Working with 220# paper
Hi all,
New to the forums but have run a trade letterpress shop for over 12 years. I mostly deal with the colleges in the area and large commercial print shops doing foil and emboss but want to dive into letterpress printing on the thick cotton stocks.
Question one, and I seen some vague descriptions here is…
Whats the best techniques for edge painting?
Also, our cutter seems like it might crush the life out of the paper when down to smaller cuts even with the clamp pressure backed off…also on a test cut I noticed it not leaving a 90 degree edge to the cut area.
Any and all tips are welcome… even tho I know some are going to be greedy with their knowledge :)
When you clamp thick cotton paper, you need to have some scrap paper above and below it. That helps keep the clamp from marking the top few sheets. You should also cut it in short stacks. That’ll help you cut back on the pressure needed to hold the stack square and avoid the blade pulling the paper.
If you do a search, there’s a thread where someone gave away his secrets on edge painting. I’m still experimenting a bit myself, but I’ve found airbrush seems to be the most successful for me.
Nice, I had been thinking of going with airbrushing but didn’t want to go buy a nice one if everyone had problems with it.
Also if your using custom mixed ink colors then you need to mix the paint…
If you see that secret post again please add a link… I will go looking for it tho.
Found the super secret leak :)
TY Mr James for speaking the truth.
It helps to sand the edge of the stack, but it also adds a bunch of extra handwork so if you want to get paid for the trouble the money goes up.
Also when you cut the cards out you want to cut all four sides against the vertical side of the blade. One side of a cut will leave a more vertical cut on one stack and a much more angled cut on the offcut side.
Also we did some silver foil edging (actually aluminum for the stuff we used) and it has turned a distinct orange. Won’t do that again.