Well, that was work getting our 1869 Hoe Washington #5 hand press stripped and primed.

We took the Hoe down to the bare metal by using a wire brush on our drill, coating it with paint stripper, cleaning it thoroughly, coating it again with paint stripper, cleaning it thoroughly, and then using the wire brush and drill to just take the dust off the surface. That took a total of about 20 hours spread over 7 days.
The hard part to figure out was how to get the bed off (the horizontal piece just in front of Jill). We pulled the bed until it was out from under the platen (the large, horizontal between Jill & Ray) as far as it would go. The bed likely weights in at maybe 400 pounds. As it is shown in this photo, it is upside down. We bought all of those 4″ x 6″ boards at Loew’s and crisscrossed them until we were near the height of the bed. Ray could lift one end enough to slip in a small pieces of 4″ x 6″ and 2″ x 8″ until it was 1″ off the rails (piece on top of the saw horses). Then repeated that for the other end of the bed.

Then we could lift the rails out from under the bed and platen. Not sure how much it weighs, but it is just about the limit of what Jill and I can pick up.

Then the hard part was trying to figure out how to get the bed turned over so we had easier access to the part we wanted to paint (the top of the bed is a smooth, flat, metal surface.

The bed has two round bars (not sure what these are called) that stick out of each end of the bed. Normally, this is used to attach straps that allow you to crank the bed in and out from under the platen between each print. We took two pieces of 4″ x 6″ x 2′ and knotched it to hold a metal bar to keep it from moving from side to side. Ray would pick up one end of the bed, Jill would move the supports until they was out under the round bars. We had to be sure that it was high enough so it would rotate the bed while not hitting the rest of the supporting boards. We did this to both ends, being careful to hold the bed to keep it from automatically rolling over. Once it was rolled over (upside down so we could strip the part we wanted to paint), Ray picked up the end again and Jill moved the supports back under the bed.

Voila.

The thing we have left to do related to cleaning is to get the rust off the top of the bed, the bottom of the platen (which is pretty rusty), and from the various other pieces of unpainted metal (figure 4 toggle, etc.). It seems that the press had not been in use for a while. The printer we bought it from had the press for three years and never pulled a print from it. He had no idea how long it had been sitting from the place he bought it from. It would really be nice to be able to track down the history of the press, but I think that is going to be hard, if not impossible.

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