As the scraper must be pressed down with great force (often as much as
sixty and more hundredweight) and must pass over the leather with this
immense pressure, there is a tremendous friction, and despite the fact
that the leather is tensely stretched and lubricated with fat, it is
considerably pulled and strained by the scraper. This pulling and
straining communicates itself to the paper under the leather. Thus all
the lines of the design become a little bit squashed in the direction
described by the scraper. If, however, the leather is very good and very
tensely stretched in the frame, if it is well lubricated, and if the
printing-paper with its underlay is not too wet, the pulling is
inconsiderable so that scripts and drawings in broad effects are not
affected noticeably. Drawings in detail, however, and crayon work
wherein there is hardly a perceptible space between the dots, are so
affected by the slightest displacement that they produce a smeared,
sooty impression.
The scraper has a second fault. If the paper has impurities, it injures
the scraper readily. A groove scratched into the scraper will prevent
any further good impression if the injury is considerable, because it
will leave a streak. The only remedy is to take the scraper off and
plane it, fashioning it accurately to the surface of the stone. I have
tried to remedy this by making a scraper of metal. As this causes even
more friction than wood, I laid a strip of strong paper over the
scraper, which generally was good for three hundred impressions before
it was worn out. Then I merely needed to move it forward a bit; so that
a strip of paper as long as the scraper and six inches wide was
available for some thousands of impressions. The pressure attained with
a metal scraper is greater than with wood; but it has the disadvantage
that it is hard to print a stone whose surface is not absolutely level,
whereas a wooden scraper can be planed to suit any irregularity in the
stone.
The foregoing shows that a good lithographic press must have these two
properties:--
(1) It must not pull or shift the paper in the least.
(2) It must produce a uniform impression without weak spots or streaks.
The other properties it needs in common with other presses, such as:--
(3) It must be powerful enough to produce the necessary pressure.
(4) It must combine the greatest possible speed with this power.
(5) It must be easily operated, to save the workman.
All these qualities combined are not to be found in any press hitherto
applied to lithography.
II
APPLICATION OF BOOK- AND COPPER-PLATE PRESSES TO LITHOGRAPHY
If we consider the peculiarities of book and copper print, we find a
decided difference between them that affects printing importantly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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