Galley proof · complete
5 pulls on file
Press notes
Everything that has come off this press and been written up afterwards, newest at the head of the galley. The earliest that survives in a readable state is from 18 April 2024; what came before it is in a folder marked make-ready and stays there.
Jobs
Printing a friend's wedding cards, and what it cost me
Two hundred cards in two colours, done for nothing, for people I like. What I agree beforehand, and every way a free job still manages to go wrong.
4 sections9 minRevised 24 Aug 2026
Paper
Paper through the damp season, and when to dampen it
October turns a ground-floor room into a cellar. How a paper stack behaves, how damp a drypoint sheet should be, and why metal type wants paper dry.
4 sections8 minRevised 13 Feb 2026
Ink
Mixing ink by eye, and the swatch book that saves me
No scales and no formulas: a glass slab, a palette knife and a habit of writing things down. Why red is hardest, and how little ink a sheet actually needs.
4 sections7 minRevised 30 May 2025
Type
Sorting wood and metal type bought by the kilogram
What is actually in a flea-market crate, how long the sorting takes, which incomplete fonts earn a drawer, and when to leave the lot on the table.
4 sections8 minRevised 15 Jan 2025
The room
Getting a second-hand proof press into a courtyard room
Moving half a tonne of cast iron through an old-town arch, levelling it on a floor that slopes, and learning what a ground-floor room does in January.
4 sections7 minRevised 2 Jun 2024
Notes are not rewritten once they are up. Where a later note contradicts an earlier one, both stay and the later one says which it replaces; the reasoning is in the note on how these notes work.