Letterpress – Page 6 – Green Chair Press Blog

Magnetic Base to Plastic Plates

Removing the magnet top from my magnetic base

Removing the adhesive under the magnet

The converted base in my platen press chasse with a plastic photopolymer plate

When I started letterpress printing, the only way to print with photopolymer was to make steel-backed plates and then use a magnetic base to mount the plate in the press. Over time I’ve acquired 4 bases in various sizes. One nagging problem with these bases is that the magnet is weak to begin with and degrades over time so that the plates don’t stay put. I resort to tape and spray adhesive to keep the plates in register.

I’ve been making due with my weakened magnet bases, but as I started work on my 2012 calendar I knew I was going to have to get the magnets replaced or go to a plastic plate system. This system, introduced half a dozen years ago, uses adhesive to attach transparent plastic plates to an aluminum base. I knew there were lots of advantages to the plastic plates (for instance they are easy to cut using scissors and because they are transparent, you can align for registration more easily using marks on the base), but I was loath to buy new bases and replace the steel-backed plates I use to print coasters and book covers.

Then John Sullivan at Logos Graphics, who makes my steel-baked plates, told me he converted his magnetic bases to use with plastic plates by removing the magnet top and replacing it with a gridded mat he got at an art supply store. He attached the mat with the same sheet adhesive used on the plastic plates (he sells it for $3 a foot plus postage).

I used a xacto knife and metal ink spatula to take off the magnet top, and cleaned off the underlying adhesive with goof-off. Then using the sheet adhesive I got from John, I applied the gridded mat.
Some final gory technical details: One mat won’t make the base high enough and John suggested red pressboard (available from NA Graphics) but I didn’t have enough, so I adhered a second mat to the bottom of the base. It helps to have a measuring caliper to get the right height. A Boxcar aluminum base is .854″ high, my magnet converted base was .860″ before and after conversion.

Book Collecting: A Bestiary

It’s been a long time since I posted a book in my artist’s book collection. Then the other day I read that the poet Kay Ryan had gotten a MacArthur Fellow Genius award. I have a broadside from a reading she did at the SF Center for the Book in 2001 hanging near my own press (that’s it to the left — click on it to get a larger image and read the poem). Ryan had allowed the Center to use her poetry in a book produced by a year-long letterpress class — the text is in Centaur, set by hand, and the drawings, by Michelle Geiger, were done in photopolymer. I also have a copy of that book, which I happily re-read. The title page is shown below.

A Bestiary, title page

L Letterpress Reviewed

Two years ago, I wrote about L, “the Letterpress combo kit [that] contains everything you need to begin letterpress printing right away.” The machine hadn’t been released yet to craft stores so it wasn’t clear how it measured up to “real” letterpress. Now it’s out, and there’s review by a non-letterpress printer and another by a professional letterpress printer. The subtitle for the later review is “The L Letterpress can produce nice printing. No, really, it’s possible. Note: I didn’t say easy.” He’s got lots of advice and tips for using the machine and making it print well. There are lots of comments on both reviews from people with experience using the new machine. (There’s a third review here with a video showing how the machine works.)

Letterpress Prints on Sale

All my limited edition letterpress prints are on sale for the month of April. Normally $18-$25, they are all now $12.

Letterpress T-Shirt

This t-shirt, from dock2letterpress, was printed using wood type on a Wesel Iron hand press (that’s it to the right of the tshirt). The form measures roughly 22″ tall by 16.5″ wide. There’s a great set of pictures of a Wesel on Flickr and some more quite amazing pictures of hand presses at the Briar Press Museum.

Letterpress Ink in Tubes

Trollop Press is selling ink in tubes. They cost less than a pound can of Van Son ink and are easier to keep from drying up. Or, as the description of the ink says “Ink in a tube means no skins & no waste!” Unfortunately they aren’t carrying many colors, but I’m going to check there the next time I need ink.