So in this post I showed that I made a letterpress. It took me a weekend to make the letterpress but Sunday night I was able to do my inaugural print run with it. Here are the basic steps for doing a run:
- Ink the plate.
- Attach the paper.
- Slide in the plate.
- Pump the jack to engage the press and press the paper onto the inked plate.
- Release the press and remove your finished print.
Here is a video of me doing just that:
And now here are some additional pictures.
This is the ink I used: Van Son Rubber Base. It’s the same one we used in my letterpress class.
Here’s the inked up brayer. It may not be very obvious, but I used waaaaay too much ink. Here’s what happens when you use too much ink:
So sad. All sorts of smudgies.
But when you do it correctly, this is what you get:
And finally the complete run (minus the smudged reject):
Hi, what kind of brayer are you using? Do you run into any alignment issues? I’m in the process of making my own letterpress too but I am favoring putting the bottle jack beneath the platen so that the pressure jacks upward. It seems easier to me to lay the paper down straight on the platen when you’re looking down at it, then just applying ink onto the fixed plate on top of the letterpress.
I’m wondering if you have any insight on what I’m considering on doing since you’ve had the ample time to put yours to good use. Any suggestions?
Great job by the way and thanks for sharing!
Thanks!
I’m just using whatever cheap brayer I picked up at the local art store. I haven’t done anything that requires specific alignment although I do have plates for something which would. I would need another color ink for that project which I haven’t picked up yet.
I agree it would be easier to put the paper on that way. I have plans to fix it up so that it’s easier for me to put on the paper, but I haven’t done that yet. But yeah, the way it is, it is a pain to load the paper. You’ll need to consider how to do the inking though as I had to ink between each time which could also get annoying if you can’t see it.
Heheh . . yeah, I have had ample time to use it, but I haven’t since making it. I have the plates for additional prints, but not the time. Too many projects, I suppose.
This is great, thanks! I’m considering making my wedding invitations this way. How do you load the paper? You say it’s a pain… how does that work? Do you have any picts showing how the paper sits in there? Thanks again, great post!
Hi, Megan,
Hmm, I’m not sure if I have any pictures. You might be able to see it a bit in the video. Basically what I did was put sticky stuff on the back–the removable scrapbooking vellum tape–which I would then rub off, kinda like rubber cement. You had to be very careful when rubbing it of that you didn’t mess up your paper which is annoying. I marked on my cork board where it was supposed to go, but you have to kinda lean over to stick it in there and see the marks and then hope for the best. I would have preferred a faster method.
What I plan to do when I have the chance (probably in another couple of weeks after unpacking) is put thicker cork board and use staples, bookmark tabs or another piece of metal that I can just slide the corners of my paper into. I will let you know how that works.
I just built this over the weekend. to replace the L Letterpress that i bought & quickly broke. Did you order a certain type of plate? i have custom plates from boxcar press (the kf152 they recommended for the l letterpress) but i can’t get the plate to make an impression…
Thanks in advance!
I used the kf152 (deep relief) as well. I didn’t get quite as deep an impression as I would have liked. But one thing that I found helped greatly was adding the corkboard to the platen. It gave the plate something to press into. I tried it without the corkboard and the paper barely looked touched..
Hi there! I was wondering if you ran into any registration issues with getting the paper to line up, and also, how you got every print in the same place. It’s impossible to see where the paper is on the platen, and I’m looking for help with my own press. Thanks!
Not really. I had markers on the cork that told me where to line up one corner of my paper (admittedly it was a little annoying to put the paper in since I had to crouch down low enough to see the top of the platen). One thing I’ve seen recommended is to use metal bookmarks or picture corners stuck into the cork so you can slide the corners of you paper into it and do it by feel rather than by sight.