New Video

The guy at How to Make Everything on YouTube is making a book from scratch. This week he’s discovering letterpress.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yjbMcQ-ThZo

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I see I have to relearn some vocabulary—composing bar as a starter, then all these years I’ve been putting the type font in the composing bar completely ass backwards—oh my, so much to learn and in so little time. And revisionist Vandercook history, not to mention some dates with a guy named Gutenberg. Where did I go wrong on my letterpress path started some 60 years ago? Oh well, beautiful quality on the actual video.

He forgot to show us how to fold a single piece of paper to make a book and OMG, I’ve been holding the wrong end of the stick for decades.

Little difference between the Gutenberg press and the Vandercook we are told, I must go along to the local Albion press maker and ask him if he can supply one powered by electricity.

OMG, never heard of putting type in a composing stick by spelling “drawkcab” - how creative!!

he didn’t even put down the clamp on the stick, not saying it won’t work but these people are teaching the next generation all wrong, I believe we are doomed.

I watched a papermaking video on u-tube in which the fellow was attempting to tell people how to make paper while he did the process for the first time himself. Hmmm..

John Henry

I’ll simply assume it is difficult for centers for the book to find experienced volunteers these days.

Experienced tradesmen are worth good money. Firstly, he is working a proofing press, which was never meant to be a production press, designed only to pull a limited number of proofs, for proofreading, correction and then on to the real printing presses. Then, I couldn’t believe how this demonstrator was holding his setting stick. The art of hand-setting is not dead in my school for letterpress printing, Pressedletters here in NSW, Australia. It has a module, requiring students to have a good back and health, high powers of concentration, spelling and grammatical ability and eyesight, it includes that part of the process, “dissing”, which many “would-be” printers hate to do.
www.willamer.com.au [this site and pricing is about to be updated but the images and videos are correct.]

Will Amer’s videos led me to this one:

https://www.youtube.7com/watch?v=fPbHSE5qEI4

which I found to be spot on so to speak about the techniques of makeready on a cylinder press explained by a fellow who has been doing it for years—nicely done.

And then how is “Miehle” pronounced? In one of Amer’s videos, he gives it a Brit/Australian pronunciation but quite the opposite of what I’m used to, and I spent the better part of a day and evening back in the last ice age taking a tour of the Miehle plant in Chicago when they were still assembling Verticals. So I watched some more videos to see how the narrators pronounced Miehle—very interesting way to kill part of an evening.

Thanks Fritz for picking up on my son’s pronunciation of “Miehle”. Being grateful for his time in making the video, I failed to correct him as to the local way of saying it, which sounds like “mealee”. A wizard in European languages, he spoke it as he thought it was to be. BTW I can’t get your link above to work, whereas all other do. [Did you see your rollers on the CP and Vert doing their job?] Regards.

I think the link should be this:
http://youtu.be/fPbHSE5qEI4