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.
So, Dad and I jumped into our Austen station wagon and went over there to the back lane door and loaded up four large pool table stones that were of slate with the corners cut to facilitate the corner pockets of a pool table.
We then took them over to a customer of ours who manufacturerd tomb stones and he owned a saw with a diamond blade that would cut stone.
This man cut these slates to a nice rectangular shape, just the right size to fit on top of two brand new galley cabinets that we just bought for our shop.
The slates were so heavy that it was all my Dad and I could do to lift them, but even so, we quickly determined that at about inch and a quarter thick these stones were too thin to be of all that much use. So, we put them down two thicknesses on each cabinet.
We really did not know if they were perfectly flat, but they sure looked flat and we just used them. Worked fine. This all occurred about 1950. I was rather young then and my Dad was in the prime of his life and printing career.
The costs involved were very small. My Dad gave the church caretaker a mickey of rye for the stones and we had to pay the tomb stone shop for his time in cutting these slates to shape, but we saw this as being well worth it.
Not too much more to say here. This is just one of the many things that we did and built and jury rigged to stay in business. Mostly things worked pretty good for all of my career.