Letterpress Feature

Good luck with that, I don’t know of any that do. Maybe my knowledge is incomplete. I can tell you my C&P rails are about .045 under type high, and my pilot almost the same- neither adjustable. My big Kluge has rails that have some amount of adjustment. My 2 little Sigwalts are just about type high. Maybe just take a dial gauge or whatever to any press you look at. Taping rails is not so bad if you can keep it dense enough- i use high density tape, have a roll from ebay that is .040

The C&P Craftsman presses have adjustable rails (CraftsMAN, not to be confused with the small tabletop CraftsMEN press). It was designed as a feeder based press, but it is set up so that it can easily be changed over for hand feeding by removing the sucker arms and attaching a wooden table. I have one and I hand feed it. It’s not small, though, the 10x15 weighs 2700 pounds, 400 pounds more than 10x15 windmill. But it does have adjustable rails!

Oh, and it’s a printing press. “Letterpress” is the process, “Printing Press” is the machine, and “Printer” is the person standing in front of the machine.

Also, a Craftsman press adjusts a heck of a lot better than adjustable trucks!

I believe the Model N C&Ps have adjustable rails and some later 14x22’s.

Mike has it right, according to the manual posted here:
https://circuitousroot.com/artifice/letters/press/presses/cp-gordon/cp-n...
The model N C&P does indeed have adjustable rails.
Interesting that they also note that it is shipped from the factory with them set at 7/8 in. which is just about what my non-adjustable new style press has.

Thanks for the feed back. We had a hard time verifying the information.

Neither of our C&P’s had adjustable rails, but once they’re built to the proper height, there is no reason to ever change them.

Thanks for the feedback. Our reason for asking is we have gotten used to working with the windmill. At times we will adjust the tracks to regulate overall ink volume. It is more than just the ink volume on the rollers, it is the point of contact roller pressure. Making a small fine tune change can help inking and prevent plugging and slurring of small text. It can even help reduce saltiness to a certain point allowing more or less ink on the type surface. This has also come in handy when skip feeding. Since we have lockout rollers we have found this very easy to do and have gotten spoiled. We are looking to expand into a press with some of the same features but is for hand feeding.

OK now an odd question:
Is it possible to use adjustable trucks on a windmill. This would allow single roller pressure control much like we have and conventional printing presses. It would be like adding or subtract a little stripe on one or both rollers.

Morgan adjustable roller trucks were made for the Windmill when the first presses were shipped with composition rollers. I would imagine those are probably scarcer than when’s teeth, though I have a set that I’m certainly not using.

Good Evening Mike, Thank you for the feed back. What are “when’s teeth”. The adjustable trucks were something we wondered about. Most of what we run is lighter ink coverage. At times I wondered if I could use the adjustable truck on one roller to either add or subtract ink volume by changing the roller contact. I know if sounds crazy.

The term is “scarcer than a hen’s teeth”. The fact that a hen doesn’t have teeth, that’s what makes them scarce. Truly a great old idiom.

Thank you, I thought maybe I missed some cool thing. Mike - I see what you mean about the adjustable truck. It was most likely not a good idea anyway.