We have a Chandler & Price 8 x 12 built in 1903 that we want to save. It appears to have been broken completely in half vertically, right down the middle. There has been a weld on every cast iron part through that plane.

We want the press because it has a treadle. When we do workshops related to the C&P platen presses we want one that treadles. Our C & P 10 x 15 is motorized. Treadling has a nice quality to it when you are feeding paper with your right hand, taking printed paper off with your left hand, standing on your left foot, and treadling with your right.

When we got around to cleaning off the decades of dust, grit, oil, etc. before we move it into our space (with nice clean floor) we found that the last remaining part that hadn’t been welded was ‘broken.’ As it turns out, Lenny, who has a shop right across the parking lot in our industrial complex where we rent our studio space can weld cast iron. He also has a forklift. Ain’t life grand.

He came over, picked up the press, drove the 120 feet over to his place and welded it back together in about 3 minutes. The left photo above is Lenny grinding the weld down to make it pretty. We kind of want to leave it well exposed as this is our first weld.

Then he gave Jill and I a demo on welding. Neither of us had ever done it and quite frankly I don’t think either of us had ever been this close to it. The right photo is Jill leaning into her test, watching the metal boil and pile up as you moved the torch (not sure of the word) along a trial piece of metal. Just for the record, every one of those little what-appears-to-be-a-bit-of-molten-iron mortars is as hot as it looks like it is.

We are definitely getting deeper into this letterpress life. Very cool to give that a try.

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