warped wood type

does anyone have experience repairing warped wood type?

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Don’t know if this subject has ever been broached here before. If no one has a better method, I only thing I can think of is to get the wood type “damp” again - not soaked in water but exposed to high humidity or wrapped in damp cloth for quite a while - and then place it in a book press and try to flaten it. This might have to be done in degrees - not all at once which might crack/break the type.

Decades ago, it had a warped top on a piece of antique furniture. It had warped because someone had placed flower pots on top on it and it had gotten wet enough over time to warp badly. The solution was to remove the top, wrap the whole top in wet newspapers and place everything in plastic bags to seal-in the moisture. After about a week the top had absorbed all the water from the newspaper and was “mushy” and plyable. It was then a matter of putting wieghts on it to flaten it out and and leaving the weights on for a week or two, letting it slowly dry and remain flat in the process. The whole trick is to do everything SLOWLY to prevent it from breaking or cracking.

Rick

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At one time it was common to use lye-water as a cleaner for ink after printing. The wetting mentioned in the flyer to which Paul has provided a link may be from the cleaning process commonly in use in printing shops of the time.

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Thanks very much for the replies. Paul, I am hesitant to try any of these processes on my endgrain type. However, I have a number of fonts of 20–40 line type that are warped badly enough that I’m also afraid to print with them. I have done some research elsewhere and seen suggestions similar to the advice from George Gilbert (thanks for the link). Most of warped type I have encountered is concave on the face, presumably due to the difference in surface tension from the shellacking. I am inclined to try Rick’s suggestions: slight dampening and applying weight/pressure in small increments.