My daughter Erin, taped me running the Hacker Block Leveler and has produced
the following video on the operation for everyone to see how it works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YQyEMekeMs

The 500 pound machine was brought home in my trailer down a steep, winding, mountain road back to Ohio and into my garage. I spent the next 4 months adding three new motors and a series of pulleys to slow down the feed rates. Every step in the process of converting the leveler from a hand-fed and hand-rotated machine to the “sit back and watch” version I now have was a learning experience.

Thirty five years of Industrial Arts experience and lessons from building my other machines helped. However, I was building something that did not exist in a working, powered form. The block leveler at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum is a massive machine with a 16 inch horizontal carbide blade and a leather belt drive feed screw 12 feet long.

I have always had the gift of designing furniture, machines, and stage props in my head, including all the steps needed to produce it. Every step in making my block leveler went through many experiments and prototype pieces. I ended up with a bucket full of odd pulleys, belts, Acme threaded shafts and metal bars. Thank goodness there was a Tractor Supply store near my workshop.

The original Hacker Block Leveler I purchased was set-up to surface metal type, including a factory installed chase in the rotating table. Vandercook  had also designed it to surface the back of wood slabs down to type high (.918″). However, even though the table was machined to hold a self centering wood vise, ATF had not taken that option. I reversed engineered my own system  and then was lucky enough to find the original Hacker U.S. Patent drawing for their wood vise on line. I kind of combined the two concepts into what I have now and it works GREAT! I am using the new block leveler to establish a reference plane on the bottom of the glued up hard maple slabs. Then I flip it over and spin down what will be the top surface of the slab into as parallel plane .050″ over size.

After a trip to my very accurate surface sanding machine that I designed and built, the polished slabs will make the return trip to the block leveler to cut away any wood from the BOTTOM of the slab to leave me large pieced of end grain hard maple at exactly type high. YEA!

On one of my trips to the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin I took research photos of catchwords, stars, and ornaments from their collection of type specimen books.  The trouble with taking photos out of books is the lens distortion and lighting. I try to use historical materials in my designs. For several years now I have using Adobe Illustrator to trace and correct these photos and make patterns for cutting wood type. My friend knew it was hard to get usable images in bad lighting.

The Tubbs book is full of beautiful old wood type designs. I could take photos with a copy stand and studio lighting. The modern trend in designing computer fonts and giving them unusual names has a historical foundation. Tubbs came up with the Tubbs Foxy Grandpa Series.  The page even included a drawing of what they consider to be the “Foxy Grandpa”

I especially like that the center of the uppercase and lowercase “O” slant in opposite directions. I have already created 7 new catchwords and ornament patterns from the Tubbs #5 Specimen Book. When I finish some existing orders I hope to  start cutting more wood type to sell based on this book.

I am very proud to say that Erin is a Graphic Design Instructor in the Art Department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She has helped revitalize their letterpress program and teaches several different courses dealing with printing and design. Last year she had a design competition in her letterpress class to design, “a modern ornament or catchword.”

I made a presentation to the class on the history of wood type design and production, showed them how to cut type with my small line pantograph, and set down some simple guidelines for the competition. I also brought the pantograph to her college and let each class member cut a piece of wood type so they would understand how it works.

The winning design would be selected by the retiring department chair, Tom Effler, who is also the inspiration for the name and logo of Miami’s Curmudgeon Press. Then Moore Wood Type would cut the design in maple at 6, 8, 10, and 12 line size and donate a full set to Curmudgeon Press, to the designer, and of course a set would end up in Erin’s Inky Winke type cabinet.

Students began with hand sketches, as a group critiqued the design based on the guidelines as well as aesthetics, then traced the selected ornament in Illustrator. Participants included printmaking and metals grad students, an art faculty member as well as graphic design and architecture majors. 

The chosen ornament is LePlume, named by the designer Emily Schwegman Graphics Class of 2013. LePlume will be sold in pairs in the MWT store soon. The unique thing about this pair of ornaments is that they work on the press in all four directions, as a border, corner blocks, line ornaments and my favorite use, to position the points toward each other to make a really neat mustache.

Here are some images of the LePlume production process.

For the past 15 years I have still been involved with the theater program.

32" wood front wheel for prop bike

I build specialized props and set pieces that the current technical director does not have time to complete. Building the interesting and creative props allow me to keep involved with high school theater students after I gave up being the Technical Director.

I am currently building “Maurice’s Wood Chopping Invention”. Think of it as a six foot  long mix of a “Big Wheel” bike with a wood chipper. The script calls for parts to fall off on cue, make noise when it moves and chop five fake basswood logs in half while the student who is playing Maurice pedals like crazy to power the machine.

The over size front wheel has to move the machine, steer it around the stage, and power the chopper. I decided the flywheel from an Old Style 10 x 15” Chandler & Price printing press was the perfect solution. However, it could only weigh 30 pounds, not 250.

Using poplar wood, epoxy, screws and wood glue I completed the new front wheel in only 3 days.  A 24” steel replacement garden wheel provided a lightweight, solid core. It will eventually get a bicycle gears, bike drive chains and two recycled bicycle pedals. 

The outer ring will be painted to look like old wood, and the flywheel center painted and detailed to look like the C&P press at the Printer’s Hall in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.

See…letterpress does have a place on the big stage!

One of the most requested items to add to my store is a three dimensional star, or what I call a William Page #2 star. It is used digitally on everything from western theme menus, to T-shirts to Dallas Cowboy football helmets..

I hand made the pattern out of 1/4” Baltic birch plywood and had it laser cut from my interpretation of the Page star.  I worked in Adobe Illustrator from a scan of his 1878 type specimen book. Once I fixed the math from the scan, both patterns turned out very accurate. I have actually cut and hand trimmed about 10 of these stars for printer friends, special orders, and of course my printer daughter, Erin.

Trimming is the hardest part of cutting type.  I understand why there was a long apprenticeship for trimmers in the 1800’s. The pantograph cutter is round, so both the inside points and outside oblique angles need trimmed. Not to brag, but I’ve gotten pretty good at trimming simple stars. The hard part is the inside. The long points are stamped with a hardened steel stamp ground out of an old metal file, just like at Hamilton.

The center five points are the problem.  They can be cut to the proper point and shape with a trim knife. However, getting the center points to all meet at one spot without over cutting or leaving a gap is very hard. I also tried grinding a second steel stamp which worked out pretty well. My average for successful trimming is one good one for three ruined ones.

I am getting ready to cut and trim out 60 Page Stars in four different sizes to put in the MWT store. I needed to resolve the center point problem before I cut and trim them. I can not afford to waste 45 out of the 60 stars.

I did some research on this star that appears in every company’s wood type specimen book, and also checked my reference photograph collection. I discovered that everyone did it differently.  Some have a perfect center or an open center. Some have a solid area in the center, and some had a very small solid center area. The very small solid center is the easiest to trim. I will be stamping the inside 10 points, and trimming the outside points with a knife.

As my daughter keeps telling me, “Each piece of wood type I make is a work of art. It is not cut with a CNC mill or a laser. It is made by hand.” I will do my best and give printers a chance to have this star. That is why I call these Page Stars “Printer Candy.”

Nesbitt French Lined & Diamond Lined

One of the fun things about cutting wood type is doing research. I love old type specimen books and my collection, both on the shelf in the type shop and on my laptop, is growing. I was given these digital files from a friend at a conference in Chicago. It is not a complete set, I have plans to make a trip sometime to photograph it all.

They are pages from the George F. Nesbitt Wood Type Company in New York City. The type specimen book is pretty rare, dating from 1838. They are digital photos, not

Nesbitt Amalgamation Lined

scans, so they are slightly distorted, but were originally printed with the actual type that they were selling. I was told the company featured the unusual wood type but not many people wanted to purchase it.

Nesbitt Roman Grotesque

Happy New Year! I will be starting a new tradition at MWT of burning all the scrap maple cuts and unsellable wood in the 5 gallon bucket by the trim saw. Nice to start the year off with an empty bucket and lots of new maple and patterns.

Thanks to everyone who have helped me this past year with type making equipment, advise, and orders.

Nesbitt Gothic Shade Ray

Loading 500 pounds of block leveler in the snow

One of the advantages I have had in cutting wood type is that I can produce 12” x 12” blocks of end grain hard maple that is type high and in large batches. I designed and build a steel framed, very heavy duty accurate surface sander as one of my first machines. Even with my machine and 40 years of woodworking experience, I still had to send each slab through sander over 450 passes, while changing velcro backed abrasive strips from 80 grit to 600 grit to get  the 1 1/8” maple down to .918”. Lots of time and hard on my wrist.

I have studied the type high machine at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, with it’s 16 inch horizontally mounted carbide  saw blade and belt driven 20 foot screw drive gear. Way too big and way too expensive to reproduce.

When I was discussing my process at the APA Wayzgoose at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa in June, I was informed that the best machine I could use to cut away the unwanted thickness from the back of the polished maple fronts was called a “Block Leveler.”  I had seen pictures of a large Vandercook Block leveler on Nick Sherman’s site that is in a collection in New Jersey.

I had decided to build one of my own design from a large Hammond Radial Router that I purchased from Don Black Linecasting in Toronto. I made the trip to Canada and brought it home in the back of my little Honda CRV and started designing my own block leveler.

Cutting a 14 inch pulley for the powered turn table

In June I was offered the chance to purchase a real Hacker Block Leveler that was manufactured by Vandercook in 1923.  I made the trip to the mountains of West Virginia with my daughter and hauled it home in a rented trailer with brakes smoking as we came down the mountain in 9 degree slopes.  The actual visit to Rich’s famous type casting shop will be covered in the near future.

Left and Right Acme threads for self-centering vise

I have been cleaning the block leveler and adding two new motors.  One to run the cutter head that originally was 3 phase, and now will be single phase.  The second motor is part of a pulley and belt system to slowly rotate the turntable that holds the wood.  Access to a big metal lathe to turn the 14 inch table pulley ring and other new parts has been a big help.  I also found the original Hacker Patent drawings on the web to help build the self-centering wood vice I was reverse engineering. I am going to try it out this weekend. Yea!

I want to share the connection.

Ron was more than a Father-in-Law, he was a good friend. We shared breakfast every Saturday somewhere in Columbus. He also shared my love of going to garage sales, yard sales, and tag sales. We would stop at several every week. He would also check the ads in the local paper and hit lots of garage sales when I was still at work. He would often find a single piece of wood type for his granddaughter the letterpress printer. Once he even found an entire showcard type case full of 10 line Futura for only $5. What a deal! Erin had a special “Grandpa” Christmas that year.

Ron also loved to help his grandchildren any way he could. For her birthday and Christmas, he would have me purchase something from my friends Don Black in Toronto or Dave Churchman in Indianapolis, and say, “Just buy her something she would like to have for her printing.” He did not know much about letterpress but he knew she would use it. She often would proudly show him a new print made with “his” type.

When Erin needed a place to store two big double type cabinets, a book job press and an 1,800 pound C&P 10 x 15, he offered almost half of his garage to store them for his granddaughter. No hesitation, no time frame, just as long as she needed until she was ready to move them. At age 82 he even helped us unload the press from the trailer.

Ron loved to see the work Erin was making  on her Vandercook 4.  We were even planning to try out the C&P in his garage soon so he see how it worked. He always wanted to see what type I was cutting and offered me his trailer to move the next “Old machine” I had found to help with making wood type.

Ron loved his family and always took pride in everything they did.  He will be missed.

In recent times there has been a revival of interest in new wood type for letterpress printing. Some people have experimented with CNC mill cutting and laser cutting of wood type. Bill Jones believed in cutting new wood type by the historical pantagraph method. He cut with the actual pantographs and patterns used by the American Wood Type Company to make their type.

Today the number of people who can put the title of “Wood Type Cutter” after their name can be counted on two hands. Most are in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. One was in New York state.

With the passing of Bill Jones, the list is now one craftsman less. He will be missed.

When I tell letterpress printers I make new wood type, usually the first question from them is, “I’m missing an upper case ‘K’ from a nice font of Tuscan wood type. Can you make me some replacement letters?”

or…

“I have a beautiful 4A font of French Clarendon, but it only has one ‘E.’ Can you make me some duplicate E’s so I can spell more than just a few words?”

or…

“I just bought a full font of wood type on E-bay, but now that I have it I see that there are 4 letters that are crushed or badly scratched. Can you repair the damage or make me new letters from the ones with the damage?”

or the worst question I have had so far…

”I just bought some old wood type, but it has been under water at some point and a few of the letters have had the corners chewed off by mice. Can you make me replacement letters and bring it back to type high?”

The answer to all of these questions is Yes. I have been working on developing the skills and knowledge to be able to do some of this work. I am still working on the price to charge, and the best way to gather the information I need to make new letters to match existing type.

My daughter, Erin, presented me with a recent order for new 15 line uppercase O’s to allow one of her students at Miami University to complete a project in their Curmudgeon Press Shop. It is one of the beautiful Page fonts from their collection but all of the O’s were missing. Erin and I have been discussing the process of making missing letters so she brought me the uppercase 15 line “C,” a smaller 8 line “O” from a matching font, and provided nice clean proofs.

A digital micrometer and the C showed me that the actual printing face was only 11 1/2 picas tall. Having a piece of the actual type also provided the measurements for the shoulders and the location of the baseline and position of the letter on the wood base.

I decided to make a pattern from wood because I was making her 5 copies of the same letter. By experimenting with different size cutters and tracers, I finally made a perfect one with the proper “Heft” or stoke thickness. 20 minutes later I had five new uppercase O’s ready to ship to Oxford, Ohio. I only ruined six other pieces of maple in the process.