ODDS & ENDS

Business cards can be handfed by holding some cards face-down in the palm of your right hand like a deck of cards. Feed them by turning your hand thumb-down and pushing off the bottom card with your thumb into the guides. A secretarial tack compound or a rubber thumb cover helps feed. Old-timers used to pour a little glycerin on a wad of cotton in an inkcan lid and work some into their fingers from time to time to make them tacky.

To hand-deliver small sheets without smearing the ink, attach a strip of sandpaper to your finger with a rubber band.

Turn upside-down the sheets as they are delivered to keep their original order.

Closed booklets can be fed by hand with the spine at the top of the platen.

Put a C & P handfeed on impression as the press begins to open.

If a handfed sheet misfeeds, let it go. Everything can be replaced but your hand.

A muffin tin makes a good holder for screws, washers, copper and brass thin spaces, etc. So does a spare typecase.

I never make a single mistake at printing—I always make five hundred or a thousand. The shop loses money when it must correct its own mistakes.

Mark the guide and gripper on the top sheet if you are sending the job on for finishing.

Keep samples. Keep work organized by using job tickets—large envelopes or sleeves that hold the paperwork associated with the job, and which accompany the job from station to station. They can be numbered and filed in order. A card file or a computer file can cross-reference them to help retrieve them. A good numbering system is one that shows the year as well as the job number. For instance, 80001 could be job number one of 2008 (or of 1980).

Keep time on jobs to get a sense of what to charge and to bid on future jobs. To simplify calculations, printers use an hour of ten six-minute “units”. Take a surcharge on buy-outs. Depreciation is an expense.

Single-entry bookkeeping is probably enough for a sole proprietorship.

Keep forms standing to avoid the expense of locking them up again. Seek new work—old work is always disappearing.

When there is no work, set yourself a project that will be useful, advertise your shop, and teach you something. Think Poor Richard’s Almanac.

Number of impressions in 36 seconds × 100 = impressions per hour.

To divide an 11-inch sheet (say) into thirds or fourths, place a ruler across it at an angle with zero on one edge and 12 on the other. Thirds fall at 4 and 8 on the ruler, and fourths at 3, 6, and 9.

A composing saw is very desirable in the composing room. Let it have a printer's blade, with carbide teeth that cut a kerf six points wide. It will cut wood, lead, zinc, magnesium, aluminum, brass, and copper.

Do not cut anything but leads and slugs on a lead and slug cutter.

Perforating and scoring rule can be cut with a shipping strap band cutter of the correct design.

Do not mix chips and sawdust of various metals together. Linotype, Ludlow, and Intertype metal, and lead rules and slugs are of the same alloy and may be mixed. Foundry type and Monotype are harder alloys. Zinc is especially harmful to the alloy of linotype metal. Brass contains zinc.

Lead, in its metallic form, I do not believe to be particularly dangerous. Lead compounds that are bio-available, such as lead oxide, are poisonous. Keep a fingernail brush next to the hand cleaner. Advice from a bullet-caster: When remelting linotype metal, do not tuck your pants into your boots.

Cover the spokes of the press flywheel with a disk of cardboard or sheet metal to avoid dangerous entanglements.

A paper micrometer is useful, as is a table of decimal equivalents.

Type-high is .918 inch. Five and one-half picas is very close to type-high. American Type Founders’ Association standards are:

A good dictionary is the foundation of a printing library. Keep a notebook.

Expect the instruction book with any press you buy. Send the instruction book with any press you sell.

Cultivate ties to local printers. They will take an interest in your progress. They may sell or give away paper off-trimmings.

To set skip-3’s. Using backwards machines, the last sheet off the press is the first sheet of the job. Suppose it to be numbered 1001, 1002, and 1003. The first sheet off the press has the last number of the job. Suppose it to be 2000. In which position should the number 2000 fall? Observe that on any given sheet, only one of the three numbers is evenly divisible by three, and that this number falls always in the same position on the sheet. In the example, the number 1002, in second position, is evenly divisible by three, as is the number occupying the second position of every sheet (and only that number). Therefore, the number 2000 must occupy the first position on its sheet, since the number 2001, which is divisible by three, must be in second position. To test a number for divisibility by three, add the digits. If the sum is divisible by three, so is the number. For example, the digits of 2001 add to three, which is divisible by three, so 2001 is evenly divisible by three.

Three solvents are generally used in the pressroom:

  1. Kerosene is slow-drying and is good for washup, possibly mixed with white gas. Do not use it to clean forms between moves, since kerosene will likely remain on the form when returned to the press, thinning the ink. For the same reason, rollers cleaned with kerosene should be dried with a rag before re-inking.
  2. White gas, or Coleman fuel, is a useful general-purpose solvent. It dries too quickly to be used by itself for washup. “Thinner” may be substituted for gas if it dries rapidly.
  3. Typewash is useful for dissolving dried ink and removing adhesive residue. Probably laquer thinner may be substituted more cheaply.

Solvents are flammable and should be used with adequate ventilation. Wear rubber gloves for washup. Observe fire department regulations about storing solvents and disposing of rags.

Fine, dry sawdust can be sifted into a typecase to prevent types from battering themselves during transport.

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