Category: Printing Advice

Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice section, here Phil discusses creating accordion folds.

If this was just an ordinary job on light weight card stock of about 9 thou; I would just comp up a form of plain old type high scoring rules and go with that.  Take the ink rollers out and run the stock through with enough impression so that the card stock folds easily.

I have often used hairline brass rule for this kind of job and scored all the scores or folds from one side.

But it all depends; for example, how thick the card stock is.  If the card stock is 12 thou or thicker, then this scoring with brass rule from one side only, will not work.  The results will be poor and there is a lot of danger that the stock will crack instead of folding like it should. Read the Full Article . . .

Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice section, here Phil discusses Bristol Board.

Bristol Board was the generic name for card stock that ranged in weight from 180 pounds for 1000 sheets of 22 x 28 inches to pretty much double that in thickness. The thickness for 180M  was just under 10 mils or thous. of an inch.
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Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice section, here Phil talks about printing posters.

A big part of our business used to be showcards and or posters. Read the Full Article . . .

Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice section, here Phil gives advice on removing a press flywheel.

Removing a flywheel, employing a wheel or gear puller is sometimes a necessity. Read the Full Article . . .

Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice section, Phil describes a very unusual print job.

One of the most interesting jobs that we ever did was to print 10 thousand wood rulers that had an angle on one edge. Read the Full Article . . .

Part of Metal Type’s Printing advice section, here Phil discusses printing paper bags.

There has been some preliminary discussion about printing paper bags of late.  Questions about soft or hard packing and what kind of plates to use, and so forth.

Here is what I ended up doing after (in some cases) years of trial and error.

I used soft polymer plates; but with this kind of plate, I had to use a very  minimal roller pressure or roller contact with the form.  I found that too heavy a roller pressure caused very rapid wear on the plate.   And I had to ask the plate maker to etch out the plate as deeply as he could.

For the most part, no makeready was required on the work that I was doing.  Just put the job on the press and in this case I used Heidelberg platens, and set the  rollers to give barely a sixteenth inch touch and run the job. Read the Full Article . . .

Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice section, here Phil discusses cutting steel rule.

I cut both steel rule and brass rule on my Rouse cutter all the time. Cutting brass is easy and as far as I can tell requires no more strength of arm or machine than cutting lead.   Read the Full Article . . .

Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice section here Phil discusses customers.

Customers: yes, the bane of every commercial shop.   Read the Full Article . . .

Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice Section, here Phil discusses printing signs.

At the start of my apprenticeship, we printed a lot of signs.  All kinds of signs.  For Sale, For Rent, Rooms to Rent, etc. Read the Full Article . . .

Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice section, here Phil tells us about Ambrosi Printers’ imposing stone.

One fine day, my Dad got a phone call from a caretaker who worked at a down town church hall, to say that the were scrapping two large, old pool tables;  and that the slates from these pool tables were available for the taking. Read the Full Article . . .