home built letterpress
Posted on February 28, 2009
[Design note. This is the completed letterpress. I added a few rails to the bottom. They need to be as long as, or longer than, the press arm. If not the whole press raises up off the floor when you try to apply any amount of pressure.]
This post is a spin-off from our wedding blog. There seemed to be a lot of interest in this DIY technique.
When I first started looking into wedding invitations, I came across the letterpress. It’s a beautiful technique that really leaves a ‘bite’ in the paper. It’s also very expensive to have your invitations printed this way.
So, I started looking into some way that I could do it myself. There are letterpresses for sale. What a beautiful piece of machinery. Unfortunately, they too are quite expensive to buy. This is one of the first documentary videos I saw on letterpress. It’s from Firefly Press.
I began searching for ways to imitate this technique. I found this video created by a guy who had built his own press. I pretty much used the same technique, but altered it a bit and used different wood to make it more sturdy.
Also, here’s another style of letterpress that someone built at home. It’s modeled more after the Gutenberg press:
But in the end, this one would take too long for printing high volumes of material.
Hope this helps some!