In the pen-drawing process, the stone must be cleansed of possible
surplus of color after the transfer. This is done by light rubbing with
sand. It is not necessary in other processes. Any surplus of color that
may have fixed itself to the stone is removed by gentle dusting with a
soft brush.
II
WASTE PAPER
This is used partly for cleansing plates, partly and chiefly as underlay
in printing.
If sheets are to be printed on both sides, usually a little of the first
impression off-sets on the underlay paper, and if it were used again at
once, it would off-set on the next impression. Therefore a fresh
underlay paper must be used for each impression of the second side.
This must not be coarse, for fear of causing unevenness or holes in the
leather in the printing-frame or in the so-called scraper-wood that
makes the impression. A good quantity of this must be on hand, that
fresh paper may always be available while the used paper is drying
again. Each sheet that has been used should be hung up at once, and not
more than three or four sheets should be hung over each other, to
facilitate the drying. A special appliance is needed for this as well as
for drying the impressions. A number of slats are fastened to the
ceiling, leaving a space under it of about two feet, and about one foot
distant from each other; and the sheets are hung on these with a pole
made for the purpose, such as may be seen in any printery.
III
PRINTING-PAPER
Not all kinds of paper are equally good for lithography. On the whole,
however, it may be assumed that this form of printing is very similar to
copper-printing and book-printing, and that the paper that is good for
these branches is suitable also for the stone, if only it does not
contain too many impurities, grains of sand and other substances that
make any considerable roughnesses. Such roughnesses, if considerable,
have an ill effect not only on the impression, but chiefly on the
leather in the printing frame. If the scraper is of wood, the leather
will suffer less, but there will be caused grooves in the scraper that
must be planed out again, because otherwise each following impression
will show a more or less plain streak. If the scraper is of metal, the
leather may tear or the stone itself may be injured if the foreign
substance in the paper is very hard. Therefore it is well to hold the
paper to the light before dampening or printing and to remove any
apparent defect of magnitude with a little knife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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