Since I have starting printing on the pilot, I have had some issues with my gripper arms.  One issue being that it is leaving marks on my paper and the other being that sometimes my paper and image are the same size so the gripper arms get in the way.  Even though the gripper arms are causing me some headaches, nevertheless they are extremely necessary for the press.  Since the ink is extremely “tacky” the gripper arms prevent the paper from sticking to the image plate.  Therefore, allowing for a nice crisp image instead of a smeared one.  So how do you fix these problems?  I have devised a way that works well for me.  

One way to solve this issue is to move your gripper arms to opposite ends.  Make your paper larger than the printable area and when your image is dry, trim the excess paper off.  This solution is great however, this will NOT work is your paper is precut, such as when I had ordered some folded A2 size cards from Paper Source www.paper-source.com.  To solve this problem, I just use a rubber band.  How simple is this?  I just put the rubber band around the platen (please see pictures below for details).  Now that your gripper arm problem has been fixed, you will have nice, crisp, clean images (hopefully).

hint: I also use some photo corners to hold down the botton of the card.  This is a great solution if you are MISSING your gripper arms.  (These machines are old so chances are you will be missing some pieces). 

     Rubberband holding back the A2 card.

    Notice the photo corners holding down the bottom of the card.

Mixing ink can be challenging.  The most economical (and my opinion fun) way of buying ink is to but all the basic process colors and mix them yourself.  The Pantone basic colors are in the pantone book www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/index.aspx and if you don’t have one, you should definately get one. For those who don’t have one, the basic colors are as follows: Yellow, Yellow 012, Orange 012, Warm Red, Red 032, Rubine Red, Rhodamine Red, Purple, Violet, Blue 072, Reflex Blue, Process Blue, Green and Black.  You will also need transparent white!  These colors, when mixed together properly will make the other hundreds of pantone colors.   If you don’t mind paying an extra $30-$40 you can have the ink manufacturer mix the color you need for you. 

Those who are going to be mixing the inks themselves, here is what I do.  I use a piece of glass (make sure the edges are rounded off) or acrylic about 10 inches x 10 inches and some ink knives.  The pantone book will tell you the colors and the percentage of each color that you will need to make your specific pantone color (thats why you need to get yourself a pantone book).

Example: Pantone 2738 U (U = uncoated paper and 2738 = dark purple).  It says that you will need 75% Reflex Blue and 25% Violet.  Since you are not a machine, you will not be able to scoop out the exact percentage.  It is also easier to convert the percentages into ratios so, 3:1.  With that you can get a small scale and measure out your 3:1 ratio.  If you letterpress just for fun, you can get away with mixing by eye and don’t have to worry about remembering your grade school math (lucky).

 Now you know how to mix ink, get to it.  Happy mixing.

Being a graphic designer, it is only natural to want to expand to the world of printing. Not just ordinary, offset but lettepress printing. Now, that I know what I want to do, where do I begin? The first step is searching the internet. I came across www.briarpress.org which is the most amazing site for anyone who wants to know anything and everything there is to know about letterpress printing. Another great site was https://listserv.unb.ca/archives/letpress.html which is a forum like briar press, but with alot less traffic, where people can post items for sale, post wants, or ask questions to other members of the forum. Another place to look is www.craigslist.org which is city specific so if you lucky enough to find one, at least its local. If you really don’t care about a bargain you can try http://www.donblack.ca/.

After checking out some sites, I found my amazing Chandler and Price pilot press on briar press. I email the poster right away of course, (crossing my fingers that it has not sold already) and lucky me, he emails back saying that its available. Now that I have a press, what next?