Any old letterpress printers out there?

[humbert]

I'm a graphic designer who would really appreciate advice from printers and machine minders about something that I want to do. I've mostly worked for theatre and opera companies which has given me a chance to do some odd stuff. Before computers existed I did some experimental jobs where I selected one of the cmyk films from each image in a job and designated it to be a special instead.

e.g. I printed Reflex blue, yellow, magenta and black instead of the usual, with the opaque special laid down first. I looked at all the films and sometimes I printed the magenta plate in reflex blue with cyan as normal, sometimes the cyan as reflex blue. The result was a slightly achromatic interesting look, like an old 1950s film magazine with a different colour bias to each image, all of which looked artificial. You can only get away with this sort of stuff in the arts!

Also I did duotones, tritones and quadtones with fluorescent inks, (I mean only one at a time) some of which had a wonderful velvety lush density like an old quality letterpress job.

I've now got a project involving lot of big bleed images from old sepia pics (unfortunately they come as standard scans from greyscale prints so I'll work on them up in photoshop).

I want to produce a series of images that look as gorgeous as that old letterpress, dusky and matt, and all slightly different like old photos, some slightly browner, some slightly bluer etc.. all with the lovely contrast of a 40s film mag.

The fluorescent will be a 5th colour, used sparingly, something in the PMS 810-811 spectrum I'm thinking. However it's about 20 years since I did anything so adventurous, I will get wet proofs but can't afford more than one lot. So can anyone make any suggestions or advice about how to proceed?

I'm printing on a HEIDELBERG SPEEDMASTER SM52
6 COLOUR (Perfecting 3/3 cols)

Text Stock is 170gsm Consort 155.

It is mostly portraits and faces, this is an unusual thread and I'd be very grateful for any comments and help.

Thanks

 

[FSA]

humbert
I still do some pretty strange stuff, we proof off the copier to get the basics, but after that it all press. And yes I still run a windmill at three different shops and one of the I do the blind embossing or embossed image in very good regisister. There is no limit to what can be done, one project took almost a month, fluroescent dries slow and you have to take in to account trap of the inks which one goes down first. Myself using a SM 102 8p, ryobi 3304, MO 4c or the Kord 64, depends on the task at hand.Haven't been to London for a couple of decade, need help?
FSA

 

[turbotom1052]

hey humbert,
its been awhile but ive done some experimenting with things like this in the past. A few years back i managed a pressroom where we had an artist come in and buy a few days worth of press time to do just as you described. Try out STUFF. We would image plates to his spec and he would have at it with one of our Heidelbergs. He wouldnt of course run the press but the pressman was directed by management to do whatever he wanted (within reason of course) Some of the results looked like chit but some things he did had some real "WOW" factor. Id think that if you shopped around you could find a hungry enough printer out there to allow you to do the same. If your interested in more info pm me and we can talk.