

Since it was a polymer class we used polymer plates rather than type. I think this is definitely the way to go.  I will eventually post some photos of the finished product but here is an outline of what we did to print after the jump.

1. Setup the chase
   We used Boxcar bases for our polymer plates. We first had to secure them in the chase using furniture (pieces of wood and metal) and quoins that tighten everything in place.  We could then take the adhesive backed plate and position it on the base.
   
2. Inking
   The next step is to ink the press.  We used Van Son rubber based inks, which you can use to mix Pantone colors. We mixed a teal color using blue and green inks.  You dab a little ink on the plate and then trip. Tripping is operating the press in non-print mode. So the rollers work as normal but the platen never makes an impression on the paper. This allows the ink to spread on to the rollers.
3. Setting up the Print
   After the press is inked you insert the chase and do a test print on to the tympan paper. This is an oiled paper that goes on the printing surface.  You use this test print to determine your paper placement.  In the photo below we are printing that blue swallow graphic under Christine’s left hand.
   
   After determining where we wanted our image to sit on the paper we marked the bottom and left edges of the paper.  We then made marks about a quarter inch outside of these lines for the paper guides. To place the paper guide you make a 3/4″ slit in the tympan paper then slide it into the slit and position it so it lines up with the paper edge line.  You put 2 guides on the bottom and one on the side.

   Then you need to check to make sure that your guides clear the base and anything else. They cost over $9 each and the base is at least $150 so you want make sure nothing gets damaged.

4. Test printing
   Now that everything is setup, the real fun begins. Printing! We put a piece of paper in and ran a test print. Getting a good print is tricky and you can spend HOURS tweaking your print. We ended up needing to move our placement around as well as lowering the rollers and changing our packing.Let me explain how the platen press works a bit. So the rollers roll over the polymer plate depositing ink the the plate is punched onto the the paper to make the print. If the rollers are too low they will deposit too much ink on the plate. If they are too high they will deposit too little ink. So you actually end up putting electrical tape on the sides of the press to raise or lower the rollers.

   One of the attractions of letterpress printing is the impression the plate makes on the paper. To get a good press this needs to be even and it can be difficult to get a good impression when some parts of the image a delicate lines and others are heavy fill.  One way to adjust this is packing. Packing is material (usually paper or board) that is placed behind the paper to allow the plate to strike more evenly. You can also use cellophane tape on the tympan paper to do “site specific packing”.

   These are just a couple of things you do as part of the make-ready for printing. Obviously, I’m just a novice at this but it took a fair amount of time and guidance to get our prints. Amber said she’s had jobs that took her hours to setup.

5. Printing
   Once we had the press setup to print the way we wanted, we cleaned the ink off our hands with gojo and got printing.  Christine and I were on the Chandler & Price Treadle press which is a little more complicated than the table presses. As you treadle the press gets momentum so you have to watch your hands as you switch the paper. I took a short video that I need to upload to vimeo.
   

Anyway, in conclusion this class was superfun and I’d totally go back and take another. I’ll hopefully get that video up and some pictures of my prints tomorrow.