Whittington Summer Show

We will once again be at the Whittington Summer Show this year. It takes place on 5 September, and you can see the gorgeous poster here. The illustrations were hand stenciled by Miriam Macgregor, and we think it’s worth going just for the chance of picking one up.

As last year, we’ll be on the proofing press. We are currently putting together some type for a poster which we’ll be taking with us so that those who want to can print their own copy. We’ll have other posters too, as well as books and cards.

Cropper treadle platen

This Acme Cropper treadle platen used to be in Bruton Museum in Somerset. They no longer have room for it, and Lucy and Robert Carter have given it a temporary home. They would like to pass it on, together with some type, to someone who can use it.

If you’re interested please contact Lucy.

New guillotine

We upgraded our guillotine recently. The one we bought when we moved to Pinchin Street really wasn’t up to the job. Our instincts are to buy good quality tools but we were spending an awful lot at the time and the price of a decent paper cutter scared us off.

Sadly it proved to be a false economy. We can safely say that we would not recommend the Laser 66. It always seemed to have an intermittent fault that didn’t show itself when an engineer was present. Most annoyingly, it wouldn’t cut through some of the paper we use, often leaving the bottom sheet or two intact. And we soon found that we need to cut paper bigger than SRA2, its maximum size, more frequently than we thought.

Now we have a Wohlenberg 76 SPM that cuts beautifully. It’s solidly built and has an airbed, and we’re happy with it so far. There have been a couple of teething problems, one machine related and the other user error, but so far it looks like we’ve made the right choice.