I'm new here, but...

[brickmaker]

Hi there, what a brilliant website and forum! It's so good, I felt I had to register.

I've been out of printing now since 2001, when I gave away the last vestiges of our old bookbindery and the remnants of the letterpress department that I'd squirrelled away to prevent the scrapman having it. I ran a successful letterpress printing business until it was swamped by digital in the mid '90s. We had amongst our vast array of machines a Lanston Monotype Composition Caster of 1908 and a Display caster (Christmas Tree) of 1935; an Intertype C4sm of 1976 (I think) and still have the display and border mats kicking around for that! - I gave the Mono constant height moulds to the Victorian Printing Shop at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum.

We also had a very small Wharfedale by Furnival, a Titan MkII (Glockner), a 4-colour Hunter-Penrose Precision proofing press and several platens of various ages and sizes, such as a 12x18 Chandler and Price, 2xThompsons (we once had 3), 2x Arabs, a Vicobold and an Improved Cropper. We were driven out of business by the burgeoning digital market in 1994-5. No presses were scrapped. The Intertype sadly was. We weighted in around 5 tonnes of typemetal and sold on all our woodletter, borders and rarer type.

Recently I re-acquired two racks of my type, one of my guillotines and the complete bindery equipment. You know, once bitten by the bug....

...and this site? Well only too glad to pass on the knowledge where I can.

[Dave Hughes]

Welcome to the forum Brickmaker. Looking forward to your continued input 

[intertypeman]

Gosh, I was chatting to the brickmaker at Blists Hill just yesterday about printing, after the British Printing Society annual convention had closed, and he told me a very similar tale about himself. That wouldn't have been you I was talking to by any chnce, would it?

Tony