Category: Letterpress for beginners
Later topic: die cutting
Earlier topic: Standard cost for bookbinding

Best trash find?

Am curious to know what pieces of printing room machinery people have found in the trash? Can’t say I’ve found a Kluge or a lead cutter but got permission to lift a Martin Yale folder out of a Dumpster once.

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While I was living in the centre of Amsterdam, many years ago, one of my neighbours knocked on my door and asked me if I would be interested in a printing press. He didn’t know anything about, it was sitting there when he bought the warehouse space and he wanted to get rid of it asap.
I went along with him and discovered an Arab treadle platen press, that had been used to print wooden coat hangers.
He gave me to the end of the day to remove it. I called one of my cousins and together we moved it out into the street, using a crowbar and a couple of pipes. We fixed the press to a lamp post on the canal-side and put a tarpaulin over.
Next day I took my toolbox and took the press apart, to transport it on a sack-barrow to my workshop. It took me nearly two years to restore the press and to get it in working order again.
I also found an Adana in a skip, when I was living in London, and a galley cabinet in a skip in Paris.