The American Printer: A Manual of Typography: Containing practical directions for managing all departments of a printing office, as well as complete instructions for apprentices; with several useful tables, numerous schemes for imposing forms in every variety, hints to authors, etc.MacKellar, Thomas
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The American Printer: A Manual of Typography: Containing practical directions for managing all departments of a printing office, as well as complete instructions for apprentices; with several useful tables, numerous schemes for imposing forms in every variety, hints to authors, etc.
MacKellar, Thomas
Graphic design (Typography); Printing -- United States -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.; Printing industry -- United States
2. The form should be examined, to see that it is properly locked up and
planed down; that no letters or spaces lie in the white lines of the
form, nor between the lines in leaded matter.
3. White pages which occur in a form must not be cut out; but, if the
page be already cut out, a piece of paper must be pasted on the frisket,
to cover the white page in the form, and a bearer put on to keep the
adjoining pages from having too hard an impression. Some pressmen use
reglets, others furniture cut to a proper height, and a third class adopt
cork, which, from its elasticity, is very useful. Spring bearers, made of
hard paper rolled up, are also employed to guard the sides and bottoms of
light and open pages, when there is an inclination to slur.
4. The pressman must examine whether the frisket bites; that is, whether
it keeps off the impression from any part of the pages.
5. He must consider whether the catch of the frisket stands either too
far forward or backward: if forward, he may be much delayed by its
falling down, and, if backward, it will come down too slowly, and thus
retard the progress of the work and not unfrequently cause the sheet to
slip out of its proper place. He must, therefore, place the catch so that
the frisket may stand a little more than perpendicularly backward, that,
when lightly tossed up, it may just stand, and not come back.
6. He must fit the gallows so that the tympan may stand as much toward an
upright as he can; because it is the sooner let down upon the form and
lifted up again. But yet he must not place it so upright as to prevent
the white sheets of the paper from lying secure on the tympan.
7. The range of the paper-bank should not stand at right angles with the
bed of the press; but the farther end of the bank should be placed so
that the near side may make an angle of about seventy-five degrees with
the near side of the bed.
8. The heap of paper should be set on the horse on the near end of the
paper-bank, near the tympan, yet not touching it. The uppermost or
outside sheet should be laid on the bank; and the pressman then takes
four or five quires off his heap, and shakes them at each end, to loosen
the sheets, till he finds he has sufficiently loosened or hollowed the
heap. Then, with the nail of his right-hand thumb, he draws or slides
forward the upper sheet, and two or three more commonly follow gradually
with it, over the hither edge of the heap, to prepare those sheets ready
for laying on the tympan.
9. He must next pull a _revise_ sheet, which must be sent up to the
overseer for a final revision, and for examining whether any letters have
dropped out of the form in putting it on the press, &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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