Old Fashioned Printing Office

lonestarlibrarian · Nov 2, 2017

I have a printing office set in 1880's London. Small-scale stuff, like handbills and pamphlets and things like that. Originally, I was thinking about writing about "inky fingers" and such, but when I looked at some photos from the 1920's printing offices, all the men working seemed to have clean hands and clean aprons.

For those of you with experience in manual typesetting, are there any signs someone might carry about with them to indicate that they've been setting type or doing other jobs in such an office? A strong clinging smell of chemicals or ink? (???) Any visual signs on their hands?

Looking on YouTube, I'm seeing bit fat daubers (ink balls?) being used to ink type many of the Colonial-era printing press demonstrations, but I'm seeing ink rolled on in other demonstrations. Does anyone happen to know when rolling ink became more prevalent than daubing it?

Siri Kirpal · Nov 2, 2017

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

We used to frequent an old-fashioned printer to print our holiday newsletters, back when most home printers were dot matrix or non-existent. I think those early photos were taken after the guys cleaned up. The man running the printer always had ink on his apron (that's why he wore one) and usually on his hands. He had to wipe his hands before taking our copy.

There was a smell of ink in the shop, but it wasn't overpowering.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Seaclusion · Nov 3, 2017

When I worked in my High school print shop way back when, there was always the overwhelming smell of mineral spirirts. It was used to clean the type, platen, and everything else that got coated with ink.

jclarkdawe · Nov 3, 2017

Daubers can be used when rollers are also used. It depends upon the job. Rollers were probably around by 1880.

Mineral spirits would have been the common smell, but ink stains were the norm. Even in high school print shop you'd end up with stains on your fingers. How hard it was to clean depended upon the type of ink being used. The type on its sides never really cleans up and will stain your fingers, if nothing else will. Frequently after the first run you'd have to reset the type a bit to get the right balance to the page, and you'd do it without cleaning the type. That's why you wore the apron. It gives you a place to wipe your hands, as well as preventing ink splatter from getting on your clothes.

Jim Clark-Dawe

Old Fashioned Printing Office

lonestarlibrarian

senior bean supervisor

Siri Kirpal

Swan in Process

Seaclusion

Absolute Parsley

jclarkdawe

Feeling lucky, Query?