Machines I just lucked into...

[NC Rick]

The only thing I'm going to keep is the Parker Majestic surface grinder. The rest will be sold.
My/our long term goal is to find and restore a letter press.

ld like to hear a bit about your attraction to letter presses? I spent 24 years working in printing and in the 70's one of my customers was still running a web fed letter press. It was magazine work and I never got to see the type setting in pre-press but watched the guys install the "plates" . My most memorable bit was open flame dryers before the folder. I was a control systems guy and the engineers had redesigned an optical sensor from plastic inplace of a casting. I recall looking at it as the plastic run down the side of the machine... "well, there's yer problem!"

 

[DavidR8]

ld like to hear a bit about your attraction to letter presses? I spent 24 years working in printing and in the 70's one of my customers was still running a web fed letter press. It was magazine work and I never got to see the type setting in pre-press but watched the guys install the "plates" . My most memorable bit was open flame dryers before the folder. I was a control systems guy and the engineers had redesigned an optical sensor from plastic inplace of a casting. I recall looking at it as the plastic pan down the side of the machine... "well, there's yer problem!"

Honestly, some of it seems to be in the blood. My father ran a print shop years back and I did a stint at a print and web design company. Part of my job there was to do press checks. I loved walking into the print room and smelling the ink, hearing the roar of the machines.
It's continued to this day. I prefer to read a physical newspaper and smell the ink.

 

[NC Rick]

Honestly, some of it seems to be in the blood. My father ran a print shop years back and I did a stint at a print and web design company. Part of my job there was to do press checks. I loved walking into the print room and smelling the ink, hearing the roar of the machines.
It's continued to this day. I prefer to read a physical newspaper and smell the ink.

I'm sure you have seen Tom Lipton's intaglio press build? I spent some time working around those in Ottawa Canada and Washington DC here in the states. The security getting in those places was nuts, printing money, postage stamps and the like. I too miss the smell and the machines, the same place with the letter press (RR Donnelley) on the lake in Chicago ran a lot of rotogravure presses which became my specialty. They were using pressed installed in the 1930s to print the big Sears catalog. i worked on machines printing National Geographic magazine and other nice quality stuff. Later in that path, most we just printing "bird cage liners". It was a great industry with amazing machines able to print and bind a multi-page stapled catalog at the rate of 60,000 per hour. Watching that happen 24 hrs a day for a week or longer, made me think, who reeds all this! It was painful watching the industry shrink.

 

[DavidR8]

The production volumes and precision required to do it still boggles my mind.
Quebecor printing was running huge Heidleburg (sp?) presses that seemed like they spanned a city block. I don't think they are still around unfortunately.
I remember RR Donnelly for some reason....

 

[MontanaLon]

(RR Donnelley) It was painful watching the industry shrink.

RR Donnelley had a place here in town which is now some other company and they are on the ropes. When I moved here 20 years ago they brought in paper stock by the train load. The internet sure killed the business. Man, we had some good fires there too. Usually in the bindery where they cut pages apart. All the scrap was vacuumed into a baler, there were several balers. Think like a shop vac with a 16 inch hose. The "filter" was what usually caught fire. A spark would get into the scraps and with the dust it would go pretty fast. The balers had sprinkler protection in them but where the filters were at was up top so we would have to open them up to get water on it. The filter box was 12 or maybe 14 feet cube and had "socks" stretched over wire cages. Worked just like a shop vac. Now picture your shop vac after running for a year and that was how the filters looked. It had valves on inlet and exhaust so they could cut the air supply off to it and it would go into the slow smolder mode. But it was still on fire and needed to get put out so they would call the fire dept and that was how I ended up there.

I remember being on top of the box once when one of the guys opened the access door. Like 2 feet square 1/8" steel sheet and hinged. When he opened it a little flame came out and he slammed it closed which knocked a whole bunch of dust loose from the filter. You think grain elevators can explode from dust, well a giant shop vac can too. It tore the hinges off the door and blew it across the room. I was on top shoveling down burning paper scraps to the guys on the ground 25 or so feet below. They were hosing down the burning stuff. The top lifted me up to where I hit the ceiling with my helmet which knocked years of accumulated dust off the ceiling and top of the machine. It got uncomfortably hot for a few seconds. That was the first time I was sure I was toast. Loud, hot and fire all around. I was geared up and the only real injury was my ears, they were ringing like crazy.

The guys on the ground were watching out for us up top though and they opened up a 2-1/2" hose and played it on the ceiling over the baler and cooled everything off fast. I never even got down off the baler until I ran low on air. I still remember my LT's smile when we got outside and took our masks off. "That was freaking cool. Let's remember that for the next time so we don't do it again!" Good times.

 

[lis2323]

Congratulations David! So happy for you


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[DavidR8]

Thanks @lis2323.
Deal of my lifetime to be sure.


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[NC Rick]

RR Donnelley had a place here in town which is now some other company and they are on the ropes. When I moved here 20 years ago they brought in paper stock by the train load. The internet sure killed the business. Man, we had some good fires there too. Usually in the bindery where they cut pages apart. All the scrap was vacuumed into a baler, there were several balers. Think like a shop vac with a 16 inch hose. The "filter" was what usually caught fire. A spark would get into the scraps and with the dust it would go pretty fast. The balers had sprinkler protection in them but where the filters were at was up top so we would have to open them up to get water on it. The filter box was 12 or maybe 14 feet cube and had "socks" stretched over wire cages. Worked just like a shop vac. Now picture your shop vac after running for a year and that was how the filters looked. It had valves on inlet and exhaust so they could cut the air supply off to it and it would go into the slow smolder mode. But it was still on fire and needed to get put out so they would call the fire dept and that was how I ended up there.

I remember being on top of the box once when one of the guys opened the access door. Like 2 feet square 1/8" steel sheet and hinged. When he opened it a little flame came out and he slammed it closed which knocked a whole bunch of dust loose from the filter. You think grain elevators can explode from dust, well a giant shop vac can too. It tore the hinges off the door and blew it across the room. I was on top shoveling down burning paper scraps to the guys on the ground 25 or so feet below. They were hosing down the burning stuff. The top lifted me up to where I hit the ceiling with my helmet which knocked years of accumulated dust off the ceiling and top of the machine. It got uncomfortably hot for a few seconds. That was the first time I was sure I was toast. Loud, hot and fire all around. I was geared up and the only real injury was my ears, they were ringing like crazy.

The guys on the ground were watching out for us up top though and they opened up a 2-1/2" hose and played it on the ceiling over the baler and cooled everything off fast. I never even got down off the baler until I ran low on air. I still remember my LT's smile when we got outside and took our masks off. "That was freaking cool. Let's remember that for the next time so we don't do it again!" Good times.

That stuff is no joke. old timers I worked with at the Chicago plant (and other locations they later went) told me stories, showed photos of a dust explosion which fortunately happened during a shift change, killed people and blew 5,000 lb rolls of paper through a very strong brick wall out into the parking lot! That happened back in the 1960s.

 

[MontanaLon]

That stuff is no joke. old timers I worked with at the Chicago plant (and other locations they later went) told me stories, showed photos of a dust explosion which fortunately happened during a shift change, killed people and blew 5,000 lb rolls of paper through a very strong brick wall out into the parking lot! That happened back in the 1960s.

Yeah, that was probably why they came up with the scrap paper vac system. I guess maintaining it was a pain though and that was neglected which lead to the fire. There was a foot or so of scrap paper on top of the filter chamber and the heat from the inside had lit it on fire. I was shoveling the paper off of it when they realized there was fire inside the chamber and opened the door to put some water on it. And what happens when you give a fire that is starved for air a breath? Backdraft. I didn't see it but the guy that opened it and the LT said the fire shot out 20 feet or so between them when he opened the door. I would have slammed it too. But we almost had the trifecta going. Backdraft, dust explosion and collapse. Thank God we broke the chain. It probably would have been worse but the reason I was shoveling the scrap paper off the top was we could see that fire and we hit it with water several times but it kept flaring up because we couldn't hit it directly and it had an external source of heat. So being the little guy they handed me a scoop shovel and told me to knock the burning stuff over the edge so the guys on the floor could put it out. I think right around when they opened the door was when I realized the water was boiling off the top of the chamber and it had to be on fire inside. I just remember "WHOOSH, BANG! BOOM!" and hitting my head and another not as loud "whoosh" and it looking like I was standing in the sparks coming off a campfire and within a couple of seconds being completely soaking wet.

My poor wife listening to the scanner at home. She knew I was at the fire and then heard "explosion inside" and "send a couple ambulances we have guys inside still". I miss it some days.

 

[Aaron_W]

The only thing I'm going to keep is the Parker Majestic surface grinder. The rest will be sold.
My/our long term goal is to find and restore a letter press.

I'm not sure if this really deserves a you suck or not. By the time you move all of these machines and find them new homes I suspect you may technically have gotten the SG free, but you will have earned it.

Personally if I were you I would consider hanging onto the heat treating oven as well. You may not need it now, but I bet you start finding uses for one as you gain skills. I'm not there myself yet, either, but I'm starting to watch for them just to get an idea what a good deal on one looks like, and how common small ovens I could manage in my space are.