My almost-working letterpress.

Last weekend a I drove down to Wausau with a friend to pick up this little Kelsey 5×8 tabletop press. I guy I bought it from purchased it sometime in the sixties and used it for awhile. I’m not sure when it got relegated to the basement, but that’s where it was for quite sometime before we came to pick it up. I didn’t realize how good of a deal I was getting until he started loading trays of type into the trunk of my car. Ten or twelve in all, some of the typefaces not even unwrapped. He gave me everything he had. The leading, the type, the furniture, the drawers, and of course, the press.

I finally had a chance to put it together today. Take some of the rust off and make sure everything was moving as it should. Other than some missing rollers it seems in pretty good shape.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be using the type. My plan was to get a boxcar base and print my monsters, which I still plan on doing, but until I get the base I’ll practicing typesetting.