A boxcar base advice request

Greetings,

Just received shipment of Laverne, our 1957 Vandercook 219 AB. I am in the process of overhauling her and getting her ship-shape. It’s now time to get a base for my photopolymer plate printing needs.

So she can take an 18”x24” base. Now I know that that may be extravagant at about $1100 but I do anticipate printing at that scale. There is no difference in price if I buy one at half the size and add a second later on just to speed up having a plate sooner as I do need to do some gathering of funds to make this happen.

My thinking is just buy the maximum size base because I can still print a postage stamp sized plate on it. The question is, aside from cost, is there any reason to NOT get the full-sized base?

Yours with greasy elbows,

~ Josh

Log in to reply   5 replies so far

Great question. You may want to cut it into quarters if you ever need it for smaller work (manageable, less weight, and if you ever wanted to include wood/metal type or linoleum to print with in the same run as the ppp you could).

If you only print using photopolymer then go with the large size and leave room for quoins and furniture to lock it up.

Very subjective, I’m sure you’ll get different answers.

Casey McGarr
Inky Lips Press

An alternative would be to purchase a chunk of aluminum from a place like McMaster-Carr. They show a 12” x 12” x 7/8” precision cast aluminum block for $90. A 24” x 24” piece is $332. http://www.mcmaster.com/#aluminum/=b479n2

The larger piece could be cut down by a machine shop to your press size and then you would have a variety of sizes made from the leftover part of the block.

This would not have the lineup grid that Boxcar provides on their bases.

When using multiple bases locked up together, is there any issue with part of your type/image running across the border from one base to another?

jonsel

Yes, there could be, though the solution isn’t necessarily a larger base as it it difficult to guarantee that aluminum flat stock bases are accurate beyond a certain size limit. Bunting Magnetics, for instance, only guarantees the 8.5 x 11 size. Anything larger than that and they recommend bases be bolted to the press bed. They do guarantee that the smaller bases will align. And theirs do. In this case, smaller is better.

Gerald
http://BielerPress.blogspot.com

Thanks for the advice. The way boxcar works is they have you buy a standard size and they cut it ofr you. The size I would get would be 24”x24”. I could have them cut the excess down into to 6”x9” pieces and have a remaining 6”x6” so I not only could mix wood/metal type and polymer but I have a Golding Map Press table top that fits 6”x9” as the maximum recommended base size per box car. Maybe even have them cut one of those 6”x9” in half too. They will probably charge for all these cuts but I would be pretty set for bases I would guess.

Thoughts?