Book Arts Committee proposal

I’m also interested. I took a semester of book design in college and have been wanting to make some more now that I have some cool materials collected.

2 Likes

This is for sale on purple wave https://www.purplewave.com/auction/191217/item/GD9858/Copiers-Copy_or_Printing_Machine-Oklahoma

This item would be an awesome press for book publishing, litho prints, all kinds of things, and I am an instructor on them, as well. Anyone want to kick in on getting it? I can drive down and get it, but we’d need to move fast if we were going to buy it. The last one I bought was around $5k, and that was 20 years ago. The current bid on this one is at $600.
Here’s what they look like when not all wrapped up:

3 Likes

I wish I could!

That thing it’s mesmerizing to watch. How do you make the plates?

1 Like

Historically, they were done through a photo process on a piece of magnesium about 1/8" thick, then mounted atop a hardwood block that was then locked up in the form. The form consists of cuts (the magnesium/wood blocks), hand-set type, leading (made of real led, which is where the term comes from), and pre-cast lines of type from a Linotype machine. They are arranged to be somewhat snug and filling in the blank spaces with wooden blocks called furniture within a metal frame called a chase, then “locked up” to make it all tight using metal wedges called quoins. The chase, when ready, is put into the press, where the ink rollers roll over it to ink it and the paper is squeezed between the form and a backing plate called a timpan, then pulled free and laid aside to dry. Hand-feed presses are by hand, but the Windmill is pretty magical. It picks up the sheet by the edge, whips it in between the timpan and the form, drops it onto some gauge pins that help it to be perfectly aligned, then picks it back up after the impression and deposits it on a stack automatically.

Here’s a video from YouTube with a demo. It is actually fascinating to watch.

3 Likes

Oh, I forgot to say that we can make them on our CNC machines or on a laser.

2 Likes

much bigger then the one i used in jr high.

1 Like

I learned printing by working part-time under Benjamin Franklin when I was young. That man knew printing, but his real talent was partying.
ben01

2 Likes

Since I’ve mentioned the Heidelberg Windmill on eBay, I’ve been contacted about donations. So far we’ve had commitments for $450. There are no bids on the press, and the starting bid is $600. I’d volunteer to pick it up; I’ve moved a lot of them over the years. The auction closes Monday at 3:41 PM. I’m not anxious to ask for donations with a public announcement – I don’t want people to take money that they’d planned on giving for the move and use it for this, but I’ve made my building commitment and will honor it in addition to this.

3 Likes

It is kinda public, because this thread was posted to Facebook last week and it had some likes yesterday.

FYI - there’s a Facebook group called Bookbinding Equipment For Sale or Wanted. Tons of amazing used equipment on there to drool over. Lots of it is in Eastern Europe with high shipping costs, but some is US. There’s also a guy in California I’ve spoken to who makes binding equipment (https://affordablebindingequipment.com/). His stuff is good quality and a fair price, but I wonder how much of this could be made in-house at MakeICT…?

2 Likes

Book binding has been on my list of things. Count me in. I looked into doing some leather bound journals as a gift in the past.

I looked at all of his pictures and a few videos. I would say 100% can be made at MakeICT. We would just have material costs (very little). I would be happy to help reverse engineering his designs to come up with BOM and cost estimates.

There were a couple (letter press and plough) I would not know how to source the parts, so hard to estimate. Everything else was very simple.

2 Likes

I’d love to collaborate on that, and don’t mind paying for the materials. The two items I’d prioritize are a finishing press and backing irons, since it’s difficult to do workarounds for those.

A good heavy-duty paper chopper can do the job of a plough. I’ve been taking my book blocks to the FedEx store to have the edges chopped, and the results and cost vary depending on which employee is there.

1 Like

I haven’t done a large text block at home yet but I was hoping maybe POD print would do it as well… then I had the idea for the book making room at Booth!

Is anyone else interested in contributing to bidding on the Heidelberg Windmill press? The auction closes in about 2 hours, and we’re still $150 short. No guarantee that we’ll get it, so any donation would be cancelled/returned if we don’t get it.

1 Like

I can do 25

Excellent. Anyone else?

Does it do letterpress? I have always been interested.

Yes, it is a letterpress with an automatic paper feeding system, so nobody smashes their hands trying to insert or retrieve a piece of paper. It can also do die cutting (like stickers with non-square shapes, starbursts, etc.), crash printing of multi-part forms, and numbering.

1 Like