The knife block on the Linotype at the Mackenzie Printery Museum was pretty much impossible to adjust due to dried out lubricant. This block controls the position of the right knife which trims the thickness of the cast slug to…
The knife block on the Linotype at the Mackenzie Printery Museum was pretty much impossible to adjust due to dried out lubricant. This block controls the position of the right knife which trims the thickness of the cast slug to…
One of the tasks I had in getting the Linotype at the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum working was to repair one of the keyboard reeds which I had broken (I blame the service manual for failing to warn of…
While using my Monotype Composition Caster recently, I’ve noticed that the pot temperature has been drifting. On several occasions I’ve found it to be quite a bit hotter than the setpoint, to the point where I had to select a…
The 45th Grimsby Wayzgoose Book Arts Fair will take place at the Grimsby Public Art Gallery in Grimsby, Ontario, from 9am to 5pm on Saturday, April 29th 2023. We will have a table at the show, selling some of our…
I’ve been using a compact air compressor to run my Monotype Composition Caster. The machine uses pneumatics to control what matrix it casts, when to start a new line, how wide to make the adjustable-width casts, etc. Originally the caster…
Continuing my work on the Linotype line caster at the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum, this weekend I adjusted the second transfer alignment, where the matrices are transferred from the second elevator to the distributor bar. On at least two…
Recently while trying to cast some fonts on my Monotype Composition Caster, I have found that the galley cycles did not operate reliably, forcing me to watch the casting run like a hawk to manually trigger the galley cycle to…
I have recently taken another Monotype mould out of mothballs to use for casting a font of 6-point type. This is one of the moulds I got from Rich Hopkins’ tertiary storage, i.e. his garage. I had cleaned off the…
I recently cast several fonts of type in Monotype #329 Sans Serif Light. This included 12-point from composition matrices and 14-point from display matrices. As with a few other Monotype faces, this one is available as display matrices in two…
On the Linotype at the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum, there are a couple of parts that I can’t find in any of the parts manuals I have: There is a lug on the slide that transfers the matrices from…