Welcome to Daisy, my new hand platen press

I have a love of mechanical things. i was the kid who took her clock apart just to have the fun of putting it back together, I drive a 1969 vw campervan, and love adjusting the valves, changing the oil and fiddling with the points. I can watch reels of letterpress machines on Instagram all day!

This is why my books are personalised on my vintage typwriter instead of via a digital printer - that would be so much easier, quicker and cheaper right? but I don’t want to work like that,

So, to add to my mechanical armoury, please meet Daisy. She’s a 1980’s Adana 8x5 platen press, she’s small but perfectly formed and I love her. I have been skirting around the massive letterpress rabbit hole for well over year.

I have researched, learnt, and now it’s time to jump in. it’s a steep learning curve, lots of patient faffing to get the tiny metal type in the right place and locked in to the chase, and a bit more patient faffing with tiny pieces of tissue to make the impression even. I was fully prepared for my first run to be a complete disaster, but actually I was really pleased with it.

Any die hard printers, please don’t examine my lock up, I have ordered some more furniture and spacers so I don’t have to make do quite so much next time ;) x