David K. battled long and hard and WON the black heart of the letterpress

Creative Arts
#1

David K aka @Photomancer has a long standing love/hate relationship with our letterpress aka miss nikki. First she was delivered crated to his home which he had to pry bar off in the cold dark night, six weeks he waited for reimbursement, he took the pieces apart by human force- almost knocking out @Bill in the process, he cared for our letterpress like a newborn cleaning all it’s rusted bits for DAYS, and finally LAST NIGHT he birthed a chase from fire and determination. DAMN that chase a few times over! It was literally found in a box in a barn and rescued for us by Herb (our favorite letterpress person). It exploded as David was machining it on the very last pass. Tizzy fits were thrown by both David and I. But I didn’t put the muscle behind the machine.

It’s a whole long beautiful story about how this letterpress came to be with us, how it got restored and NOW (thanks to David) it’s functional!!! WOOOOOO DAVID! Now he hates praise so let’s just consider this a win for all of makerspace.

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DMS, Letterpress is here!
#2

cool! I can’t wait to see it in action. what do the letters and such need to be made from? I’ll fire up my laser and CNC and we’ll see what we can do.

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#3

Wonderful! I am anxiously awaiting the class!

#4

And my feet only got wet to the ankles when I walked across Nicole’s pool.

The Chase is made of cast iron, broken in several places, only surfaced welded across the top by MIG resulting in a nasty twist wouldn’t let it seat in Miss Mikki (she’s old fashion, circa 1920, and doesn’t like being referred to as Ms.).

When trying machine it flat all the welds broke. Curse words long forgotten were uttered. This was my first attempt at welding Cast Iron, which is notoriously picky. Some the welds don’t look real pretty, put they are strong, and completely through. The magic “cold weld” cast iron TIG rod I found worked.

Truly a Fetivus Miracle!

Look for Nicole’s first Letterpress Class to be posted soon!

I’ll machine a reference block at .918" for indexing the surface height of the cutter for the Shapeoko (which was what we got it for originally - for letterpress blocks).

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#5

Really excited about this. Have been eyeing I every time I’m in CA, wondering how it works and what can be done with it. I don’t as much have a project for it than just want to make something with such a cool tool!

Thanks for all the hard work!

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