The print I am currently working on has not only taken an inordinate amount of time to progress because of various delays and distractions, but it is turning out to be quite a technically challenging and complex piece too. Which is the opposite of what I said I would be doing with linocut! However the test of the ‘Ternes Burton’ registration pins with a largish print on a roller press is proving worthwhile. So a full report on this in the future.
So – to keep the discipline of regular blog posts, I thought I would share this and perhaps see what special and favourite (old?) tools other printmakers own and cherish.
I have owned this 8”roller (brayer) for something like 35 years. Its constituent parts are however, much older. The handle and spindle were rescued from a pile of ‘junk’. They were bent and caked in old ink and muck and the old roller itself long perished and hard. The ‘new’ roller itself was made for me by a clever printing technician friend Roy Caplin (god rest his crazy soul!) who cut it down from an old ‘Heidleberg’ letterpress machine roller. It is a firm, incredibly durable rubber compound that is soft enough to pick up ink beautifully but not too soft to push ink into parts of fine detail that should not get ink. It is not entirely suitable for every task’ and I have other nice rollers, but this is my favourite by far.
Thanks Roy!
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