I keep a Heidelberg windmill and two Adana presses in a rented workshop, and this
page is where I write down what worked and what jammed. Nothing here is instructional —
it is a notebook, and notebooks are allowed to be wrong.
Current bench
Heidelberg T-platen, 10×15 — new grippers fitted in spring
Adana 8×5, mostly for proofs and small runs
Caslon and Gill Sans in 10, 12 and 18 pt; a partial case of Bodoni
Hand-mixed rubber-based inks, mixed by weight, never by eye
Notes from recent runs
Damp cotton stock takes a deeper bite but curls badly if stacked warm.
Packing height matters more than pressure. Two sheets of tympan was enough.
A worn quoin will drift a full point over three hundred impressions.
Cleaning solvent left on rollers overnight will glaze them. Learned twice.
Reading
Updike, Printing Types — slow going, worth it
Chappell & Bringhurst, A Short History of the Printed Word
Assorted trade manuals from the 1930s, found in a box at a fair