I’ve been meaning to get around to this post for a year and a half, but it kept slipping with all the pics of the girls rightfully taking precedence. So before this is completely irrelevant, I thought some of you might enjoy seeing some pics of the restoration process of an old letterpress.

Needing a project to accompany the painfully slow job search process after grad school in the summer of 2007, and having had a strong desire to get involved with letterpress, I started looking for good opportunity to find press of my own. A kind acquaintance pointed me in the right direction and before I knew it, I had made a successful Ebay bid on a 1950′s Chandler & Price New Style Pilot Press in storage in Ohio. It was a sweet deal; came with a type cabinet original to the press, a couple sets of lead type, and some additional (also original) accessories. I hopped in a rental van and hit the road the next week.

I said I was looking for a project and I wasn’t disappointed. It clearly hadn’t been used in years, which means it was resting from quite a bit of misuse. The gunk buildup was significant and rust had started to settle in a few places. It also suffered from some poor attempts at repainting. So, I started researching the best way to tackle a restoration. There are a ton of opinions on this in various letterpress circles, with quite a few people insisting that a press should never be taken apart. But, I knew with some common sense and attention to detail, this was going to be the best road for me.

I found the original manual for the press online and and started a carefully cataloged disassembly. I also started experimenting with various cleaning agents. Frustratingly, nothing seemed to work. Not even the serious stuff like acetone or engine degreaser. They just made a huge mess. Digging deeper, I discovered that a lemon juice and vinegar bath can lift minor rusting and remove tough grease. It was my next best option and, amazingly enough, worked like a champ. To think, that multiple tough chemicals couldn’t match the power of two simple, natural ingredients. Impressive. So, I gave the press in parts a 2 day bath and then gently rubbed all the rust and grime away with a cotton rag, or the occasional finishing steel wool and some Simple Green. The Pilot was back to her original paint job or bare metal.

I could have put it all back together with the original paint and that would have been that. It would have looked just fine (some would say better than a fresh coat of paint), but I was too tempted to really bring back the luster of the press. However, I did make sure that only the parts that were supposed to be painted, actually got paint. Something the previous owners had neglected a few times. The main reason being I didn’t want the precise metal-to-metal connections for all the moving parts to be disturbed by a layer of primer/paint. Yes, this is a big hunk of cast iron weighing a few hundred pounds, but it’s also meant to be a finely-tuned machine. I wanted everything to be as true as possible. Hence the meticulous blue taping and trimming.

Painting was a pain. For the prime coat, I laid everything out, painted one side, waited for it to dry and painted the other. Then I started to get impatient. For the finish coat, I wanted to paint all sides at once. And that’s when my stubborness kicked in. Instead of doing a side at a time with (ridiculous!) waiting times in between, I hatched this elaborate (crazy!) scheme of hanging all the press parts from the opened garage doors in my parents garage. I covered all the walls and knocked out the finish coats in a few hours. I do not have pictures of that. Sorry.

But, now I was done! I followed my detailed instructions for the assembly and minus the one misstep of forgetting one part halfway through, requiring taking it apart again, it went pretty well. It did take a few weeks to get the press calibrated correctly. I knew that would be the case going in and, frankly, I would have redone all the calibration without the restoration anyway. It was a good way to get to know the press and parts.

One part of the process that I wish I had cataloged was restoring the type cabinet that came with the press. It was in equally poor condition and cleaned up equally as well. I made some minor improvements by stripping the top to stain the butcher block surface and reinforcing the bottom for heavy casters.

So, what about actual printing? Well, I’ve done some stationery for the girls and have a long list of projects I’m anxious to get to. However, home improvement has moved to the top of the list, which will keep me busy for a while. I’ll be sure to capture a bit of the printing process next time I go to press. But, if you think you’d like to special order some stationery, etc. designed AND letterpressed, you know who to call.

Finally, don’t forget the link in the lower right hand corner of the picture viewer will take you to Flickr for a slideshow and more comments. Later!