supplies, distributors. etc.

the largest (and about the only) supplier of letterpress stuff is NA Graphics, i have never heard anyone speak badly about him, there are others around that sell used things for letterpress, check the yellow pages on this site for names and addresses.

Tom,

Do you contact NA Graphics by email or phone? I’ve found them more responsive to the latter. I also feel I should say here that in my experience, their customer service has been excellent, even on a couple of confusing orders. Sorry to hear that things haven’t worked out as well for you.

@tom - I’ve had nothing but good experiences with NA Graphics - don’t understand.

@dickg - There is also American Printing Equipment Supply http://www.americanprintingequipment.com/letterpresssupplies.aspx

man, I must be unlucky. I’ve had an order in for rollers and trucks for a month now. Just called them. They screwed up again. Every time I’ve placed an order I’ve called and talk to someone.

I think I’ve gone to them four times over the years and every time I’ve had to call them back to find out where my stuff is. I keep having to tell them who I am, and ask them why I am not in their system. And usually they have no documentation of my order. Totally frustrating.

.

Roller and Trucks….

Ramco Roller Products
241 W Allen Ave
San Dimas, CA 91773-1439
Phone: (909) 592-1002

Fax: (909) 599-5514

Adrian Ramos - Owner

Email: [email protected]

Jayne Ramos - Office Manager

Email: [email protected]

Have ordered from NA several times in the last year and had great results. Wanted to view the operation so me and the girlfriend drove the 5 plus hours (one way) for the visit, that place has lots of stuff. Fritz was a hoot to talk with and a walking reference manual for anything involving ink on paper. He’s an easy guy to work with, talk with him and he will make it happen.

I have purchased supplies-rollers, tape books trucks, spacing, leading, type… from NA Graphics for over 6 years and had only one problem when some brass came back 20 points instead of 18. He sent me the 18 right away. Sometimes email orders are slower and especially during the Winter snows. It gets pretty deep in Silverton.

“I’ve used NA Graphics to unbelievably frustrating results. They have ALWAYS screwed up orders of mine. “

And I thought I was the only one.

I am relatively new to letterpress and have found Fritz and NAGraphics a treasure. He’s extremely knowledgeable and always helpful. Most times, I call late in the day and Fritz answers the phone and will “chat” with me.

My impression is that NAGraphics is a small operation and at times more is going on than he and his helpers can do in a day. But, you are not dealing with Amazon or a call center in Mexico or India. You are dealing with someone who has been a printer for more than 50 years. I will gladly take the less than an automated computer response to deal with a real person who cares about letterpress and printers.

lad boyle

to tom and musikwerke and others:

Even the people I worked with screwed up occasionally, but …

seems to be a breakdown of communication; a friend who sends me emails does not understand that his machine is not always interpreted by my machine, but I get the important part of his messages.

I sent a FAX to one of our outlying sites, but put the sheet upsidedown; ‘nuff sed!

In this country, we have several means of communication, and we find that even a method which is usually reliable can sometimes break down. There has been a furore recently because (in a local authority election, postal) some people (even one of the candidates) received multiple voting papers, while some received none. The Mayor won by 47 votes, about 20,000 to each of the two leaders, but will consult with the second-runner about policies.
I ordered goods by mail-order, wondered why the parcel had not turned up, till someone realised that the numeral 2 in the address has the horizontal part (of the 2) written over a line (6 points thick) which was a guide-line to where to write the address, so that it was delivered to a number with a 7. Another parcel was delivered to a point on my property where I never expected it, not near the letter-box. An overseas friend omitted the country (Australia) when he sent me a letter, it never left the country where he had mailed it. In a third-world country, no voice communication (telephone) is used (there are several hundred languages), all orders are sent by FAX. Sometimes multiple (copied) means of communication are advisable, but that sometimes results in multiple supplies of an order.

Do you feel comfortable with writing, different-colour pen (or printing/stamping) on your order that you will be phoning (after a few days) to confirm your order? In this country, we would be happier with the word “confirm” rather than “check”.

Even over-the-counter, a friend bought some fluoro tubes, when he went to use them found they were the wrong “colour”, complained, was told he should have checked his order. I don’t blame the seller from declining to take back the tubes. Some electrical items have a warning sticker on them that they cannot be returned, but that’s a long story; I believe the seller in this case is fully justified, the purchaser has to know what he is doing with the goods.

At the newspaper where I worked, we had to tell one section of the workers not to use red pens when writing comments on artwork, because the camera-room was illuminated with red lights. During World War 2, (we have been told) England and USA had a problem, because one of the standards (I forget if it was inches or millimetres) was slightly different. I found that a box-wrench for wheel nuts on a car were different size to box-wench for nuts used in other parts of the vehicle, both S.A.E.

Even when I choose goods at supermarket, I find them wrong when I arrive home; my mistake. Have you seen what happens when “top-loader” laundry detergent is used in a front-loader machine?

Occasionally we confused fixer and developer in a photo process.

Even in this country, where we have very little difficulty, I have found some words have a different meaning to some people than others. You will need to find the source of difference of understanding, and how to overcome it.

Alan.

Alan nankivell ,
uk wheel nut spinner can have six different sizes but they are all wheel nut spanners !!
Spark plug spanner can fit a spark plug but tere are four sizes of spark plug !!
1/2 ” ring wont fit 1/2 ” A/F I think, we made some bad mistakes when we tried to standardise because we measure our nuts differently to you .
Let us not mention any other form of the above .

Ref NA Graphics
If you read all the stuff on their web page they do say that they may have to order in your bits but wont inform you of this and it may take time so their system is not faultless , they point out that they are only thre e people and i would imagine they make a few mistakes with the volume of orders and lack of them. We have all scribbled a note down and left it on the desk only for it to blow on the floor as we leave the room ,If you process fifty orders a week you should be near perfect but when that reaches as many per day you will make mistakes.
They may over look things ,at least they dont take your money without a thought .
On the last bit ,they point out the paypal problems too so have a read of the sites notices they are doing as best they can , i see everyone on this site passing on the name for this and that so i can only assume they really do have their work cut out keeping up !

My two cents:

I have received nothing but great service from Fritz and NA Graphics. Not only that, but he has been a great resource for all my newbie questions and for helping me figure out what exactly I need, even if it’s not something I order from his site.

Alan:
As long as you are going to call me out personally, here are the facts behind my post and you can chew on them as you please.
I ordered a new set of rubber rollers for my Hohner. I was told by the fellow who took the order (not Fritz) that they had all the specs on a 9X13 Hohner and they could have have rollers with new cores made on just my say so, no need to send specifications or trucks etc. Very pricey as you can imagine. Well, two years later when I decided to unwrap them and put them in use I find that they are WAY TOO BIG in diameter. So much so that they touch each other and bind. Totally unusable. Still haven’t sent them to someone else to be re-ground.

Second incident:
Placed an order for some in-stock items. Over a week went by and no delivery. Phone call to to NA Graphics and I learned that they had stopped delivery on my order due to my credit card being “declined”. (First time in my 63 years on this earth that this has ever happened) No call to say something was wrong, just put the items back on the shelf as if to say ‘screw you’. So, after more phone calls ( no I never have talked with or had Fritz take an order) it turns out that this other employee couldn’t write down my credit card number correctly; again; first time in my life I’ve placed a phone order and had this problem.

Two orders - two incidents as described. What frame of mind would this put you in?

to musicwerke

My apology if you found my comment offensive.

When I buy on credit card, the person taking the details reads back the numbers if I request, and usually can immediately confirm that my card is valid. Only a couple of times has there been a problem, when I did not realise that the banking system took a couple of days to move my deposit into my account, so that when a large amount (more than my credit limit) came up, I needed to find out what was wrong (I had deposited the extra the same day), but they still accepted my transaction.

I included the story of the fluoro tubes (wrong colour) to show the importance of checking that the goods are correct, in some places and with some tricky items. Fanbelts for older-style cars are a problem, so I have been told, an auto mechanic told me there is no known list of fanbelts of that era which is completely trustworthy, the usual is to put the new belt on immediately, then keep the old one as an emergency spare.

We found enough errors that we always check very carefully. Lots of problems because specifications were not always interpreted in the same way by different people.

Alan.

To Peter Luckhurst and anyone else interested in nuts:

Thanks for your comments on various sizes of spanners. I should have mentioned that I was using a box wrench (socket spanner in my language) with a tension wrench on the wheel nuts of a car; the tension wrench does not fit the usual wheel-nut spinner; so that accounts for discrepancy of size of nut in that case.

I have a set of spanners which are metric-inch, but they have a drawback, in that more room is needed to swing the spanner; by the way, the force is applied to a point away from the sharp corner of the nut when metric-inch spanners are used.

That leaves the problem of the 8-sided nuts. I cut my own spanners for that, but it’s a fiddly job.

I even cut a spanner with 4 sides (a little like a ring spanner), one of the sides not parallel to its opposite, to fit a badly-made head of a plug in the water-jacket of a car (not a sparkplug).

But you sent me off to look at the various sizes of nuts, and I found British Standard Whitworth and BSF (British Standard Fine), BSP as well as BA, SAE, AF, and of course metric, and there appears to be some other standards.

And I decline to discuss the various thread forms.

Is variety the spice of life, or should we always remember Murphy’s Law?

Alan.

My experience with NAgraphics spans both sides of this I’ve had good service most of the time but lately an order that was Paypal has just been ignored and it is very hard to get an answer by email. I cant use the phone as I’m on a island south of Australia! when I did get a response they said i had reversed the order. first time I’ve heard of that so they indeed may have some accounting mishaps.

I appreciate all the responses. I have always heard these stories about NA so have repeatedly gone back to them in hopes that it will be different this time. I call my orders in by phone. I can also appreciate that they have a ton of orders to fill and things can get lost in the shuffle. But, seriously, if this is an issue wouldn’t you think they would make some effort in CHANGING their mode of operation. If hundreds of orders are coming in perhaps writing things down on a piece of paper is not the way to go. I have a business. I have jobs to do and order to fill. This isn’t a hobby press where I can wait around. I can accept a couple of weeks turn-around. But this?

The frustrating part is they almost have a monopoly on the market for letterpress equipment and supplies. They don’t have to change.

Again, at the end of the day, I think I’ve just been unlucky if all of you have had extraordinary experiences with NA. I’ll try to keep going back. For now.

Of course NA has made changes, which is to say, the people who make these mistakes get fired. The hard part is finding people who don’t make mistakes, whose brains function at 9,000 feet above sea level, and through the winter.
From my experience, Fritz gives far more than receives.

All this complaining! Be glad that at least you’ve got Fritz Klinke doing what he does! People who don’t make mistakes, are a mistake themselves! I got my spare parts for my Vandercook no problem. I even received them twice. I sent the second parcel back with a note.