Most of it is dirty, nearly all of the type is unsorted (mixed up in the post), but I'm so happy! The rollers of the five-three are sticky and seem unusable, but the eight-five's rollers appear to be okay, just a bit dirty. I have eight or so quoins and two keys, eight chases, and a variety of type and furniture. Type I have includes Gill Sans (roman, italic and bold), Times Roman (inc. bold) which came in very old but still unopened packets, and two or three other fonts that I haven't identified yet.
Closer inspection of the two presses revealed that although the eight-five seems to move well, the mechanism that rotates the ink disks has a bolt that needs replacing. No biggie there. The five-three needs a bit more work - a bolt missing, mechanism on the ink disk snapped, needs replacing. I'm not too worried about that for now though. He was a bonus, as I was only after the eight-five to start with. So I'll fix up the eight-five first, then get to the little guy.
The lovely man at Prestons Graphics (02-6280 4899, Tennant St Fyshwick) gave me a half-full pot of Pantone Black to experiment with. Neither of us were really sure if it would do the trick, but it seems to be the only ink I can source from a local supplier. If it works ok, I'll buy a few different colours and start mixing my own.
Tonight I'll be sorting more type and working out how to best clean the eight-five.
1 comment:
I've been using Pantone inks from Prestons for ages; everywhere I go I enquire about ink alternatives, but the advice I get is always to order from overseas if I want to get fussier than than. A bit (just a touch) of linseed oil is nice, especially in winter when the ink is cold.
Congratulations! I'm looking forward to following this journey!
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