Home Built Letterpress

Built a "letterpress" to print wedding stationary. Whether or not you technically call it "letterpress" is open to debate, but it does what I wanted it to do. There are several other videos on youtube that talk about letterpress in general and great websites like www.boxcarpress.com and www.briarpress.org for more information. My photopolymer plate came from the folks at Boxcar Press.

Definitely some things I would do differently in the construction of my press, but overall I'm happy with how it worked and I thought some other people might be interested in it as well.

If you have any suggestions for ways to improve it, let me know in the comments. So far I've just done "Save the Date" cards and I'm thinking of building a new, more reliable press for the actual invitations.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Letterpress
• printing
• DIY
• Home
• built
• Wedding
• Invitations

[chesshirecat2]

man. you're a badass. you did a fine job for home letterpress and probably saved a ton of money. I need to borrow your press, hah ha

[dryboogers]

dude, why work on the floor? set this up on a work bench, saves your back!

[TejkA8]

sir...my hat comes off to you!

[TripInsure]

That is amazing. I love the use of the pipes.

[usernameunvalidhuh]

this is great... I was looking for diy home-printing videos and i liked yours the best... (so far)... ;)

Do you think you could help with how you went about making the Type ready for the jobwork?

[craftulous]

wow. Your set up is pretty darn badass.

[gurlmeow]

Hey GTGehrke,

I must say I really like what you did!!!!!!!!!!!! I had not idea that letter press is so exciting it seems to have quit a process to it depending on which letter press you own, but you created your own!!! Now that is very impressive.

[mrbluenun]

Hi GTGehrke,

Love what you have done, really clever and you have obviously have the different stages and exactly what was needed as you work your way through a job.

I admire your skill and ambition Sir!

The 'apparatus' used matters not but the fact you are using a true Letter Press style and methods keeps the knowledge going, and putting your video on the Web will help enormously to stress, just how basic things can be and still get a very decent look! You have to be extremely pleased!

[nn8nn]

this is nice..respect for reliving the old times..but would'nt it be better using serigraf?

[gomaaterra]

Great man, I like your press.

[steveoco1]

Cool shit man, I am looking at putting together something just for business card design, using a normal vice and some basic right angles.

[zthetha]

As an old guy I can remember the days of hand type setting and manual printing and I find this return from electronic-desktop-easy peasy-any-fool-can-do-it to the craft of printing on home made equipment a most healthy development. In the final analysis it is what we make with our hands that has value and not what the damn computer begrudgingly allows us to do ... he said tapping away on his laptop. Ah, well... they have their uses I suppose...