Monday, November 19, 2007

Paper, bases, guillotine, test prints.

Today's little achievements:

I've ordered a roll of BFK Rives 300gsm white from
Melbourne Etching Supplies. THEY HAVE A SALE ON! Nothing like spending one of your last paychecks on paper. It'll be a couple of weeks before that arrives.

I've found someone that can make a metal base for me! WOO HOO! Tomorrow I'll be taking the base that I borrowed from &Duck (yes, I still have it. I'm bad) to Greg to illustrate what I need, then getting a quote for how much it'll cost me. Oh, and &Duck: I'll let you know how much they are in case you need some. I'll try to set it up so it has a magnetic top, and find a way to put a metal base on my polymers to prevent curling - perhaps a metal sheet the size of the base, which I mount the plate onto? I've never seen a metal-backed polymer before, so I'm guessing here.

Oh, and a friend of mine who works at an offset printers can organise guillotining of my next set of cards - phew! Still got sore fingers from cutting on Saturday.

Now, to today's printing. Here's a couple of pics of more test prints. They're much better than yesterday's, but I'm still not happy enough to run the final version. Stinking hot weather doesn't help either. It's going to be so nice to print all day and have time to work things out.







2 comments:

Ampersand Duck said...

Metal-backed polymer is about the same thickness as plastic polymer, so by laminating plastic onto metal, you're going to end up with a plate that is twice as thick as a 'normal' plate.

I have some metal-back plate, but it's old and out of date. Still good to look at if you want to clap eyes on it. I don't use it because I find it hard to cut into useful sizes (plastic is far more accommodating), but if you were to get it cut in bulk to a standard working size, it could be ok.

Poppy Letterpress said...

Hrm, the height issue makes sense.

Might be something to consider for a special job, but I might just stick to plain ol' polymers for now. Thanks for the tips. Next time I'm at the school, I might have a squizz at your metal backed one.