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gementYesterday I went on a field trip for school! Okay, for a club that I signed up to VP because it has almost no responsibilities. But that means that the President and Vice President of the iSchool's Bookarts Interest Group (Notorious B.I.G. for short) drove up past Sedro Wooley to visit an AMAZING pair of local printers.
They have a converted barn full of printing presses. All different makes and models, probably a dozen of the giant free-standing kind and more little hand presses up on shelves and tucked in corners. Bureaus and bureaus of drawers of type. The enormity of storing movable type had never occurred to me before.
Then the room where they pour their own movable type on demand, which is an amazingly cool process: First they use a complicated keyboard to type out the sequence of letters they want onto a paper tape like a player piano reel. Then they feed the tape into another machine that moves a little mold matrix around and shoots hot metal into it! Then you get new-minted movable type, already typeset in the order you want. That means you can edit and fiddle with it. When you're done, you can sort it into drawers or dump it back into the machine to melt it down for MORE new-minted movable type.
Then the shed (another large garage-sized building) full of more movable type and small presses collected by a former housemate of theirs. Then the attic of the barn, which is a light and airy bookbinding studio where their design and final stitching and pressing stuff happens.
In-between the type-making room and the shed, we stopped for a picnic lunch supplemented by the first crop of cherries from their Bing tree, which we picked and then immediately put on the picnic table.
I was sitting with my legs stretched out on the bench/railing of a shady porch with dry hot weather and a nice breeze, looking over sun-baked yellow grass pastures. At just the right angle up from my eyes, a skyline of hills or low mountains cut a nearly flat line across the just-right-colored blue sky, and every time I would look up at it I felt Home. But with more fresh organic cherries and amazing skilled book geeks.
I took a long car ride out into cow country and brown fields. I saw the sky and hills, and lay lazy in the heat. I got to feed carrots to their neighbors' horses. I start a job next Wednesday, and I've had a rest but it never quite felt like Vacation. This helped with that a lot.
Sitting update: Yesterday's morning sit (25 min) was performed to the mental tune of "Do de duck". That was okay. I just let it play. Over. And over. And over. I also sat 20 min last night with Jason. My foot fell asleep and I spent two thirds of the time worried that I hadn't set the timer. I haven't sat yet today and I'm expecting L soon, so we'll see if it happens today.
They have a converted barn full of printing presses. All different makes and models, probably a dozen of the giant free-standing kind and more little hand presses up on shelves and tucked in corners. Bureaus and bureaus of drawers of type. The enormity of storing movable type had never occurred to me before.
Then the room where they pour their own movable type on demand, which is an amazingly cool process: First they use a complicated keyboard to type out the sequence of letters they want onto a paper tape like a player piano reel. Then they feed the tape into another machine that moves a little mold matrix around and shoots hot metal into it! Then you get new-minted movable type, already typeset in the order you want. That means you can edit and fiddle with it. When you're done, you can sort it into drawers or dump it back into the machine to melt it down for MORE new-minted movable type.
Then the shed (another large garage-sized building) full of more movable type and small presses collected by a former housemate of theirs. Then the attic of the barn, which is a light and airy bookbinding studio where their design and final stitching and pressing stuff happens.
In-between the type-making room and the shed, we stopped for a picnic lunch supplemented by the first crop of cherries from their Bing tree, which we picked and then immediately put on the picnic table.
I was sitting with my legs stretched out on the bench/railing of a shady porch with dry hot weather and a nice breeze, looking over sun-baked yellow grass pastures. At just the right angle up from my eyes, a skyline of hills or low mountains cut a nearly flat line across the just-right-colored blue sky, and every time I would look up at it I felt Home. But with more fresh organic cherries and amazing skilled book geeks.
I took a long car ride out into cow country and brown fields. I saw the sky and hills, and lay lazy in the heat. I got to feed carrots to their neighbors' horses. I start a job next Wednesday, and I've had a rest but it never quite felt like Vacation. This helped with that a lot.
Sitting update: Yesterday's morning sit (25 min) was performed to the mental tune of "Do de duck". That was okay. I just let it play. Over. And over. And over. I also sat 20 min last night with Jason. My foot fell asleep and I spent two thirds of the time worried that I hadn't set the timer. I haven't sat yet today and I'm expecting L soon, so we'll see if it happens today.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 08:18 pm (UTC)(and a slight tinge of bitterness, 'cause the MLIS kids are so much cooler...)
That's an incredible day.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 09:37 pm (UTC)I LOVE printing presses. This is a big reason why I love my job, where I work with flexography printing. I get to go on the production floor and watch the presses, and give approvals once they get things set up before they start printing each job. I also love the Graphics & platemaking portion of things, where I get to fill in when someone from that department is on vacation.
Still, I'm envious of your tour. It sounds delightful. I'm drooling at the thought of it. Do you know any of the names of the models you saw? It also sounds like a kind of printing I haven't yet seen in person. I've only worked with offset & flexo. The type of text you describe does not sound like offset. Sounds older.
What materials were they using to make the type? Was it simply rubber?
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 01:38 am (UTC)This is totally old school stuff. Some of the presses were new enough to use some electricity, but very few. Steel and grease and giant flywheels and counterweights and lead type and ink and friskets (masks) made of cardboard, blackened with use. Pretty much all by hand.
I'll see if I can get some model names from La Presidenta, who was squeeing with delight at every new model that she'd never seen in person before.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 05:47 pm (UTC)The printing tour sounds wonderful. I'm quite jealous (and distinctly curious as to how the moveable type pourer actually works... my brain isn't wrapping around it particularly well)
-B
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 05:58 pm (UTC)So the reel says, "Move it so Q is centered," then there's a crucible of hot metal that shoots some in. There must be a little containing wall that makes the edges of the letter block, then a cooling time so the block is solid, then some kind of shake-out mechanism that puts the new-minted letter in next to the other finished letters. Then it starts on the "u". I guess.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-04 04:33 am (UTC)