I have a new press!! This big beast is an Arab Crown Folio weighing in at around 600kg and dwarfing my little Hogenforst.
An unexpected surprise (thanks Dad!), the press is missing a few pieces so won’t be printing anything for just a while yet until we can make a few repairs, clean it up a bit and get some new rollers.
Sadly while checking over the press a few weeks ago I found that one of the gears is missing a tooth - exactly in the spot where the press closes and needs the most pressure. It looks like it’s an old break and on closer inspection there are air bubbles in the casting so it’s no wonder the tooth broke off at some point.
Luckily though, I was able to get a friend to weld a new tooth and after me spending half a day filing down the weld my press has a shiny new gold tooth!
Being not a well known press I’ve yet to find a chase for it, which is kind of a problem when I’m impatient to get printing. So for the time being I’ve made a wooden chase out of plywood, it’s not perfect but so far it’s been working pretty well.
This is the condition my rollers were in when I got them! All I can think is that an area was cut out to avoid something?
In any case they were hard, uneven and couldn’t be used so I had to start searching for replacements. I had thought that I could buy a set of rollers for say, a Chandler & Price, and use them on my press but apparently this is not the case. Everyone I emailed suggested to get them re-covered instead. I’m sure with some research I could have found someone in Australia to help me out - and maybe I was being silly but I wanted someone who understood platen presses and what the rollers were going to be used for.
In the end I shipped the rollers over to the US to Ramco Roller where Adrian and Jayne were the most helpful people ever! They were fantastic and even kept an eye out for a chase for my press (mine didn’t come with one but more on that later), I highly recommend them!
