Printing

After we'd all checked the second proofs of our typeset poems, eight of them were put into the forme, in carefully calculated positions so that the pages of the book will be in the right order after the sheet of paper is folded and cut. Here J is rolling on the ink (and watching my camera warily) while A positions the paper on the tympan. The frisket (cut-out card) above will be folded down to hold the paper in place, then the paper laid onto the forme. The whole print bed will be rolled under a platen and pressure applied with a lever. Once it's rolled out again the paper will be removed to dry, and the process will start again.

Professional printers, with one person inking and another doing the rest of the work ('pulling' I think the term is), would have been able to print about 250 sheets an hour. We took two hours to print 75 sheets. Part way through I noticed a spelling mistake on one of the poems, so we stopped the press, loosened the forme, corrected the error then carried on - so there will be a variation within one edition of a book.

(See the previous three Tuesdays for how we got this far.)
Press
Type
Proof