Garage printing press party

My friend…

and fellow U of G alumnus, Mr. Matthew Reynolds, had…

a really cool get-together Friday night, that featured…

multiple printing presses and one of the most spectacular arrays of awesome food/beer I’ve ever seen at a makerly meetup.  The star of the show was Matthew’s 1953 Heidelberg press.  The auto-tire-sized flywheel (above) is driven by a whopping 1.5hp electric motor powered off 220VAC.  The massive clutch lever (for lack of the real term) on the right is impressive and evokes memories of steam engines (and I rarely use the word “evoke”).  You can see one in action here.

The Heidelberg weighs in at around 2400 lbs.  In an age where digital printing machines have soaked up a lot of the work, these older presses are still frequently used to perforate, deboss, and crease forms, wedding invitations, whatever.

This particular machine spent a lot of its pre-Matthew life printing red numbers on tickets.  Flecks of red are still apparent.

The windmill (above) moves the forms from the input tray vacuum pick-ups to the platen for printing and then to the output tray.

These presses were usually made with English labels for the North American market, so clearly this one was an out-of-channel unit straight from Germany.

It’s impressive as hell to see Matthew drive this thing: tweak a lever…

adjust a setting…

turn up the vacuum on the pickup.

Here’s the magnesium printing plate Matthew had made up to do this demo.

It was cool to hear printing-savvy peeps talk the lingo at this meetup.

Equally fascinating were…

the bits and tools that go along with the trade.

Here the printer employs a different press, hand-inking to produce…

this sample.  The ink had dried a bit and was cold, causing sub-optimal registration on this test.

Individual metal type…

recovered from a basement somewhere.

I love…

these old…

machines.

Thanks a ton, Matthew!  Always a privilege to visit another maker’s shop/studio and a pleasure to learn about an unfamiliar domain.

Happy making,

DW