Any tips for more vibrant colors on small type?

I’m hoping some of you might have advice for me regarding achieving brighter ink shades when printing small type and linework on my Heidelberg Windmill. I am using photopolymer plates on a boxcar base, and using rubber-based ink. My press seems to like running best with very light ink and fairly high roller settings (6-8 pt. ink stripe), otherwise the ink gets pushed onto the shoulders of the photopolymer image and I end up with a faint white line where the ink has been pushed off the edge.

So for many images that are solids or have larger surface areas, I often print 2 lighter passes and the problem is mostly solved, but with small type (like 8 pt.) and thin linework, the surface area of photopolymer is so small that even with 2 passes the result is a color that is about 2 shades lighter than what would be ideal. I always start with the most vibrant mix I can get, such as today I was using straight Orange 021, but my end result on small type after 2 passes was 2 shades lighter, so more of a pastel. If I go heavier with the ink so that the shade is brighter, I end up with the aforementioned “shoulder ink” problem and also the type starts to fill in.

I’m printing primarily on Reich Savoy 118# stock. I want a little impression but not a lot, as the sheet isn’t very thick and I want minimal show through on the back side.

Does anyone else have this issue? Other than this the press runs well, the rollers are in good condition and recently rotated.

Any suggestions welcome, thank you!

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Vibrant colour :- Well what a minefield. Being based in the uk I’m not familiar with the stock you are using, is it an uncoated stock? If it is, are you comparing your printed result with the uncoated pantone swatch for orange 021. I have a sample book produced by a Uk ink maker many years ago asking how many inks were used ? And the answer was one but with many different paper stocks giving a different colour for each stock. The other issue is typeface and with different typefaces of the same size the coverage can change, with a light face the juxtapostion with the white stock can make it appear lighter.
It maybe worth trying to print a small solid, say an inch square and see if you can match the colour you are after then put the text in the same forme to see what result you get.
good luck, wiil be interested to hear how you get on.

Hi Frank,

Yes I can match a small solid pretty closely to a pantone swatch, even when printed at the same time as small type. The Savoy sheet is uncoated and yes I use the uncoated pantone swatch book. I know it isn’t really suited for letterpress inks but it’s serviceable enough.

Hi Sylvie,
These issues sound ink color related. I’ve never bought Orange 21 but I have a light orange tube of Cranfield ink. It seems to be mixed with white to be somewhat opaque, and I think it does pretty well at small sizes staying vibrant. So your orange may be more transparent. Would you say it looks mixed with white? If not, try adding just a little to make it more opaque and less transparent. The other option is to go darker by adding red to go a couple shades darker, and yellow to keep it orange. Many inks look dark in the can but print transparent and vibrant. It’s a matter of experimenting and playing with your color. You sound like you have everything else figured out

You could try to register over a first run of varnish. I agree about the white paper surrounding the type is some of the visual problem that you are seeing. Adding opaque white may also help. I do not use rubber base inks.

Hi J Russell & Colophon,

I do use a lot of opaque white in my printing (rather than transparent white). But the problems I have with the too-light colors happen with or without white opaque in the mix. However I have better luck with blues and greens, as a too-light blue or green still looks OK, I can add a bit of black to help darken them. It’s the reds and oranges that really look especially washed out. I can’t add black to those shades or it changes the color completely.

I understand you do use opaque white now. I would not add black to darken, but rather more red and yellow. It may look wrong when mixed up, but print better and still be nearly the same color. In general it could be a design choice with small surfaces areas to use a darker color.
I haven’t tried the varnish myself.

Uncoated stock sucks the vehicle of the ink up and then it tends to suck some of the pigment in there as well. Pigments as you probably know are minerals or organic chemicals in small particle form, like a fine talc.
These are mixed into a vehicle, oil or rubber or acrylic or other base, and then further encapsulated into the vehicle in a process called milling.

Uncoated Papers, and particularly nicer cotton stocks like reich, have a rough surface that is fibrous in nature and has pores/cells to it. It will absorb moisture and even solids will enter these little pores/cells between the strands of fiber that make up the paper.

The problem you are describing is exactly why coated stock was invented; to keep as much of the brilliantly saturated pigment on the top surface as possible, therefore increasing the density and mass of the ink film that sets on the surface.

SO what you’re looking at are tiny particles of ink that are going to want to fit into the pores; how can you combat this? That is the proper way to view the problem.

You can start by choosing an ink with a vehicle that sets quickly enough that it won’t migrate into the surface as easily; actually a stiffer ink will sit up and set on the top surface more easily.
Picture a dried out sponge on a counter. Dribble some coffee, and dribble some yogurt onto it. Which one is going to absorb into the sponge, and which one is going to sit on the top no matter what?

Same principle of viscosity applies.

You can try sealing the surface with a varnish, as has been already described by others. If you use offset varnish with some tack to it and a bit of drier. Print the varnish run, wash the press up, and then ink up in your orange and re-print the run. This is known as underpinning, and it is particularly useful on black stock or dark stocks where one would like lighter, opaque white colors to keep from absorbing into the stock. In fact, the opaque white/black stock is the perfect analogy for what I was describing above because it is a quite extreme example.

The second thing you could do instead of hitting your pieces twice in a row to build up thin ink coverage is to add some drier to your ink; print your whole run in the orange you have been using. Wait about 20-30 minutes after the run for the ink to set up and ‘block’ the surface of the Reich.
Then without much further delay, re-run every sheet again and be careful with your feeding/registration.

If you follow this procedure, it will be night and day with a hit/hit/dry.

In fact, hit/dry/hit/dry/hit is the best configuration I have found for saturation as described.

Best of luck to you.

Uncoated stock sucks the vehicle of the ink up and then it tends to suck some of the pigment in there as well. Pigments as you probably know are minerals or organic chemicals in small particle form, like a fine talc.
These are mixed into a vehicle, oil or rubber or acrylic or other base, and then further encapsulated into the vehicle in a process called milling.

Uncoated Papers, and particularly nicer cotton stocks like reich, have a rough surface that is fibrous in nature and has pores/cells to it. It will absorb moisture and even solids will enter these little pores/cells between the strands of fiber that make up the paper. What this means is that you print wet ink and it looks nice and dandy, then when the ink dries you see a bit more of the paper fibers sticking through as absorption, shrinkage, and even fiber expansion/unsettling occurs.
Picking, when an ink actually pulls the fibers up or even off the paper during the moment of ink-split, can even exacerbate this.

The problem you are making a go at describing is exactly why coated stock was invented; to keep as much of the brilliantly saturated pigment on the top surface as possible, therefore increasing the density and mass of the ink film that sets on the surface.

SO what you’re looking at are tiny particles of ink that are going to want to fit into the pores; how can you combat this? That is the proper way to view the problem.

You can start by choosing an ink with a vehicle that sets quickly enough that it won’t migrate into the surface as easily; actually a stiffer ink will sit up and set on the top surface more easily.
Picture a dried out sponge on a counter. Dribble some coffee, and dribble some yogurt onto it. Which one is going to absorb into the sponge, and which one is going to sit on the top no matter what?

Same principle of viscosity applies.

You can try sealing the surface with a varnish, as has been already described by others. If you use offset varnish with some tack to it and a bit of drier. Print the varnish run, wash the press up, and then ink up in your orange and re-print the run. This is known as underpinning, and it is particularly useful on black stock or dark stocks where one would like lighter, opaque white colors to keep from absorbing into the stock. In fact, the opaque white/black stock is the perfect analogy for what I was describing above because it is a quite extreme example.

The second thing you could do instead of hitting your pieces twice in a row to build up thin ink coverage is to add some drier to your ink; print your whole run in the orange you have been using. Wait about 20-30 minutes after the run for the ink to set up and ‘block’ the surface of the Reich.
Then without much further delay, re-run every sheet again and be careful with your feeding/registration.

If you follow this procedure, it will be night and day with a hit/hit/dry.

In fact, hit/dry/hit/dry/hit is the best configuration I have found for saturation as described.

Best of luck to you.

I’m really glad I’m learning a whole bunch more here from Haven Press! I just did a double hit print run, but next time I’ll let it dry in between. And try that varnish I have. Such good info.

Thanks HavenPress this is really helpful information.
I have never used driers (the rubber base dries on contact with the paper) nor varnish, but I would really like to give your method a try.

Sylvia, lots of good responses so far. As has been said a double hit can help and when I print gold or silver I always put a base of pale yellow or pale blue down first. I print with a windmill or miehle vertical an have found litho inks to be the way forward. They tend to dry more quickly than rubber based inks and because when used for litho printing a thinner layer of ink is put down, consequently the pigment content is more intense to compensate for the thinner film, so when used for letterpress it generally gives a stronger colour.

Hi Frank,
Thanks for your response. I’ve heard good things about litho ink in the past, but have only printed with rubber base and acrylic. I’m confused though about the references to rubber base not drying quickly—it dries immediately and all my sheets stack up with never any problem.

Rubber base inks are actually meant for offset printing. Technically, it’s all litho compatible.

Frank, I am assuming for clarification sake you mean oil base ink. Which does dry rather quickly, no matter the surface. It also tends to be a little “wetter” than the tackier, higher viscosity rubber base ink.

Sylvia, It can all be modified to act differently, a little smooth lith/setswell etc added to the ink- or rubber base reducer, in the case of rubber base ink- will convert the ink you’re already using into a wetter/thinner viscosity if you want to try that.

What brand of ink are you using? Van Son? Gans?

Regardless it’s good you’re printing on the windmill. If you’re running with the guides you should be able to hit the registration well, which means you could feed them through multiple times without issue. I always like to have a bunch of targets in a straight line at the very bottom of the sheet on the brass guides edge to give me the closest possible inspection of positioning.

All the suggestions above are on target, but it is difficult to diagnose a problem like this from a distance.

If you have a good magnifier or loupe, take a good look at the image as printed. If the characters are solid and of correct color strength under magnification, then there may be little you can do but strengthen the color as J Russell-Steuart described. By making the ink “darker”, you may negate the effect of all the white paper around the image when printing small text. If the character appear grainy, you may not be compressing the fibers enough to get good ink transfer. A good, hard packing is best for small text on ultra-compressible stock.

John Henry
Cedar Creek Press

Yes Havenpress, thanks I was refering to oil based ink. My very limited experience with rubber based ink has not been very good, so stuck to oil based ink. Never had any issues with drying on uncoated stock and with coated stock there is always the anti setoff spray as backup.

HavenPress,
I use both Van Son & Ink in Tubes from Letterpress Inks. I see no difference between the two. My Windmill has no troubles with registration, I can run 2-3 passes without problem. One thing I didn’t mention is that I can put the same plate on my Vandercook and have much less trouble with getting a decent vibrancy in color, simply because the Vandercook can carry much more ink. I use the hardest packing I can get (on both presses)— red board foremost plus tympan sheets or sometimes just a sheet of typing paper depending on the stock I’m running. Also I did think to try stiffening the ink as you suggested previously, but really saw little difference in outcome.