What we did the night before Whittington

We are great admirers of the Whittington Press, and it is always a privilege to take part in their open day. It has the refreshing effect of reminding us why we do what we do. We feel at home with their FAG proofing press, and it’s great to give visitors a chance to print something on it themselves. Last year we were making a lot of posters, so we designed one for the show and took the forme with us. This year we wanted to take something we had cast.

There were several jobs to cast on Friday, in two or three different sizes, and the most convenient order in which to do them was with the Whittington job last. It all went well, and by about 5 pm Nick had everything set up and ready to go. Then he was hit on the arm by a large splash of metal. There’s a a lot of cleaning up to do after a splash to get the machine to cast properly once more, often involving cleaning out the mould. Maybe it was the time of day, or maybe it was our inexperience, but we could not make any usable type after that. First metal was leaking from the join between the mould and the matrix. Then the sorts were falling over in the type channel. By about 6 Phil thought he’d better start hand setting the same copy as insurance. He finished correcting it at about the same time as Nick brought the caster into line and and finished casting, so we could take the machine set version with us. We didn’t get out of the workshop until 9.30, though.

And the copy? We used a short excerpt from Eric Gill’s Autobiography:

And lettering has this very great advantage over the other arts; at its very base, conjoined and inseparable, are the fair and the fit – most obviously useful and depending for its beauty upon nothing but man’s musical sense. The shapes of the letters do not derive their beauty from any sensual or sentimental reminiscence. No one can say that the o’s roundness appeals to us only because it is like that of an apple or of a girl’s breast or of the full moon. We like the circle because such liking is conatural to the human mind. And no one can say lettering is not a useful trade by which you can serve your fellow men and earn an honest living. Of what other trade or art are these things so palpably true? Moreover it is a precise art. You don’t draw an A and then stand back and say: there, that gives you a good idea of an A as seen through an autumn mist, or: that’s not a real A but gives you a good effect of one. Letters are things, not pictures of things.

Adventures in Monotype

Nick has started a casting blog. As he says, ‘pretty niche, but if you’re interested it’ll be at http://adventuresinmonotype.tumblr.com‘

Pressure regulators and metal splashes

Working with the Monotype composition caster has shown us just how sensitive it is to air pressure. Air is used to raise metal pins that determine how far the die case can move in each cycle, and therefore which character is cast. If the pressure is too high the wrong pins can be raised and an incorrect character is cast. If the pressure is too low the pins may not rise, or rise too slowly, and again, the wrong character is cast.

We tried fitting a second regulator to the air supply in an attempt to maintain even pressure. It did help, but we were still getting more typos than we were happy with. We thought that the trouble might be that there were two air pipes: one to control the pins and the other to cool the die case. Both were positioned after the new regulator. Changing it round (and buying some jubilee clips that tighten up without breaking) so that the cooling tube comes off before the second regulator has made an enormous difference.

That’s not to say that everything is perfect now. This week the pump kept sticking, and we had an enormous splash of molten metal, which meant dismantling the mould to clean it out. Nick, who is doing most of the casting, thinks that now that we’re running the machine 2-3 days a week it’ll bed in and these problems will diminish.

Whittington Summer Fair

We delighted to have been invited back to the Whittington Press Open Day, part of the village’s summer fair. We have once again been given use of the Press’s FAG proofing press, and we’ll be setting something special to take with us for visitors to print.

Moons, fishes and playing cards

An unlikely combination, perhaps, and the only reason we’ve brought them together is that we have matrices for them all in one of our 10 point die cases. We cast them at the same time as the symbol founts, and now they’re in our shop.

Monotype borders

Life has been rather hectic since we got back from our holidays, and we’ve only run the caster a couple of times. The computer system that controls it depends on a web application, and as its server has been crashing and we’ve come up against some limitations of the program we haven’t achieved as much as we’d hoped. We didn’t have any words ready to go on Friday, so we thought we’d have a look at the border matrices that came as part of our installation. You can see the type sitting on the caster in our picture, and proofs of the borders themselves in our ebay store.

Internship vacancy filled

Well, the internet’s done it again. We have an intern for the two weeks from 12 July.

Great printing. Mostly

‘We make great printing,’ we say on our website. It’s quite a boast, but generally speaking we’re rather proud of the standard of our work. Sometimes, though things go horribly wrong, and this week they did, twice on the same job. We’ll spare you the gory details, and us the anguish of reliving it all, but it was not good. We can’t even put it right as we’re away on holiday next week.

On a more positive note, we’ve had a second regulator fitted to the compressor, so now our Monotype caster is getting much more even air pressure. We’ve done a little testing, and so far we’re quietly optimistic that it’s going to help greatly.

Internship vacancy, 12-23 July

Please send us an email if you’d like to take up the place. We’ll post here again when the vacancy’s filled.

Type and spaces on sale

We moved in our Monotype machines just over six months ago, and today we’ve put our first batch of type and spaces on our ebay store. We’ve also set and printed a couple of small jobs for ourselves.

The operation isn’t as smooth as we’d like yet, because we’re not getting constant air pressure from our compressor. There’s someone coming to fit another regulator tomorrow, and we hope that’ll make a difference.