Got any funny pressman's stories?

In 1970 the printing company where I worked in Atlanta had the pressroom and bindery seperated by a freight elevator. The pressroom was on the second floor and there were large expansion cracks in the floor.

Who here has the record of the longest distance covering the floor with press sheets when turning over a full press dolly? LOL......... I think mine was around 30 feet.

 

A few things I have learned along the way -

1. Warm red is NOT warm!
2. There is no such thing as a bucket of halftone dots on the top floor (no elevator)!
3. If you push the ink fill nozzle out of the way to clean the fountain PUT IT BACK! Cleaning up 25 gallons of black ink off the floor is no fun.

I'm sure there are more but I'll save those!

 

We were installing the first SM74DI in the country at the Print 01 show in Chicago. For the occasion we had a couple of engineers come out from the factory to help with the install since there were quite few new items on the press.

When we put power to the press we were getting a 24v error. On a Heidelberg all of the 24v wires are blue. So I told one of the engineers from Germany that it was probably one of the blue wires. Then I went over to the press pulled one of the blue wires loose from a bundle of them and clipped it with a side cutter. He almost went into shock when he saw me do this. I told him I was just going to keep clipping them until the error went away.

He came unglued at this and started telling me something in German. I thought he was probably commenting me on the brilliance of this troubleshooting idea.

Before he had a coronary I pulled the dummy wire I had cut out from the bundle which I had stuck in there earlier when they initially went around the press looking for the problem.

I'll bet that guy still remembers me...

 

I once fooled the operator of a SM 74-2 by, in his absence, decreasing the display contrast to zero. When he turned on his press the next day there was no image on the display. I told him:" get me some coffee and I will fix this". When he came back with my coffee everything was working perfectly!

 

that's funny story about the newspaper....

here's one...I was production manager in the mid 90's & had an operator in training putting ink in the fountain and he let the ink knife hit a roller and it pulled it right out of his hand...luckly it didn't damage any rollers but it bent the heck out of the ink knife...my lead pressman got it out of the trash can & took it home only to bring it back spray painted gold & mounted to a piece of wood with the words "Golden Goober Award" on it & we gave it to the pressman trainee....to this day he hasn't lived that one down

 

Here is one more for you...mike you'll like this one....

I went to work for a large commercial printer in Atlanta and it was my first day or two I can't remember, but anyway I was hired to be a GM and was trying to learn the whole shop so I was always feeling under the gun to learn everything quick like...bindery and pressroom were in 2 different buildings attached together with an access door between the two...the bindery foreman was running a polar cutter as I pushed a dolly to up to her from the press room when she asked me all serious like "can you see if you can find me the paper stretcher? I think the guys had it over by the presses...." Me not wanting to look stupid was wondering what the hell it looked like so I went off to look for it...the pressmen told me to look in the back of the paper warehouse...the guy there told me it was in the front office...I walked in and asked the owner "Joe have you seen the paper stretcher I can't find it anywhere?" he laughed his *** off.....

 

Yep, good one John. The first week on my new five color helper's job in 1970, the pressman sent me to the plate and stripping dept. to borrow the "plate stretcher"...lol.

 

Wel one day running a 4colour komori ls40 we spent the whole day having problem with the delivery. The paper was flying all over, couldn't get it to drop & knock nicely. Went on to strip the suctions wheel bar, thouroughly cleaned the vacuum pump filters as wel as the pipes but al didnt work. It was when we were about to swarp the pumps that we discovered there was a piece of paper lying on top of delivery fans hence the failure to stabilize the paper. How it got there i dnt knw up to date as we had ran that stock a week before. Felt so ashamed when an engineer we had spoken to earlier called to find out how we wer doing

 

Well - is this funny, when cat crawles at night to sleep somewhere under/between the cylinders of Planeta? You can imagine the horror after the starting of press in the morning.

 

Reminds me of the time we had a Rat living in our old printing down frame. I opened it up once we found out and found it full of food tinfoil etc. Rotten.


Also the odd time we get a rat in the printroom i leave a dusting of spray power on the floor to see where he goes. I have used ink too, bugger leaves little ratty ink footprints everywhere

 

While Teaching Someone to mix ink,I told them how, when you mix ink, the friction builds up alot of Heat, Put your hand over it and you can feel it. Then slap their hand down into the ink.
It's kinda of a version of "If your hand is bigger than your face..." but with ink.
It's always better when the mix has alot of refex,that stuff never comes off.

 

i remember when i first got into printing working as a feeder tender/helper my lead operator had told me that they were running short on red dots and needed me to grab some from the ink shop. Not knowing any better i naively walked down to the ink shop and asked if i could get more red dots. They told me that they were fresh out and to grab our shift leader and explain that we were out of red dots not only on press #2, but the whole shop. Now thinking this is a really big deal i walk up to him and say "boss, were out of red dots on our press, and when i went to get more i was told we don't have anymore in the shop, what do i do?" at first i got a blank stare, that slowly lead to hystarical laughing. he then told me to get my **** together and get back to work. not 2 hours later on lunch i hear over the speaker my boss asking everyone in the shop if they have any red dots and to quickly give them to me. it was then one of our crew told me that there was no such thing as red dots....

 

anyone that has worked on an older speedmaster will remember the red forked tool that you would use to make micro adjustments on the side guide. well yaknow how at times a truck driver or someone else would be walkin around the shop with a look of amazement in their face as they watch the presses run? when i would see that id walk back to the feeder of the press and pick up the forked sg adjustment tool. id take the tool and lightly bang it on the roller adjustment on the side frame of the press. id then proceed to placing the fork near my ear like it was a tuning fork and then reach up and fake making adjustments to the roller locks. out of the corner of my eye id look at the bystanders face and see this dumb assed look of total amazement. priceless expression!!!! my feeder operator would often give it away by laughing his *** off.

 

FFR428 Please Let me know if you know anyone that is out of kindergarten. I may have a job for someome this actually interested in being a professional and turning a profit.

Rod (old school)

 

Am I the only one missing something here? Or maybe there's a post that's been deleted??

 

i hope something has been deleted cuz it would pain me to think that some people here have their heads so far up their butts that they cant find a little time during a sometimes really long workday for a little laughter

 

I'm sorry if I came off like an old stick in the mud on this issue, but this kind of horse play is not permitted in my pressroom. It will only lead to one guy trying to out do the previous which eventually leads to animosity in the shop! It gets out of hand every time.

I can give you all an example that even involves me. You will probably crack up laughing ,but we didn't

Back in 1994 I was running a 6/40 Komori for the UPPER DECK in Carlsbad Ca. (baseball cards etc..) Everynight I would go to the John to take a dump like clockwork. Someone kept trurning off the light in the middle of my dump! Sounds funny until your the one left holdinfg the shitty toilet paper! ar,ar,ar

This was an amazing facility. It was huge, we had absolute perfect print conditions. The tenp. was 72 F and the regulated humidity was a perfect 45. ( we had misters for Christ sakes gently spraying water into the room to keep the constant humidity at 45) At any rate , I figured out who the young pup was that was ******* with me. He was a second man on a press near to me. One night I waited for him to go on break . You see , he was a tobacco chewer. He made the mistake of leaving his chew on the bench. I took his new can of Scoll, dumped it out on the bench, added 1 tlbs. black ink and then re filled the can with tobacco.

It seemes he got about half way home in that new pick up with the baby blue cloth interior and went for a chew. Out ther on the freeway with no blanket wash , no shop towels, etc... and your fingers all full of ink can be a real *****.

When I got to work the next day, I was informed by several other employeees that this guy was really pissed off at me. I caught up to him as we were all walking down a secured hall ( security cameras etc,..) , and handed him a fresh can of Scoll that I bought for him. "I said, don't ever **** with me again, the next time I will take that dump in your lunch!"

He never did, however , he never spoke to me again. Keep in mind (We were friends before this horse play started.)


Rod

 

my boss had a guy that worked for her for a couple of years and one day he said he had to go to the post office (which is next door to our building) and he never came back. So as a joke we always say when some one goes to the post office to check if Ernie is still over there haha

 

Had a multi tech replace a circuit board on a 1650 XE. He tested the press by starting it up and proclaimed it fixed. Packed his tools and left. The operator came in later and said it wouldn't feed. It ran fine, pumps worked, just wouldn't feed. Then we noticed it was running backward! Tech came back and switched the plugs, he was a little embarresed.

 

i was working as an apprentice back in 70s when the foreman asked me to help a pressman on one of the harris
presses we had with a powder problem the pressman told me do not touch the switch.cause he had the cap off the
powder jar the foreman came to the back of the press and said what goin on i told him what the pressman told me
and with that he said this switch and turned on the blower the powder shot out in a giant blast and completley covered
the pressmans face everything was completey white except his lips and his eyes never forgot it funniest thing i ever saw
laughed my *** off so did the half deaf foreman