Inking and Printing

Inking and printing was a hands-on activity that was so much fun.  Most of time I ended up doing the inking, which was interesting.  In order to get all of the letters sufficiently covered in ink, one must roll the roller over each section in a plethora of directions about a trillion times.  And then there's always that one corner at the very edge of the page that is lighter than the rest, because apparently in the Great Inking of the Letters, that one section was stubborn and refused to succumb to the great powers of my inking roller.

I also enjoyed the experience of making sure the words got onto the paper through the wonderful art of printing.  It's pretty interesting to learn that some people were so fast with those archaic machines at some point.  The swinging must have been intense, because I wasn't moving that quickly and the printer swayed whenever I pulled the bar to clamp the print down onto the paper.  However, I really enjoyed that part, and felt that if I were working in a book-making factory back in the Golden Ages, I should not so much mind just swinging from that bar clamp all day.  It took me leaning with all my weight to make sure everything was pressed down sufficiently.  So I could pretend that I was on a ship or something and it was swaying back and forth, and I was just holding onto the railing.  It's a highly metaphorical image, but if I was to do the same monotonous motion all day, I would attempt to add some creativity to an otherwise easily worn-out task.

The similarity between the two machines is striking.  Anyway, I very thoroughly enjoyed the overall process, and it is something I should be glad to have a chance to do again sometime in the future!

Mind your P's and Q's

Setting type has been an exciting, new experience for me. In a way, the repetitive motion of it is soothing. The hardest part was figuring out the spacing, especially when we were justifying the type. I was sure glad we had a practice run for printing our paragraphs. Luckily, I caught a couple of mistakes before it was time to make our final project. Something of interest to me was the 'Four Demons,' referring to the letters p, q, b and d, as they look really similar on the type. On our handouts there was a great trick to deciphering which letters are which. You simply look at the type (nick up) and slide the descender/ascender. This reveals what the actual letter is! This is very helpful for when you are returning to type to its spot in the case.

 It was exciting to finally do some inking and printing. I was surprised by how much work it was to surround the type with furniture and tighten it up before inking it. It is quite a process! Luckily, it was not terribly messy like I imagined it would be. Only three more classes to go; I can't wait to see the end product!

Type!

This week/last week we were able to set type, which is actually a really soothing activity.  I found that once I got to working on setting out my paragraph and finding the letters, my hands started to remember where the letters were and it became muscle memory to just go grab the letter I needed.  I wasn't sure how exactly the process worked at first, because I had never really seen the type itself or the method in which it was held.  But once I saw how everything was set up, it was pretty clear to me how it worked.

What amazed me, though, was thinking back to how people used to make entire newspapers by doing this.  And some newspapers were daily editions, so the type had to be set and changed every day.  Not only that, but there were stories that needed to be written before they were set in type, and then the type needed to be checked for errors.  That makes today's methods of printing newspapers seem SO much easier.  Seems to me that there shouldn't even be mistakes in today's newspaper, considering all we have to do is click on some letters and use spell check to correct things.  And mistakes can be removes supremely easily.  It's a wonder to me that people were able to make so much using movable type.

However, I really enjoyed the activity, and would like to do it again.  For me the fun was just in finding the letters and seeing how efficient I could become, how fast I could go without making a  mistake.  In all of my efforts, I only ended up making one mistake, which was an inverted period.  That's what I get for competing with myself!

The Smallest Beginnings

It's hard imagine that books that can be as big as a computer can come from such small beginnings. So many pages and so much writing comes from tiny little pieces of lead. Something as complex as, say, the bible was made up of tiny little letters individually placed. The amount of work required to make a book in the past is incredible.

One also has to consider the frustration that would come from messing up a sentence, or even just one word. It might mean you would have to redo the entire thing, and that would take forever. And if the entire phrase falls apart, that's even worse. It makes you appreciate how much work was put into books by the printers.

Also, I wonder if they ordered different style of letters for different books. If all of the books from a publisher were in the same style, I would wonder if people who wanted a specific style of text would go to a different printer. An interesting way to cause rivalry.