Linotypesetting.com

huh, it appears it does fit though in a surprising doesn’t actually fit the way you’d expect way. Catalog 56 confirms that it doesn’t wrap the sides, and curiously, hangs off the back. Not sure how that’s suppoed to control the chips it throws.

if you know, you know.

needed and NEVER expected to find, but the The Museum of Printing, the amazing resource it is, had it sitting out at today’s garage sale. now I can recycle the one I taped together out of corrugated cardboard.

Been wondering why I’ve been so quiet? April to July I was doing house work. Clapboard tear off, housewrap, re-clapboarding, prep, two coats of alkyd oil primer, and two coats of color. Then back to work designing books to get some money coming in…

www.flickr.com

Another ebay score. Some mats we didn’t have, some we did. Will probably make the duplicates available for sale.

Making some backup 20 and 25 pica recessed liners in 10–14pt from a large inventory of spare liners. Yesterday made up three 10pt for 20 solid liners to replace that one I dinged recently.

Watch your ejector settings folks. I had been casting 18/30 with a display mold for that 18pt Caslon border. Someone dropped by the shop and I went to do a quick cycle of the machine, assembling 9pt mats on the UA 10/20. Except I didn’t set the ejector to 20 from 30. BANG. At least nothing but that liner was ruined. Pay attention.

Need small star wheels (1.0625”)? We got you covered. Six packs of 6 rescued on ebay. (I run medium, so it was a crap shoot again.)

This is an experiment for Typorama. Run out a lowercase n from any standard font and check the tooth combinations. I believe you’ll find that it’s the same as these 18pt Erbar and 14pt Memphis. If they are, that would mean the distributor bar is the difference.

it was a fruitful visit to the The Museum of Printing’s Garage Sale last weekend.

With this rescue of 6,8,9,10,12,14 Helvetica w/ semi-bold, we now have almost the full sweep of Light w/italic, Regular w/italic, Regular w/ semi-bold, and Semi-bold w/ semi-bold italic to work with a serious range of hand-set Helvetica.

We’ll be updating this now out-of-date showing with new mats in the shop.
https://www.interrobangletterpress.com/files/Helvetica.pdf

Back at the collapsing barn, after having rescued 21 galleys on Wednesday. Mostly Helveticas. Taking advantage of unseasonably warm weather I made another run on Friday last week.

I’d been discussing the Garamond No. 3 with the gentleman with the collapsing barn for over 10 years. The word was the mats came from a typesetter doing work for Yale.

While there are still additional sizes to excavate, I did locate the pi mats for 6, 7, 8, 9, and 14pt. They’re quite comprehensive. All have Cap/period, Double Cap, and Cap/Lowercase 2-letter logotypes, pi sorts, old style and lining figures that run pi, lowercase accents, and in a size or two, cap accents. And of course fractions, and roman figures with small caps that run in.

I managed to find the 8, 11, 12, and 14 point mats in magazines. Unfortunately the magazines seem pretty shot for years of freeze/thaw and water infiltration. I’ll have to drain the mats and check condition. Fingers crossed. The magazines are brass-back Alumilites, so full, they’re heavy as all get out.

A bonus, there were two magazines of 11pt.

I also managed to grab a 7-magazine Foster rack to expand my modest magazine storage.

Spent a few hours north of Boston yesterday rescuing some matrices from a collapsing barn. Dozens of fonts of mats in galleys, boxes, magazines, and sorts trays of every shape and size, and pi’d everywhere. Poor lighting made it difficult to see, but there is much that might be saved from the scrap man.

As a for instance, here are three sizes (10,12, 14) of Kentonian with pi sorts.

There’s a a box of 11pt Scotch Roman, there’s a full run of Baskerville with italic, Caledonia, etc. etc. There was an 18pt font of two-letter Lydian w/italic. There may or may not be pi mats with a lot of this stuff. All tbd. There’s a lot to excavate, and it’s an hour and a half north, so not a casual trip.

Who needs mats? What’s your wish list?

If these mats aren’t rescued they’re going to scrap, so prices are reasonable, plus shipping.

There are also literally tons of antique 19th century foundry fonts, decorative initials, and ornaments, cuts, and rare wood type.

If I could save it all and remove it for sorting I would. But right now I simply don’t have the space. My plan is to photograph what I can to help the owner out, but it’s literally an overwhelming amount of material in an absolute rats nest of horde.

PM me, and I’ll try to get materials in the hand of folks, because the window of opportunity, due to the owner’s health, is perhaps a year.

Setting a short broadside poem for a reading at Boston College on Thursday evening (yes, time is short) in 12^302/364 Metroblack w/Metrolite, I found the font is missing its question marks.

In fact, I needed to include an é in the word “outré,” so ran the pi sort… and it distributed… into the ? channel! Ugh.

If anyone out there with a font of 12 Metroblack w/ Metrolite could spare a ? mark or two, I’d be forever grateful.

We’ll be up in Haverhill for Linotype Day at the The Museum of Printing this Saturday, but the shop will be open on Sunday the 24th for the 30th Annual Jamaica Plain Arts Council-JP Open Studios. Even though we aren’t on the map, Interrobang Letterpress has been a creative force in Jamaica Plain since 1992. Off the beaten path, we’re tucked back in a workshop behind Hatoff’s off Washington Street. Come by and see the Linotype in action.

I finally sat down and made up a (digital) specimen of the Helvetica in the shop. We have two incomplete series of mats for the Linotype, and nice ranges of hand-set variants in cases at Interrobang.

If you like Helvetica, or even if you think you don’t, you can at least marvel at the amount of material we’ve assembled here. If you have Helvetica matrices in good condition for the Linotype, I’m always looking to complete the series, and find Regular duplexed with Bold. I would especially like to find pi mats for several sizes now lacking any.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fhfhfo4zy94rs0xl6vkue/Helvetica.pdf?rlkey=u6lthqmzuxkfnrn4zc74eme9o&dl=0

As a follow up from yesterday’s question about why different star wheel sizes, here are two pages from the 1966 Star parts catalog that discusses the different AE pawls, gates, and star wheels. Importantly there’s spec on star wheel sizes for reference so you can check your machine to see if the various parts you’re running are properly matched.

I finished working up a spreadsheet of parts available for sale. most are Intertype parts since I’m a Linotype guy.

if you see anything you need get in touch and we can figure out pricing.

Parts Inventory.xlsx Shared with Dropbox

Here’s a question for the elders.

Traditionally there were two sizes of Star Wheel, large and small. Star Parts appears to have added a medium size in the 50s. Star Wheel size also needed to coincide with Assembler pawls, and Chute Rails so that mats were delivered into the Assembly Elevator square and sure.

The question is, why. My Model 31 Two-in-One is fitted with a medium star wheel. It can run mats from 5–42pt.

Was a machine routinely setting 5–14 set up with a large star wheel to push mats past Assembler Pawls, while a machine set up for mostly display work set up with a small star wheel because the thicker mats didn’t require as large a star to get the mat out of the chute and into the elevator past the pawls?

Maybe this is one of those questions for which the answer is lost to the sands of time. Maybe there’s a machinist-operator out there who knows.

Among all those parts was this envelope and post cards. Apparently this was one way to have your metal assayed by Imperial Type Metals. Gather 7oz of back knife trimmings in the canvas lined envelope and send it along.

Interestingly there’s a mall built on the site of the Philadelphia works called the Imperial Mall.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/r43hGMr3hHJbykfP9?g_st=ic

We all know lubrication of various parts on a linecaster is important.

As I’ve been inventorying spare parts I was disassembling and inspecting a Second Elevator Bar (G-1821), Bar Plate (G-136), and Bar Link (G-1269) assembly that was salvaged from a Model 31 on Long Island. As I drove the Bar Link Hinge Pin Rod (G-70) out to separate the parts I noticed that the eyelets on the Link had begun to round out from lack of lubrication. Bummer.

This allows wobble in the assembly where there should only be front to back swing. The result is that when the Second Elevator Bar Plate assembly seats in the Intermediate Channel for transfer of mats from First to Second Elevator, if there’s wobble that seating may not be square. I ran in to this problem two years ago. Four of five transfers would happen smoothly, the fifth the transfer would jam. I had fitted a brand new bar and bar plate. What the heck is going on?…

Luckily Dshms LetterPress was rolling in to town to do some work at the The Museum of Printing, so he dropped by on his way. We lowered the Second Elevator, and he gave it a turn. “The eyelets have gone oval.”

Bar Links are a relatively complex part. Finding ones in good condition will become more and more difficult. As they say, “oil is cheaper than iron.”

Keep that hinge pin lightly oiled and the whole assembly clean.

I spent the past two days sorting through all those parts, and am now starting to inventory them. There are a bunch I’ll rat hole for my self, but there are a number of Intertype parts that don’t also fit on a Linotype, and a bunch of mystery parts I couldn’t identify.

Another one of those crap shoots was delivered today. I guess I’m a sucker for what looked like a big lot of potentially good stuff. This must have been from a machinist since it’s a mix of Linotype and Intertype parts.

Yeah there are some good front and back jaw pawls and assembler parts, 7 brand new Star Parts transfer fingers, and a bunch of other stuff, but then annoyingly, a bunch of empty parts envelopes that silverfish feasted on.

Oh yeah, and that Star Parts bag with a few piece of part A-3-3… Yes, they are what they look like. Also a Ludlow part of the same material, woven. Yikes. Just stuffed in a box.

Any of you Intertype folks need small parts, or if you have a Mohr saw, there’s a blade and a nice new belt. Let me know, I’ll see what I have.

Here’s a rarity. This is the City of Boston Printing Division Union bug.

I got it from the guy who won the lot which was all of the composing room fixtures and material except the two late serial number Model 31 Linotypes at the auction.

Here’s the story. After the hammer dropped a bunch of folks, myself included gave him business cards and left, sad. A few days later he phoned and said if I wanted anything I better come down cuz he was going throught it all.

I was home working, so had the luxury, grabbed a couple beers from the fridge and threw them in my bag and hopped the T downtown.

When I arrived it was just me and him and a couple auction folks down in the empty offices collecting the odd check. No one else showed up (it was mid-day midweek, so maybe no surprise. The guy had no idea what he bought. He had a backer, and the plan was to sell bits at Brimfield, and cabinets to e.g. Ralph Lauren to throw $500 jeans over for displays. Ugh.

Anyway, he had no clue. After the auction guys left I pulled out the beers, cracked em open and walked him around and talked him through values. Unusual woodtype. Big Bucks. Ancient foundry type. Valuable as fonts, please don’t piece it out for monograms. Galleys and galleys of Linotype slugs on the deadbank; scrap it. Etc. etc. I walked away with a few sizes of 19th century Tudor Black and Cosmopolitan and a bunch of City of Boston seals.

And that Union bug mat. There was a locked cabinet under a giant furniture cabinet. “Hey what’s in there? I ask. “Dunno, but here’s the key…” So we open it and it’s empty except for one of those grey 4x5 file card boxes. What a letdown. Coulda been gold… He picks up the box, it rattles and he opens it.

There’s a lone mat. The Mat. Under lock and key. “WoW”! I say. “You want it”? he says. Oh hell yeah.

Here’s pics from the preview day, and the auction. Doug Wilson was there filming, Keith D. Cross, DWRI Letterpress, the late Al Gowan, John Barrett of Letterpress Things. A few others.

https://www.flickr.com/gp/interrobang918/3201Km6i39

Shout out to my newest followers! Excited to have you onboard!

Juha Korhonen, Paul Marotta

I knew it was going to be a crap shoot, but the pi mats that delivered today had a couple possibilities for usefulness among the great number of fractions.

Two sets of 12pt News Gothic Special No. 3 figures. One set runs baseline to x-height, the other as superiors.

The others are four sizes of degree marks; 18, 14, 12, and 10. A couple years ago I had a business card job in Helvetica that needed a degree pi sort for setting latitudinal longitudinal positions instead of an address. Luckily I had one, but just one.

If anyone needs a 14pt degree there are a few more than I need. $5/mat.

The fractions will probably go in the scrap bucket, but there were also daggers, double daggers, maths, and virgules.

And as quickly as it was started, they are complete. Have I mentioned the hundreds of slides I can cast for borders of all sorts?

I’m happy to cast anything listed for other printers in need.
https://www.linotypesetting.com/files/Lino_Ornament.pdf

In the shop early before it gets too hot out casting up a slew of 6-point 1409 Greek key border for a wedding save-the-dates.

Shout out to my newest followers! Excited to have you onboard!

I’d love to hear if you worked in typesetting or are just interested in what’s happening.

José Deusimar, Sheila Veeraian

I was just contacted by a gentleman in New Hartford, NY who purchased a printing company, and needs to rehome some equipment. He believes the machine pictured is a Model 31. The previous owners said it’s not running, but would be good to part out.

If anyone needs parts I can provide his contact info. That written, time is of the essence. He states that stuff needs to be removed in the next 2–3 weeks.

Just saw a first cut today of ~5-minute video that was made in the shop a few weeks ago by/for the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass. They have a Model 16 (with Hebrew keyboard) and wanted an explainer and demo that can loop next to their machine. I think it came out better than the WCVB Chronicle segment that aired a couple years ago. And my wife said my hair looked better this time… There are two typos in the captions that need to be corrected, and if I get permission to link to it, I’ll post a follow up.

Type composition around here isn’t all Linotype all the time, and with corrections made to markup on first round proofs, production has moved across the aisle.

There’s always hand-set type at Interrobang that extends the various Linotype series in the shop.

Now that I’m pulling 2nd round proofs, the time has come to fix the rough letter spacing on the section openers hand-set in Gravur. For the OWA in TOWARD that W needed both sides kerned, and the U kerned to better space the AU combo in BEAUTY. The rest is letter spacing.

I’ll look at it again with fresh eyes when breaking galleys into four-page impositions and maybe slip a hair space in or out here and there.