Vandercook 219 OS Cylinder Problem

Rob,

Paul Moxon at Vandercookpress.info.com will know the answer to this and I also think he has a downloadable manual for the 219. If not Boxcar or Letterpress Commons has one.

Hey Rob,
How long is the gear rack at the far right end of the press? If you remove the stops, can you run the cylinder to the end where the gear is no longer meshed to the gear rack without it’s weight being unsupported? You need to bump it counter-clockwise a few teeth. Hopefully you won’t have to take it off all the way to do this- that press has a very heavy cylinder assembly which is too much for even two people.

Do you have the frisket tower? If not, you can take off those big cast iron uprights and put them aside. There’s no reason to have all that extra weight on there if you don’t have the rest of the tower assembly.

You may notice a bit of brass peeking out under some of that gray paint here and there. It looks like someone went a bit wild with a spray can and covered a bunch of the nice original brass details. If it were my press, I’d get a scotchbrite pad and polish them back!

Let me know if you have any more questions. Those 219s are great presses.

DGM

PS- do you have the rest of the roller assembly?

I agree with Dan about how to re-time the cylinder. But those posts for the frisket tower are also supports for the roller-lifting mechanism. Not to be removed!

Oops! I can see that you are right- I thought the standard non-tower support was there behind those big cast metal parts. Guess you’re gonna have to crank all that iron back and forth whether you have the tower or not!

Rob,
Our 219os has an approx. 6” spot in the rack just off home position that is bolted in with a couple flatbheads.
If you pop that out you should be able to reposition there.
Not sure if yours would have it, but worth a look……
Chris