I watched a great movie about letterpress on YouTube last month. It was called Pressing On. I wanted to try my hand at doing some carving and block printing. While I may move up to bigger projects, this is my first foray into the subject.
I used a website for inspiration about carving my first block. I just drew out the design on some linoleum that I bought at Hobby Lobby that is made for this process. But it really is the same stuff that is used as flooring (though much of what is sold as linoleum today is actually vinyl flooring).
Cutting the Block
I carved away the lino block using woodworking chisels that I found at the shop. These are smaller chisels used for wood carving. There are lino specific chisels, but the ones I found worked just fine for my simple design.
Inking and Printing
One of the things I have read about and seen videos say is that you don’t need to use as much ink as you might first think. So, I used a very small amount and found that it wasn’t quite enough to get good coverage.
I printed out several tries with the first bit of ink I laid down. The whole time I was also trying to figure out how to get a good ink transfer. You are supposed to use a tool called a baren, but when I went to the shop to work on the project, I hadn’t thought through that part yet. Many people use a spoon or something with a similar smooth, but curved surface on it.
I ended up making my own baren from a block of wood and a knob I found in the cabinet hardware drawer. To make sure it didn’t rip the paper I was printing onto, I sanded it with curved edges and made it smooth.
Reprint
The next day I came back and tried again with a bit more ink. It turned out much better. I am using water based ink which supposedly dries faster. It is great in that it seems to dry quickly on the paper (and is easy to clean up), but it also doesn’t seem to give as much working time as the block printing videos I see where they are using an oil based ink.
Video
One thing I really don’t like doing is video editing. Somewhat because the more ignorant I am on it, the more easily I can tell people I can’t help them with a video project. But, I took the time to put together a video of the printing process. This is not meant to be a tutorial on how to do this properly. Rather just a video showing how I did it.
Next Steps
My plan is to carve another design (one that I used the laser to transfer the lines onto the lino block for me). Then maybe use the CNC machine to cut a large project for printing. This would be something that I can use as a project to let kids play with when we present at various public events.