We’ve been wanting to do some long printing via letterpress. We finally got around to building something that allows us to do it. Below is the first test print of about 70 inches.

You can see our second attempt at printing long for Birthdayscape 2009 here.

Above, Ray and Jill hold a birthday card which gives you some idea of the scale. We used a handrolling technique with about 6 colors on the type.

Below is a schematic of what we ended up building.

All of the materials were bought from a local Home Depot.

We used the roller from a C&P proofing press. You might notice that it has an outer edge that is slightly raised. We aren’t sure this is standard for this kind of roller. We think that when the proofing press was new there was some kind of cloth tympan wrapped around the roller. We are printing directly on the metal without using any kind of packing.

The material indicated in light grey is 3/4″ particle board with white melamine coating (often used for shelving). We bought a 24″ x 8′ piece and cut it down using a table saw.

The black L-shapes are angle iron we bought in 4′ lengths (4 total). This material might be different in different stores. As it turns out the thickness of the metal was exactly right for our first try. The thickness of the lip on the roller and the thickness of the angle iron was almost exactly 1 pica. That plus the 3/4″ thickness of the particle board plus the white melamine coating gave us a printing height of 0.917″. We produced our first test prints without any additional packing.

We’ll want to try putting something under the angle iron to raise it a bit on our next try which would allow us to sandwich a second piece of paper to cushion the pressure between the paper we are printing on and the roller. I think we were so surprised at how close it was to the height we wanted, we just went with it, as is.

Only the sides and bottom were screwed together. The 1″ strips of particle board were held in place by the type, furniture and quoins. The angle iron was kept in place by the pressure and width of the roller. We were careful as we rolled from one piece of angle iron to the other, but honestly, it was no problem at all. When we cut the piece for the bottom of the press, we calculated the width so there was only 1/16″ gap between the roller and the angle iron. The roller stayed in alignment along the printing path without any problems.

The paper we used was from a roll of photographic seamless paper (9 feet wide by 36 feet long- $71 when we bought the roll about a year ago - and enough paper to produce about 72 pieces like shown above). We cut about 8 inches off the roll using a radial arm saw and then cut that into two 9-foot lengths to give us  room to hold the paper at the ends as we printed.

This image shows Tray and Jill locking in the type. We used 1″ x 2″ wood as wood furniture. We cut the 1″ x 2″ in one place to accommodate the comma. We screwed the side pieces to the bottom every 4″. When we tightened the quoins snuggly, but didn’t push it.

We utilized a technique we use quite often by inking with multiple small rollers and multiple colors. Below shows the type after the third of the four pieces we printed. In the lower right is just a piece of corrugated cardboard that’s keeping the roller from rolling to the left.

The paper process worked like this. We would put one end of the paper under the roller and hold it tight against the floor. The other end was held about 1′ above the other end of the type. As the roller moved across we moved the unprinted end closer to the type, but let the roller actually push the paper against it.

The best results we got in this first try was leaving the paper stuck to the wood type as it was printed. Then once we got to the middle of the last letter and while the roller still had pressure on the paper we lifted the printed paper. Once it was up to the roller we tried to carefully print the last half letter and freed the paper.

We will likely work out a better process after a couple more tries on a book project we are just starting. We’ll show photos of that result in a few days.

Once it was dry we trimmed the piece square as shown in the top photo.

You can see our first attempt at edition printing here.

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