Home Made Chase

Re thickness of chase frame material, a reasonable rule of thumb, would be to see the depth/thickness of Cornerstone, (aluminium), Resolite or Paxolin furniture, generally these tend to be, close to the height of standard quoins, implying that this would be a good MINIMUM thickness and ONLY up to the thickness that would clear the rollers!!! Follows a few suggestions for D.I.Y.ers, as an esteemed buddy has implied, every retro (or would be) letterpress printer, should have a friendly engineer handy, but in the real world this may not always be possible, hence “1” make some delicate enquiries, within possibly the B.P.circle and see if any body, has retained a rack of steel interlocking furniture, (normally 24 point thick graduated from 18 ems to possibly 40 ems) which would have been used, for example, as a furniture saving device, inside the 2 colour border for a certificate, interlocked, stronger than any multiple of quoins!!!or the chase? If BIG IF admittedly, such were still lurking, unused, unloved and negotiable, with a little help, from, just a reasonably proficient welder, think of the variety of chases that could be manufactured?? O.K. this is in essence the principle, so small pegs on either side for locaters or small ramps top and bottom for clamps, are not exactly, space age, i.e.ordinary hand held electric drill and hand file, surely, well below the relative expertise required to lock up a forme, to lift all the leads and spaces!!! Especially if one hasent grasped the principle of 1 point squeeze per 10ems of typeseting???>>>”2” Assuming that your cutting formes are manufactured basically the same as in U.K. and are normally only of sufficient height to accomodate cutting. creasing.and perforating rule, by implication and at 10 ply, will make chases, that easily stand table top machine pressure!!! Once again not exactly high tech, especially in the print trade, most everybody seems to have access to an accurate table saw, for the outside parameter of the chase and the inside, after determining, the wall thickness, 4 (four) holes at the internal corners, with the electric drill, reasonably straight lines/cuts with D.I.Y. jigsaw, slightly under sized, to allow for truing up, in the bench vice, by using the jaws with your chase clamped in, and a little delicate filing, or rasp (for wood) and file, the jaws will not let you get anything, other than accuracy, to within 2/3 thicknesses of stock.! >> If of course inbuilt ramps, for clamping into machine, are required no problem, small rebates with the aforementioned rasp and file, should be easy, if it should be felt, that as clamping ramps may detract, from the overall strength of the chase forward planning would involve making the section, top and or bottom slightly thicker, as learned friends have already posted expecting more than I believe 60/70% overall impressionable print area is expecting more than the inbuilt capabilities, will not seriously effect your internal chase capacity!! Should the machine have only slots in the bed, for the chase to drop into downwards, for location, construct the chase with an overall size, side to side, by less than the thickness of 2 pieces of steel strip 1/16 of an inch for example, incorporating 2 tiny pegs incorporated in the steel strips, to locate the chase within the bed, and then when correct alignment is checked out, small screws, countersunk into the steel strips to retain. HOPEFULLY all Junior School type technology!!!??? Or “3” on the basis that you seem to be well blessed with live steam enthusiasts, building scale models in home workshops, with possibly only a lathe and small milling machine, just possibly suggest that, with such equipment and sufficient bribery and corruption, to help their fighting funds, by acquisition of 1 suitable piece of steel they could manufacture “RUSSIAN DOLL” style chases i.e. progressively smaller to suit several machines, at hopefully lot less than normal suppliers!! and tailor made!! with out the “of course Sir We will have to jig up for a One Off!!!” at telephone figure charges,

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