Letterpress area needs help

Hey all,

Southwest Paper has been good enough to offer to donate to our Letterpress Area two pieces of equipment - a three-hole paper drill and a corner-rounding machine. Their only condition is that we pick them up before 4 pm on Friday. These would take a pickup truck or even a small trailer. Both pieces will fit in a pickup. They are willing to load them for us.
Does anyone have a truck or trailer available during the day on Thursday or Friday? Here’s what we’re talking about:

If you can help, please let me know. I’d be willing to meet you at Southwest Paper.

Thanks,
David

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Pick a time. Where do I need to be.
Dean

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How about 3 pm? The address is 9180 E 35th St North.

Wow letter press is really growing!!

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For the purposes of Credit Where Credit is Due, @deanday is meeting me at Southwest Paper at 11 am on FRIDAY to pick up these items. They’re not light, and I’m recovering from shoulder surgery, so if anyone would like to meet us back at the makerspace around noon, we’d be glad to have the help.

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I’ll probably be around then. Feel free to find me.

I’ll look to be there…

I’m no help but this is exciting! We can have our own MakeICT Bullet journal!

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Printed on handmade paper, and bound at MakeICT.

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Thanks to Dean Day for providing his truck and his help in getting the equipment moved yesterday. And thanks to Dean, John, and Steve for the help in getting it unloaded when we got it to its new home. You all rock!

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So just an update…here are the main things we need to get the Letterpress Area up and running:

  • Finish running conduit along ceiling directly above the press. @Typerover and I have most of the conduit in place already (Thanks Glenn!).
  • Pull wire through conduit from above the press to above the hallway near the door to ERP.
  • Install the 220V outlets for the letterpress and the paper shear.
  • Purchase ink rollers for the letterpress - maybe about $275 ($75 has already been pledged).
  • Install ID card authorization for power to the letterpress and cutter (could be a single reader).
  • Purchase ink, washup solvent, and a few other basic supplies to get started on the press – around $200.

Once we’ve knocked out this checklist, we’ll be ready to gear up to teach classes on letterpress printing, which is becoming something of a lost art. In reality, we are planning on teaching the gamut of Book Arts, from presswork to bookbinding to papermaking. But we can’t really get off the ground without a bit of help. If you can help with some help finishing our electrical work or perhaps with a donation to help pay for rollers and supplies, we’d be able to get started right away!

Some people may not realize that we can leverage much of the rest of the makerspace to complete projects in Book Arts. Did you know that a CNC works great to make a printing plate, and it can also do embossing (3D raised image in the paper) and debossing (same thing, but in instead of out)? Did you know that the exposure equipment in screen printing can be used to exposed a flexographic plate for the letterpress? Did you know you could make your own authentic WANTED poster from scratch?

Personally, I can’t wait until we are finished. I’ve wanted to make my own hardbound book from scratch. Make the paper from recycled pulp. Make plates for the illustrations. CNC carve some images for embossing a design in a leather cover. Print each page, assemble the signatures, clamp and stitch, and trim the contents. Finally, bind it into the custom embossed leather cover. How do you find a project that screams MAKER more than this?

TLDR: we’re close to having Book Arts open for business, but need your help!

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What’s the book about tho?

Smith Charts

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Maybe a nice workbook with grids in it for sketching out projects, but the wife also has 2 books that could use a nice leather-bound printing for at least a copy each.

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Way too advanced for me…

“Maybe a nice workbook with grids in it for sketching out projects”

That’s what I said… smith charts

In the middle of your call for help, I thought I might make an offer…I’ll be back in Wichita on the 23’d of August to pick up a U-Haul…If I could get some makers to help drag things into it, from storage and apartment I’d be happy to turn over the $300 I was going to pay to mover dudes to the Letterpress project…just kicking a few options around…

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Yeah, but even “workbook with grids in it” is too advanced for me. I intend to make it anyway, but definitely too advanced for me.

I do like the idea of a MakeICT bullet journal.

We could certainly mass produce those, although probably not leather-bound.