Got any funny pressman's stories?

I thought it might be interesting to hear some.

I'll go first...

While trying to get my ink strength up on an old single color Solna, I became very frustrated. Adding more and more knotches to the ink sweep, spinning the ink fountain roll rapidly with the hand crank, I finally thought WTF and stopped the press.

While walking around the press and racking my brain wondering what was going on, I noticed the wash up blade was engaged and there was about a half pound of ink in the tray!

OK...I know y'all have some.

 

yes, several years back, I was training an pressman and he was laying each plate down by each unit. I was watching him and I had to chuckle but I decided to let him put each plate on and see if you can figure something out.

while the press was run up for makeready, the trainee saw that there was no impression/image coming off this one unit. He proceeded to make sure the ink rollers was on, he checked to see if the plates were on, he was doing this while I knew what the issue was.

He was getting frustrated. So, I stopped the press and he was telling me his frustration.. Well, the unit that was having the problem, was set for dink placement. Which was half a web.

Well, after I pointed to the plates, he finally realized that he put the wrong plates on. Since the image was on one side, putting it on the wrong side, the side where the paper met, there was no image.. so therefore no ink being laid to paper

LOL, I had to laugh, and he got the picture, and I know from that moment on, he will pay more than the usual attention when putting plates on..

I hope I was explaining this well for you all.

 

24 years ago I was training my brother to be a pressman in our family business. He was still a bit new at it so I would check on him from time to time. One day I noticed him reading the newspaper as the press ran. He is notoriously focused when he reads almost to the exclusion of everything going on around him. I looked down at the sheets stacking up in the delivery and saw they were blank. He had allowed the ink fountain to run out of ink.I asked him, "How's the press running?" "Fine", he mumbled, never taking his head out of the newspaper. I asked him if I could see a sheet. He reluctantly puts the newspaper down to pull a sheet and panics when he sees the sheets are blank. He franticly runs around the press trying to figure out what went wrong. I point out to him he ran the fountain out of ink. I then took his newspaper. Folded it up, put it under my arm and tell him, "Your not ready for the press and the newspaper at the same time."

 

Man where does one start. I worked at a small offset shop for some 25 years. Lots of long run bulk letters, cards, envs etc.... We had a old guy who only ran black ink letters 24/7. He'd sit and read the paper not facing the machine. We'd slowly feed in Reflex blue ink into his ink fountain till he'd see the ink was clearly blue and stop in a panic. We did this for a good month. He thought he was grabbing the wrong ink can and even put the blue ink across the room FAR away. LOL drove him nuts he couldn't figure it out.

We also used to put a balloon with some offset powder inside on the blow end of the vac pump. Balloon would fill with air and a loud POP with a huge cloud of powder. That would get your attention. LOL.

Ketchup or mustard packets taped to a sheet of paper in the lift? Yummy.

New guys got the real tests.

We'd swap the vac pump air blow and suck hoses so the sucker feet blew and the blowers sucked.

Remove some idler rollers or a gripper bar off the del end. Feed roll and stop finger settings lightened.

Plastic wrap on the inside opening of the water bottle. You'd run out of water but still see the water in the bottle and look to the float level etc....

Guys that came in and said they knew everything, they were the one's we'd test. If anything they learned a few good tricks.

These were small Multi and Hamada offset presses we all ran back in the 70's and 80's. Those were some fun times.

 

Oh do i have some good ones....
While mixing in tack reducer to about 4lbs. of magenta I spotted a new guy and asked him over and told him we just got a new batch of heat-set ink. I waved my hand over it and said "man the heat this puts off!". LOL, so this guy does the same and I slapped his hand into it. The look on his face was priceless and the stain that stay on his hand had me giggling all day.

This one bindery guy was dilligently drilling away, was the quiet type. I was coming from the warehouse with a carton of 23x35 index upright on a 2 wheel dolly. I measured it out perfectly and leaned it over to fall flat on the ground behind him. I have not seen anyone jump that high before. Look was priceless again.

2 women from the advertising department were getting frustrated with a paper jam in a copier. Conveniently for me I had a boat horn and waited for them to open a door of the copier and "WAAAAAA"!!! I blew the boat horn. They jumped pretty good, and I almost had one of them pee their pants.

This one almost got me fired...
My boss was admirably super meticulous about keeping his Multi 1250 clean. I noticed him finish up one job and go to his office for another. I grabbed an ink knife with a light amount of black ink and proceeded to dab ink on the bottom of every knob on the press. Trying to keep a straight face later as I watched him try to figure out where the ink was coming from was very hard.

Another funny moment was watching an operator who supposedly knew how to flush the air/vaccum pump and forgetting to disconnect the blowers and procceding to spray the wall and bench and the job he just finished printing with solvent. Priceless...

"Take your child to work day"
A presswoman we have was showing her 2c 3302 press to about 40 kids, and she was quite overrun and mobbed, so we moved them on to the bindery room after her presentation. Later she noticed that they changed all her register guide settings blanket pressure settings and one kid actually press the stop switch, screwed it off and tryed to steal it, LOL! And by the way, she was in the middle of a 4 color job, second pass!

Same presswoman was being trained on crash numbering on a Hedi windmill. She was getting frustrated about having to take the chase out and reset the number because it misfed. So I had a plastic magnetic mirror that would stick to the paten so she could see the number and change it without taking the chase out. I warned her to remember to take it off after! Low and behold later that day, you guess it! She stamped the mirror real good, lol. So I made her a sign next to the Hedi, "STAMPING PRESS - SECTOR 5"

New guy on a 360 was setting up for a pre-diecut label job and was fighting it all day. Finally he got the supervisor's attention and he had the label separate from the sheets as he ran, and jammed. They were all over! In the forms, and I had to take the feeder apart because they were all jammed up in there.

Good times... LETS HEAR MORE!!!!!

 

Many years ago, I was in charge of Printing on a Newspaper Press. This press takes rolls of Newsprint. Many times, we do not use all the paper on a roll so we store it somewhere. Many jobs would take these leftover rolls so we sometimes choose which leftover rolls to use. FYI, we call these rolls butt rolls. It was common to say to another, we need this butt roll and this butt shafted.

Well, one afternoon, a few of us was discussing which butt rolls to use.

and then I quipped up ' There is a pretty good size butt over there' while pointing to the left. Well, at that time a Lady that ran the front office turned beet red. Well, I was pointing toward her and she thought I was talking about her 'big' butt.

LOL.. I make sure I look around next time when I talk about butt

 

Several years ago I was looking for a pressman to run our 2/c. I put an ad in the paper and interviewed 50 people. One of them passed out cold while filling out the 4 page application. He got half way through his name and the ink trailed off the page. I finally hire a new guy, a trainee. I told him, "Look, this is a good career, I don't expect you to learn the press in a week etc. The first day I had him stand next to me while I set up and ran jobs. I told him what I was doing as I did it. I told him he didn't have to worry about memorizing anything, he's learn over time. At noon, I told him I take a half hour for lunch, but if he wanted more time that was OK, we were off the clock. He said noon and a half hour were good. He left at noon. I never saw that guy again.
Never came by for his check. At first we wondered if he was in an accident, after a day we stopped wondering.

 

Had an ad in the paper for a pressman, had several call asking " what kind of stuff do you press?"

 

Same thing happened to me when I had an ad in the paper. I asked the guy what kind of equipment he ran. Guy with heavy accent said, "A Smoover"

I asked if that was an offset press. He said, "no, I smoover wrinkles out of clothes"

 

My brother and I had our pressroom rivalries from time to time. He kept stealing my gloves. You know the type, heavy rubber gloves with material lining, perfect for doing blankets & wash ups. So, to get even, one day I take an old glove, scrub it down so it almost looks as good as my new gloves. Write my name across the cuff like my new gloves, then hide the right hand glove of my new pair and replace it with the old one. But what I had done was pack the fingers with grease from a grease gun. I waited hour after hour for him to grab the glove when I wasn't looking. Finally, late in the afternoon I go to get some water and out from the press room I hear, "Son of a B@#$%! What the ?$%@#@!!!" I come around the corner trying not to laugh or let on. I take one look at him and burst out laughing. He jammed his hand into the glove so quickly, the grease shot up to his elbow.

 

I ran a Crabtree K100 some years back (too many to mention!), the lubrication was done by manually via an extreme high pressure grease gun, you know the kind with a massive spring inside to prevent the grease from remaining at the bottom of the gun.

I tell my number 2 to top it up with fresh grease, he didn't take lock the spring loaded plunger off with the result that when he unscrewed the cap the remaining grease shot out and covered him from head to waist...the grease was a red jelly type...he looked like an extra from a horror move

 

Back when I was a helper on a 6 color.. The operator and I were a good team, always did everything the same way and knew what each others next move was going to be. Well we would always clean out the wash up tray after every use and then hang them up on the wall. We did this for a year and half always made sure to clean before hanging them on the wall. One day, the operator took one out without cleaning it and hung on the wall... At the end of the day, running late already, I grabbed the tray and next thing I know I have red ink ( or red solvent waste ) covering my shirt... threw that shirt away, while the operating is laughing his butt off.. not funny to me.

Another time, same press, I was speed loading using forks/swords. The feeder was very touchy during this process and you had to remove the forks very fast and in a certain order so the feeder wouldnt trip. So im pulling the forks out in a hurry and i accidentally threw one out with so much force that it flew about 15 feet hitting the cutter operator behind the press in the back. He wasnt to happy.

 

In the early 70's I was a helper on a Miller 38 5 color. The pressman was walking around the press by the fountain solution tanks looking for the measuring cup so he could add alcohol. I didn't relate that to his question, "Have you seen the graduate?"

I replied, thinking it was an odd out of the blue question...."No, I never did see that movie....."

 

Not really press stories, but I own a print shop and these were a couple calls I got.

1) I get an email from a lady asking this....note...I got an EMAIL from a lady asking this:

"I would like to send you a file for a quote on a print job, are you able to send me your email address so I can send it electronically?"

2) Another lady phones me (I still don't get how someone could think this)

"Are you guys in the mall on park street" she says

"Yes, but there are many malls on park street. We are located near cowtown western wear"

"Oh okay, cause I lost your phone number and wasn't sure this was the right place!"


LOL...too funny....how did you phone me if you lost my phone number!!!?

 

My favourite from PrintPlanet...

Smelly Job!

 

I was printing the first job of the week. No print coming out on the sheet. Couldn't figure out why it wouldn't print for me, tried everything.
No ink in the duct!!

Working on a gto 52 one day, the ink ductor roller wouldn't engage to the duct roller while printing or manually. called over another printer to take a look, i was only new to the gto and he didnt know too much about the newer models. spent about two hours taking off the side panel and checking the mechanics only to realise i had left the switch up for putting the plate on. Flipped it back, problem solved. Our boss came over and luckily my colleague covered for me. said we fixed the "mechanical fault", my boss was delighted with us.

 

This was funny at the time, but not really and quite mean. Myself and another printer fixed a electrical problem with the feeder pump. had a bit of spare cable. So i just stuck the spare cable under the press, lay on the ground and held on to it (it was connected to nothing). I knew he was coming back to the operators side so i lay there, shaking as if i was being electrocuted. he freaked out, ran to turn off the power and when he came back i was laughing so hard i couldnt even get up. he was not impressed.


Suppose we have all done it but dabs of ink on all the handles of a press, had a new guy one day destroyed in ink, he couldnt figure out where it was coming from.



Apprentices are total cannon fodder too, sending them to another department for " a long stand", "skyhooks" or something else totally ridiculous. The long stand is excellent, another employee has to be in on it though. Had a guy one day waiting 50 minutes for his long stand before he realised what it was.

 

They keep coming back to me. We used to use small elastic bands to keep trips engaged. This was on a machine with no trip display. Hours of fun.



White spirits in the dampening tray, this was done to me. I wouldnt do that kind of stuff to someone else though.


Printing college was the worst, anything went there. You would be printing yellow and one of the lads would come up and dab black or cyan on the rollers while you are not looking, even on the last pass of a 4 colour job on a single colour machine. also switching the side lay during a job or make ready. Pouring water into the ink duct, although on the KORD's it sometimes did it itself. drowning somebody with water bottles, usually 4 on 1.
small handfull of spray powder over the back of the head. deleting text off the plates while the printer isnt looking. again, white spirits in the dampening. and again ink all over every handle was a daily occurrence.

Fun times but frustrating

 

Had a larger sized press mechanic get stuck between units... me and another had to pull him out. Next time i saw him a couple months later, he had lost some weight

 

haha, thats one is very good, must of been on a japs press, they never put any room between the units.