Part 16
A different process must be used in the wetting of drawing and plate papers. These papers are usually sent in quite flat; that is, not folded into quires or half-quires. The best method of wetting these papers is to use a brush, such as is called a banister brush; and, instead of dipping the paper into the trough, he lays it on the paper-board by the side of the trough, and, dipping the brush into the water, he shakes it gently over the whole surface, to give an equal degree of moisture to all parts; and then proceeds as before described. The drawing-paper, being very hard-sized in the making, will require the brush, and much water, three, four, or even five times a quire; while the plate-paper should have as little water as it is possible to give it, so as to cover it all over; and twice a quire will often be too much. This same mode must also be adopted in wetting paper of extraordinary dimensions.
Having wet his first token, he doubles down a corner of the upper sheet of it on his right hand, so that the farther corner may be a little toward the left of the crease in the middle of the heap, and the other corner may hang out on the near side of the heap about an inch and a half. This sheet is called the _token-sheet_, being a mark for the pressman, when he is at work, to show how many tokens of that heap are worked off.
Having wet the whole heap, he lays a wrapper, or waste sheet of paper, upon it; then, three or four times, takes up as much water as he can in the hollow of his hand, and throws it over the waste sheet, to moisten and soak downward into the wet part of the last division of the quire; after which, he places in the heap the label which the warehouseman must always furnish for each heap, and upon which are written the title of the work and the date of wetting, one-half hanging out so as to be easily read.
The paper should be pressed for twelve hours, and then carefully turned by each three or four sheets, so that no lift be relaid in the same position with respect to the adjoining lift; at the same time, every fold and wrinkle must be carefully rubbed out by the action of the hand, so that nothing but a flat and even surface shall remain; the heap should then be pressed for about twenty-four hours in a screw-press, and it will be in good order for working.
The wetting of paper must, in all cases, depend entirely upon its fabric; and, since the printer has seldom the choice of the paper, it will require all his skill and patience to adapt his labours to the materials upon which he is to work. The texture of the paper must be suited to the fineness and tenacity of the ink. To attempt doing fine work upon common paper is lost labour. A paper to take the best ink must be made entirely of linen rags, _and not bleached by chemicals_. A fine hand-made paper, fabricated a sufficient time to get properly hardened, and well and equally saturated with size, so as not to imbibe more water in one part of the dip than in another, nor resisting the water like a duck’s back, is most suitable for fine printing.
Machines for wetting paper are now used in most large printing-offices.
BLANKETS.
Woollen blankets are unnecessary when a book is printed from new type. Nothing more should be used than a sheet or two of paper, as in fine work only the face of the type should show in the impression. But when the types or plates are worn and rounded, fine cassimere or broadcloth should be used in the tympan. In this, as in all matters connected with artistic typography, the pressman must display good judgment and discretion.
MAKING READY A FORM ON A HAND-PRESS.
Before a form is laid on the press, the pressman should carefully wipe the bottom of the type and the bed perfectly clean; for, if a particle of sand remain on it, it will cause a type or two to rise, and not only make a stronger impression, but probably injure the letters.
An octavo form should be laid on the press with the signature-page to the left hand, or nearest the platen; a duodecimo, or its combinations, with the signature at the right hand, or nearest the tympan. The form should be laid under the centre of the platen, and properly quoined up. The tympan is then laid down, and wet if necessary, and paper or blanket put in. It was formerly customary to wet the tympans for all works, and even jobs of almost every description; but, since the introduction of fine printing, and particularly iron presses, the custom is well-nigh banished, excepting for very heavy forms, composed with old letter, which, of course, require more softness to bring them off. After the inner tympan or drawer is put in, it is fastened with the hooks for that purpose, which serve to keep it from springing out. The tympan being lifted up, a sheet of the paper to be worked is folded in quarto, and the short crease is placed over the middle of the grooves of the short cross, if it lie in the centre of the form, as in octavo. In a form of twelves, the paper is folded in thirds, and the long crease placed in the middle of the long cross, and the short cross over the grooves. The sheet lying evenly on the form, the tympan is brought down, and a gentle pull will cause the paper to adhere, when it should be pasted to the tympan and fully stretched. The points are next screwed to the tympan, for large paper short-shanked points being used, and long-shanked for small paper. In twelves, the points must be placed at precisely equal distances from the edge of the paper. In octavo, the off-point may be a little larger than the near one, as it enables the pressman to detect a turned heap when working the reiteration or second side.
When a press is continued upon the same work, the quoins on the off-side of the bed may remain and serve as gauges for the succeeding forms; for, if the chases are equal in size, the register will be almost, if not quite, perfect.
The following operations are comprised in the term of making ready the form:—
1. The frisket should be covered with stout even paper, in the manner described for putting on parchment, the paper being carefully placed on the inside of the frame so as to lie close to the tympan, and to confine the sheet in its place when laid on for printing. When the paste is dry, the frisket is put on the tympan, and, after inking the form, an impression pulled upon it. The frisket is then taken off and laid on a board, or on the bank, and the impression of the pages cut out with a sharp knife about a Pica em larger than the page. After being replaced on the tympan, it is advisable to put a few cords across, to strengthen the bars of paper, and to keep the sheets close to the tympan. When the margin is too small to admit bars of paper, it is necessary to work with cords only.
2. The form should be examined, to see that it is properly locked up and planed down; that no letters or spaces lie in the white lines of the form, nor between the lines in leaded matter.
3. White pages which occur in a form must not be cut out; but, if the page be already cut out, a piece of paper must be pasted on the frisket, to cover the white page in the form, and a bearer put on to keep the adjoining pages from having too hard an impression. Some pressmen use reglets, others furniture cut to a proper height, and a third class adopt cork, which, from its elasticity, is very useful. Spring bearers, made of hard paper rolled up, are also employed to guard the sides and bottoms of light and open pages, when there is an inclination to slur.
4. The pressman must examine whether the frisket bites; that is, whether it keeps off the impression from any part of the pages.
5. He must consider whether the catch of the frisket stands either too far forward or backward: if forward, he may be much delayed by its falling down, and, if backward, it will come down too slowly, and thus retard the progress of the work and not unfrequently cause the sheet to slip out of its proper place. He must, therefore, place the catch so that the frisket may stand a little more than perpendicularly backward, that, when lightly tossed up, it may just stand, and not come back.
6. He must fit the gallows so that the tympan may stand as much toward an upright as he can; because it is the sooner let down upon the form and lifted up again. But yet he must not place it so upright as to prevent the white sheets of the paper from lying secure on the tympan.
7. The range of the paper-bank should not stand at right angles with the bed of the press; but the farther end of the bank should be placed so that the near side may make an angle of about seventy-five degrees with the near side of the bed.
8. The heap of paper should be set on the horse on the near end of the paper-bank, near the tympan, yet not touching it. The uppermost or outside sheet should be laid on the bank; and the pressman then takes four or five quires off his heap, and shakes them at each end, to loosen the sheets, till he finds he has sufficiently loosened or hollowed the heap. Then, with the nail of his right-hand thumb, he draws or slides forward the upper sheet, and two or three more commonly follow gradually with it, over the hither edge of the heap, to prepare those sheets ready for laying on the tympan.
9. He must next pull a _revise_ sheet, which must be sent up to the overseer for a final revision, and for examining whether any letters have dropped out of the form in putting it on the press, &c.
10. While the sheet is undergoing a revision, the pressman should proceed to _make register_, if half-sheet-wise, which is done by pulling a waste sheet, and turning it, (without inking, as the sheets may afterward be used for _slip_ sheets,) being particular not to stretch the point-holes in the least, or to draw the hand along the sheet in leaving it. In making register, the points must be knocked up or down in such a direction as will bring the first impression under the last, knocking the point only half the distance apparent on the sheet. If register cannot be made with the points, the difficulty must then be either in the furniture, the length of the pages, or in the springing of the cross-bars, from the forms being locked up by careless compositors, who commence at one quarter of the form, and lock it up tightly, and so go around, instead of gently tapping it at opposite sides till the whole is equally tightened. In locking up a form, the quoins at the feet should be gently struck first, to force up the pages and prevent their hanging; but, in unlocking, the side quoins must be first slackened.
Altering the quoins will not make good register, when the compositor has not made the white exactly equal between all the sides of the crosses. The pressman, therefore, will ascertain which side has too much or too little white, and, unlocking the form, will take out or put in as many leads or reglets as will make good register.
PULLING.
In taking a sheet off the heap, the pressman places himself almost straight before the near side of the tympan, but nimbly twists the upper part of his body a little backward toward the heap, the better to see that he takes but one sheet off. This he loosens from the rest of the heap by drawing the back of the nail of his right thumb quickly over the bottom part of the heap, and, receiving the near end of the sheet with his left-hand fingers and thumb, catches it by the farther edge with his right hand, about four inches from the upper corner of the sheet, and brings it swiftly to the tympan: having the sheet thus in both his hands, he lays the farther side and two extreme corners of the sheet down even upon the farther side and extreme farther corners of the tympan-sheet. In the reiteration, care should be taken to draw the thumb on the margin, or between the gutters, to avoid smearing the sheet. The sheet being properly laid on, he supports it in the centre by the fingers of the left hand, while his right hand, being disengaged, is removed to the back of the ear of the frisket, to bring it down upon the tympan, laying at the same moment the tympan on the form. He then, with his left hand, grasps the rounce, and quickly runs the form under the platen; and, after pulling, he gives a quick and strong pressure upon the rounce, to run the carriage out again. Letting go the rounce, he places the fingers of his left hand toward the bottom of the tympan, to assist the right hand in lifting it up, and also to be ready to catch the bottom of the sheet when the frisket rises, which he conveys quickly and gently to the catch: while it is going up, he slips the thumb of his left hand under the near lower corner of the sheet, which, with the aid of his two forefingers, he raises, the right hand at the same time grasping it at the top in the same manner. Lifting the sheet carefully and expeditiously off the points, and nimbly twisting about his body toward the paper-bank, he carries the sheet over the heap of white paper to the bank, and lays it down upon a waste sheet or wrapper; but, while it is coming over the white paper heap, though he has the sheet between both his forefingers and thumbs, yet he holds it so loosely that it may move between them as on two centres, as his body twists about from the side of the tympan toward the side of the paper-bank.
When the pressman comes to a token sheet, he undoubles it, and smooths out the crease with the back of the nails of his right hand, that the face of the letter may print upon smooth paper; and, being printed off, he folds it again, as before, for a token-sheet, when he works the reiteration.
Having worked off the white paper of a form of twelves, he places his right hand under the heap, and, his left hand supporting the end near him, turns it over on the horse, with the printed side downward. If the form be octavo, he places his left hand under the heap, supporting the outside near end with his right hand, and turns it one end over the other. All turning of the paper for reiteration is treated in one of these modes. In performing this operation, he takes from the heap only as much at once as he can well handle without disordering the evenness of the sides of the paper.
Having turned the heap, he proceeds to work it off, as before described, except that with the left hand he guides the point-holes over the points, moving the sheet with the right hand, more or less, to assist him in so doing. The token-sheets, as he meets with them, he does not fold down again.
RULES AND REMEDIES FOR PRESSMEN.
About every five or six sheets a small quantity of ink should be taken; yet this rule is subject to some variation from the nature of the work and quality of the ink. A form of large type or solid matter will require ink to be taken more frequently, and a light form of small type less frequently. During the intervals in which the roller-boy is not employed in brayering out or taking ink, he should be almost constantly engaged in distributing or changing his rollers. He should invariably take ink on the back roller, as it will the sooner be conveyed to the other roller, and, consequently, save time in distributing. When, through carelessness, too much ink has been taken, it should be removed by laying a piece of clean waste paper on one of the rollers, and working it off till the ink is reduced to the proper quantity.
If letters, quadrates, or furniture rise up and black the paper, they should be put down, and the quarter locked up tighter.
If any letters are battered, the quarter they are in must be unlocked, and perfect ones put in by the compositor.
When bearers become too thin by long working, they should be replaced by thicker ones.
When the form gets out of register,—which will often happen by the starting of the quoins which secure the chase,—it must be immediately put in again, as there can scarcely be a greater defect in a book than the want of uniformity in this particular.
If picks, produced by bits of paper, composition, or film of ink and grease or filth, get into the form, they must be removed with the point of a pin or needle; but if the form is much clogged with them, it should be well rubbed over with clean ley, or taken off and washed: in either case, before the pressman goes on again, it should be made perfectly dry by pulling several waste sheets upon it, in order to suck up the water deposited in the cavities of the letter.
The pressman should accustom himself to look over every sheet as he takes it off the tympan: he will thus be enabled not only to observe any want of uniformity in the colour, but also to detect imperfections which might otherwise escape notice.
In order to make perfect uniformity in the colour, the roller-boy should keep his ink well brayered out with the small roller, in proper quantities for the work in hand, and also should change his rollers well after taking ink, and at other times. The rollers are changed by moving the roller-handle slowly to the right and left, while the crank is being turned briskly with the left hand.
Torn or stained sheets met with in the course of work are thrown out and placed under the bank. Creases and wrinkles will frequently appear in the sheets when the paper has been carelessly wet: these should be carefully removed by smoothing them out with the back of the nails of the right hand.
If the frame of the tympan rub against the platen, it will inevitably cause a slur or mackle: this can easily be remedied by moving the tympan so as to clear the platen. The joints or hinges of the tympan should be kept well screwed up, or slurring will be the consequence. When the thumb-piece of the frisket is too long, it always produces a slur: this can be prevented by filing off a part of it. Loose tympans will at all times slur the work, and great care must therefore be observed in drawing them perfectly tight. The paper drying at the edges will also cause a slur: this may be remedied by wetting the edges frequently with a sponge.
Slurring and mackling will sometimes happen from other causes: it will be well in such cases to paste corks on the frisket, or to tie as many cords as possible across it, to keep the sheet close to the tympan.
The pressman should make the boy roll slowly, or the rollers will be apt to jump, and cause a _friar_. To prevent the rollers from jumping or bounding, bridges or springs made of thin steel, to reach across the gutters, may be used: these springs should taper off at the ends, and having an oblong hole in each end, through which they may be tacked to the gutter-sticks. In very open forms, it may be necessary to put bearers or pieces of reglet where the blank pages occur at the end of the form, to prevent one end of the roller from falling down and leaving a friar at the opposite end. This difficulty may be obviated in a great measure by imposing the form in such a manner as to bring the blank pages in the centre. This mode should always be adopted for title-pages and other light matter.
Before the pressman leaves his work, he covers the heap of paper by first turning down a sheet like a token-sheet, to show where he left off, and then putting a quantity of the worked-off sheets on it, and a paper-board if convenient. Laying the blanket on the heap after leaving off work is a bad custom. If the paper be rather dry, it will be well to put wet wrappers on it, after damping the edges well. If the form be clean, he puts a sheet of waste paper between the tympan and frisket, and lays them down on the form; if it be dirty, it must be rubbed over with clean ley, and several waste sheets pulled on it, as before directed, to suck the dirty ley out of the cavities of the letter. On his return to work in the morning, he takes care to wet the tympan, provided the type be worn. If there should be any pages in the form particularly open, the parts of the tympan where they fall must not be wetted.
THE LEY-TROUGH.
The form being worked off, it is the pressman’s duty to wash it clean from every particle of ink, not only for the cleanly working and well standing of the letter in the subsequent composing, but to save his own time in making ready when the same letter gets to press again. Many an hour is lost from not bestowing a minute or two in thoroughly cleansing and rinsing the form.
For this purpose, printing-offices are provided with a ley-trough, suspended on a cross-frame, and swinging by iron ears fixed somewhat out of the precise centre, so that the gravity of the trough will cause it to fall in a slanting position forward. This trough is lined with lead, the top front edge being guarded from the pitching of the forms by a plate of iron. The form having been placed in the trough, on its side, the pressman takes hold of the rim of the chase by the hook, or instrument for that purpose, and, laying it gently down, pours the ley upon it, and sluices it by swinging the trough on its pivots two or three times to and fro; then, taking the ley-brush, he applies it to the whole form, type, furniture, and chase; the ley is then let out into a receptacle, and the form well rinsed with clean water, by swinging the trough as before; the form is then lifted out, and consigned to the care of the compositor.
The ley is made of pot or pearl ash, or, what is better, of concentrated ley. A large earthen jar is usually chosen for the purpose; a sufficient quantity of ash or concentrated ley is added to the water to make it bite the tongue sharply in tasting.
The ley-brush is made large, the hairs close, fine, and long, in order not to injure the type, while sufficient force is applied to search every interstice in the letter where the ink can have insinuated itself.
MAKING READY ON CYLINDER PRESSES.
Make clean the bed of the press and the impression segment of the cylinder. Adjust the bearers a trifle above ordinary type height. See that the impression screws have an even bearing on the journals, and that the cylinder fairly meets the bearers. Select a suitable tympan or impression surface.
The tympan may be the India-rubber cloth which is furnished with the press, a thick woollen lapping cloth or blanket, several sheets of thick calendered printing paper, or one or more smooth and hard pasteboards. Each of these materials has merits not to be found in any other. Upon the proper selection of the tympan the presswork in great measure depends, and the pressman should be thus guided in making choice.
_A pasteboard tympan_ is most suitable for wood-cuts, for perfectly new type, and for the best kinds of presswork. It is not suitable for miscellaneous work, nor for heavy forms, nor mixed old and new type. If the overlaying is properly executed, a pasteboard tympan will enable the pressman to show a sharper edge and a more delicate impression of the type than can be possible with any other, and it will wear the type less than any other. But it will require a very tedious and careful making ready, or it will prove very destructive to type.
_A woollen blanket_ is best adapted for old stereotype plates, for very old type which has been rounded on the edges, for posters with large wood type, and for all common work which requires a clear but dull impression. For such work a woollen blanket will enable the pressman to make ready a form more quickly than with any other material; but it is injurious to new type, and incapable of producing a fine and sharp impression.
_Thick paper_ is much used for book-work. It also answers well for script circulars and leaded forms. It will not answer so well for mixed old and new type, nor for table-work with unequal heights of brass rule, nor for mixed large and small type. It will prove most serviceable for the average of light and fine presswork.