Wednesday, 25th August 2010

TWO NEW PRESSES!

We recently purchased two new, or very old, letterpresses. I have been keeping an eye out for a new letterpress for quite a while now, they are very hard to come by, so when I saw an ad for an Arab hand fed platen press I was very excited, to top it off the photographer selling the press was also including a No.1 Croperette hand fed platen press! We think the Cropper is an 1888 press and the Arab is an 1894 press.

Deal done next step drive to London to collect the presses, easier said than done. The Arab weighs approx. 1400lbs and the Croperette weighs approx. 400lbs. That’s over a tonne combined! Luckily a friend lent us their van and we got the ferry over to Holyhead where we arrived a 6.00am, we drove through the day to London, six hours later we arrived in London and the fun really began…

It took Alan with the help of the seller, and a little help from me, 5 hours to dismantle the two presses and load them into the van, a mammoth task. Unfortunately I wasn’t much help, I literally couldn’t lift most of the parts they were so heavy.

We then drove back to Holyhead through driving rain, missing our ferry, luckily it was only a matter of paying another £10 to transfer our booking to the next sailing, which we just made. 5.30am and we arrived back in Dublin with an hour and a half drive ahead of us back to Kells. We made it back safe and sound, no major hiccups and went straight to bed, completely exhausted from our 30 hour round trip! We did eventually come out of hibernation on Sunday evening and Alan called in the cavalry to help unload the van.

Back to work on Monday morning, I was surrounded by parts and couldn’t wait to get the presses up and running.

On Monday night the studio was a buzz of activity, it took four men as many hours to assemble the two presses and voila they were ready for printing, or so I thought. The presses needed to settle so I spent the next few days oiling them and cleaning them and finally on Monday I began my first print run on our new Cropper press. After a few tweaks and adjustments and one call out from my personal mechanic the press was a go. It runs like a dream and last night I finished the first print run of letterpress wedding stationery on it.

So what about the Arab, well it will take a little longer to get up and running but I’ll keep you posted, watch this space.

I have to say a huge thank you to Alan for all his help, he was a gem, and of course to Tommy for lending us the van and to Ronan, David and Paul for all their help putting the presses back together.

Labels: Farrell & Chase Loves..., Letterpress, Our Travels