Letterpress is good for me because it forces me to do tedious things that require patience. I seek character development and aesthetic, and this gives me both.

Last week, I attacked a drawer full of spaces. I feel fortunate to have a drawer (which appears to be a Hamilton Wells job case: not a particularly common case layout, it would seem. It’s not really made for spaces, but it serves the purpose well) full of spaces, but they were in mad disarray and there were motes and piles of filth and mystery wedged into every slot. Plus the spacing was all mixed up, which isn’t joyous.

Spaces Drawer, Before. Dirty and mixed up.

It took me four and a half hours to sort all of the spacing.

I got a nice, sealed box of American Type Foundry (ATF) 10-point quad spacing on eBay. It has never been opened. ATF went out of business in the early 1990s. I’m not sure when these spaces were made. Could have been decades ago.

Still sealed. I like the little sayings on the tape.

Shiny, shiny, old new quads.

Spaces drawer, after. Shinier and organized. And clean.

I took all of the spacing out and used our air compressor to blow the caked and loose gunk out of the boxes. Then I oiled the whole thing with orange oil. Type cases are traditionally unfinished (except for the front) and the oil seems to do nicely.

Tags: american type foundry, atf, organization, quads, spaces, type

It came! It came! The poor UPS guy was confused because I received a box that didn’t say “Amazon.com” on it. I’m known around here as a black hole for Amazon products.

He had to wheel this stuff in. The Caslon stuff itself wasn’t too hefty, but the spaces and the leading–well, they are made out of heavy metal, see.

Caslon, upper and lower case, in 12-on-14pt and 18pt

I was a bit worried about finding leading. You need it to set type; it is non-optional. You may be familiar with it in your regular life from word processing or graphics program–the leading metaphor is still alive and kicking. But with letterpress, one has to deal with it concretely. Unfortunately, the gentleman responsible for the vast majority of leading and slugs for the entire country passed away last year. Supplies are tight. I have a friend who used to work for one of the larger letterpress supply companies in the country (if one can call any of them “large”), and he confesses that he “killed the machine” that produced their leading. So I’m glad to have this grip of leading because I’m not sure the next time I’ll be able to find any.

2pt. leading and 6pt. slugs

I also got what looks to be four lifetimes’ worth of 14- and 18-pt. spacing. I was worried there wouldn’t be enough spaces in the Caslon.

Spacing

Tags: caslon, lead, m&h, spaces, type