Brayer choices
Hello all,
I am doing some work using wood type on a Vandercook, I would like to hand ink the form in a selection of colours to print in one pass. I only have one old and trusty brayer but would like to buy a few brayers so that I do not have to keep cleaning for each colour. Can any of you recommend a particular sort of brayer or particular weights, hardness or other attributes I should be looking for?
Thanks for any advice, Al
Hi Al,
I have been doing this kind of work for decades. The most efficient and economical selection of narrow brayers can be found in most art/crafts stores. They are the Speedball brand brayers with the black rubber rollers. The rollers are fairly hard, but are perfectly suited for laying down the ink in selected areas on your form.
They come in various widths. Offhand, I think I have several
1” and 4” wide Speedball brayers in the shop, and there are probably other available widths as well. The diameter of the rollers is only around 1” as well, but a few reapplications will provide the necessary coverage for a fairly large a area.
I generally keep a glass plate nearby to use as a second-color ink plate.
It is a little slower to accomplish, but it does insure perfect register of your colors in one pass.
Thanks Foolproof, I think I know the ones you mean, the sort you would buy to ink up Lino. I wondered if they were too small and hard (compared to the one I have), but I’ll give them a go.
Al
The Speedball brayers are affordable, but may not be smoothly finished. An open pore or rougher surface is fine for linoluem, but if you want to brayer smooth-surfaced plates, orange-peel mottling may result.
Finer and considerably more expensive brayers can be bought from McClain’s , Graphic Chemical, or from Lawrence .
check out the website of; lernen und drucken in Germany, they sell fantastic brayers and will send them worldwide. They have got a nice 5 cm (2 inch) wide one. Ideal for lettering wood type and a couple of lines.
brayer.tiff