blind embossing

Would help if you use thicker, SOFTER paper. Many papers made for printmaking fall into that category. Stopping by a store like Utrecht, Central Art Supply, or maybe a college bookstore in your area would give you some options. I keep a book of samples of every kind of paper I use. I always just bite the bullet and cut an 8.5” x 11”, hole punch it, list the appropriate data, and put it in my ring binder.

I would also think that if you can make an acquaintance in your area most printers have offcuts of all kinds of papers you could test. Your note didn’t say where you were.

It also helps to not have large solid areas. The more area you are trying to emboss the more force it takes to push it into the paper. I would think that you could get type to work fine or an illustration that was more linear than solid.

It is worth it to say that you want to be careful putting too much pressure on your press as the parts are cast iron and they can definitely break. Then you’ve got problems.

As for the best press, the cylinder types (i.e. Vandercook) work best because they only apply pressure along a thin line which moves across the image. This can really put a lot of pressure even on larger solid areas.

While I have seen embossing done on cylinder presses, the vast majority of embossing is done on platen-type presses.

The Pilot can do a good job if, as “Wallflowers” said you keep the image fairly small and no large flat areas which need to be embossed.

I have used my pilot for embossing, hot stamping, die-cutting and just all-round printing with excellent results. The press has limitations, and you don’t want to push it beyond its limits, but it certainly has good impression strength when compared with some similar sized presses in the tabletop realm.

Sometimes we need to be creative in our approach when our tools are limited. It actually take less impression to blind emboss a small image than it does to print a large form on the press, so try it out, and see what you can do. If it takes a lot of arm pressure to get the effect you want, it probably is too heavy a form for the press.