Kelsey Excelsior Troubleshooting as a Newbie
Hello All,
First of all apologies for the poor-quality image.
I have a 5x8 Kelsey Excelsior I’m trying to get working with a Stark Press base for photopolymer plates.
I’m running into two issues (for now) and am hoping someone can help or offer advice.
1. Ink is covering the entire polymer plate and base, not just the raised image area. I assume this is a roller height issue, but I’m not sure how to properly adjust rollers or what the correct setup should look like. I have a roller setting gauge, but I don’t know exactly how to use it on a small tabletop press (YouTube shows mostly larger C&P presses).
2. I’m getting very little to almost no impression from the press. I know tabletop presses are not meant for deep impressions, but it feels like next to nothing even with a decent amount of packing.
Thank you so very much in advance should you choose to help out!
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Definitely roller height issue. Are ink rails even working
It might be roller height which you can test with the roller guage. Same as C&P’s push the guage under the inked roller then lift the roller off the rail and remove the guage. You want a stripe of ink on the guage of about 1/8 of an inch or slightly less. If it is thicker you will need to tape the rails up until the stripe is the right width. Don”t forget to do both sides.
The other possible cause could be that you have a thick polymer plate on a high mount?
Happy detective work.
The trucks are sliding up and down the rails so they are working.
I ordered the KF95 polymer plate that is compatible with the Stark Press base. So unless boxcar sent me the wrong type of plate then it should be correct.
I will try adding tape and hopefully that will do the trick.
One additional followup question:
I am not able to get the base out of the chase bed while the ink disk is on the press. I am seeing people add in the chase after applying ink to the disk and rollers, but I am not able to do that at the moment. Any recommended fix?
I have restored and used several of the Kelseys, and I use the Stark base as well. I would definitely check the roller height and the platen height as the first issue. If the roller height is off, add strapping tape to the rails to bring the rollers up higher, this is a very common problem.
One thing I would suggest is to make sure that your chase bed and base are actually seated properly, all the way back. The Kelsey presses have 2 notches on the latch, one for the chase bed and one for the chase. If your bed is only held in the 2nd notch, it will be too high. This may also be the reason for not being able to remove the chase with the ink disk on, but I have also hade some that just sit too low to be able to remove. If it bothers you, you can add a round shim under the ink disk to raise it a little. Good luck!