Going through the pics I’ve been taking with the F707, I’m struck by the people I take pictures of. Sometimes friends, sometimes strangers – always interesting. I recently went to a wedding in Tucson and a Halloween party. guess which photo was taken where:
I’m going to be spending more time in the press garage wranglin the old Itek 975, now that the fellow who’s run it for the last 15 years has gone off to the lucrative field of maintaining bank-owned properties. When I’m not at a computer keyboard coding away, I’ll be getting ink on my hands. Not much different than is already the case, what with my typewriter habit and all. I’ve been filling in off and on over the past year, but now this press is pretty much all my baby to play with. The air compressor that comes with it has already proved handy in my typewriter cleaning endeavors.
Plate etch & fountain solution. I call it “Slime-Odd”.
Printers never throw away anything. These stacks of taped-together paper are called “Beds”, and they are used to support a stack of paper to be printed on when fed into the air pickup system of the press. I made these when I first took up printing in the early 80’s to go with an AB Dick 360 that we had at the time. They were transferred to the Itek 975 when we got rid of the 360, and have stayed with it through a half-dozen moves and about the same number of different pressmen & women who’ve ruled the press room since I gave up the printing trade and went into that crazy computer thing in the 90’s. Nobody’s seen fit in all that time to make new ones or toss these out in the intervening 30 years – they just wrapped new packing tape around it when the old tape crumbled. I credit superstition: pressmen are full of superstition and a belief in talismans that keep the job running smoothly. Paper beds are one such talisman – you build one that paper feeds good with and you stick to it. I am considering taking them apart to check out those old makeready sheets from the 80’s and see how many of those businesses are still in business, but I’d have to overcome a very real dread of screwing around with the mojo.
The talismanic 30-year-old paper beds
And since this is an UJTU, here’s a pic taken at MTE of Key Snap’s Hermes 3000. Just check out that funky character set. International Math maybe?
A gentleman does not display photos of ladies in an unclad state. That behavior should be confined to the smoking parlor after dinner. ;)
I actually have a type sample all ready to post, but I haven’t done the photo shoot yet. And now I’ve injured my damn arm. Drat.
In true Jubalist tradition, clothing is pretty much optional in our household. The idea that one should hide away what is given by God is utterly alien to us. (:
May your arm heal quickly!
Neat press.
That is the first H3k keyboard I’ve seen like that. I’d love to find one.
Have fun running your press.
That’s an impressive Hermes 3000 setup! I love it.
Thanks for the blog! Those photos were fun!
Weird keyboard. You can type Ü and Ö, but not Ä!
Yeah, it’s an odd one – QWERTY, yet some Teutonic characters and a load of *some* math keys, and somehow they managed to cram some basic punctuation in as well. I can only imagine that it was a very special custom order for Lord alone knows what purpose. Perhaps Erik will be able to shed some light on it eventually.
Comment Just To Comment: nice pics, and can’t wait to see Erik’s posts on that machine.