Skylab Letterpress Internship: Week 5

Day 14
Today was the new intern Laura's second day at Skylab. She shadowed me a lot of the day and I explained what I was doing as well as had her step in occasionally to try out the task. The first task was prepping one of the presses with ink and a plate and making adjustments so that the crop marks on the paper and on the plate match. It was a tricky one, especially as the plate is an older metal one rather than polymer. It was also a little tricky since I am not used to explaining what I am doing to someone else, but it made for great experience as well as instill the information that Bob has taught me. After lunch, we packaged up a business card job and then finished tweaking the press for the reprint. Once all was straightened out and the crop marks matched, I ran the job while Bob spoke with a client that came in. After the cards were finished printing, I set up the second press with the die to cut the edges of the cards I just printed.

Day 15
I started the day with changing out the water of the photo polymer plate processor. Then got the paper loaded onto the press with the die and tested it to make sure all was lined up still. After a few adjustments, I ran the job through. As this was a reprint of the original job we did a few weeks prior due to the ink being flip-flopped, I unpacked the original set and packed up the new-correct run. After lunch I showed Laura how to block in type and let her lose while I cleaned up one of the presses and prepped it for another run. Once she had all of the type, furniture, lead, and quoins locked into place, I showed her how to ink it up, and dial in the pressure. Once it was dialed in, we printed several sheet.

Day 16
I made three rather large plates and showed Laura through the process of processing them. Once they were all complete, Bob and I realized that I had developed all three with the film facing the wrong direction (the plates would have printed everything backwards). A simple mistake ruined a lot of polymer plates; so I did them all over, correctly. After that, I set up more type with Laura and printed them.

The film of two of the plates

 My poor plates that I messed up.