Officially Printing at Home

Just a couple of weekends ago I picked up THIS printing press from a neighborhood vintage sale.  I've had a few opportunities to test this baby out.  Here are a couple of results :



















On the left is the first print which was pulled from the type already set upon purchase.  The right print is obviously my own creation.

From the research I've done, this press is considered a Sign Press and was used most predominantly in the 60's by department stores. It seems as though they made signs to represent their store hours and often to inform passersby of upcoming sales.   I love that the type set prior to my purchase was an actual store sign.

My press is a very simple press all inside a metal travel box.  The metal box has three drawers (1 for type, 1 for the roller mechanism, and a narrow one that I'm using to store the wood spacers), and the inner flat space is used to lay the type and pull the print.  This press came with 3 sizes of the same font.  The type seems to be made from a rubber or linoleum material.  I'm hoping to acquire some wood or metal fonts to try out on this press as well.

One downfall is that this press doesn't have any way to increase or decrease impression pressure.  However, it only weighs 50 lbs or so, which is a very decent tradeoff.  I'm doing a bit of research and testing to see if felts or extra "padding" under the type tray will help increase the type impressions.  I look forward to posting more of my printing experiments in the near future.