The Beginning...

Well not really THE beginning. That started earlier in November when a coworker heard me talking about wanting an old hand operated lever platen press to fool around with. I wanted to connect and keep a reminder of where the art of printing had started. Especially since printing is no longer so much an art anymore with all the automation and digitalization. It turned out that this generous coworker had a circa 1970s Honer B collecting dust in his families rubber stamp business. Many decades ago letterpresses were used not only for printing ink on paper, but also for making molds to pour hot rubber into for stamps. Like printing however the trade has evolved and the press and type was no longer needed or used. The press, type and a few other items they had were mine for the taking. A very very generous offer and gift that will never be forgotten. We transported it all to our home, set it up, cleaned it off and so that was the real beginning.

This beginning, though a little late, is the start of the blog for the private press we are now operating. Full Metal Press as we have deemed it through a family vote. Blogs seem very popular among the letterpress community around the Internet, so it seemed the most appropriate and simplest way to create a website to go with our little private press. Like many others operating letterpresses for fun and profit, this is a great way to easily share that which we learn, create, discovery, acquire and even sometimes print. Being this beginning is later than the actual beginning of things though, your going to see a whole lot of posts made to try and catch up on all that's happened to our little print shop the past year and half. None of it was recorded as it happened, so we're left to speculating about the actual dates when things took place. I don't imagine there will really be a whole lot, though we all know how story telling can go once one gets started. . . .