2014 Handpress Process

My name on my first plate	My first plate	First attempt at a press. The wooden handle quickly proved impractical. It was too heavy.
Moved to a pipe for the handle, but the hinge turned out to be too high. And the thin rod flexed too much.	Now we're getting somewhere. This moved pretty well.	Since I wasn't sure what I was doing, I left way too much space between the names. I could have fit a lot more on here.
This was my first real attempt. I thought with the hooks, the board holding the paper being printed would always hang level.	And my first problem. I pulled down so hard, I broke my piece of pipe.	My second problem. I bent the little hooks. Need a new design.
Here I basically just bolted two pieces of plywood around the pipe. This didn't work either.	Here we have the successful design. Some conduit clamps (with duct tape for padding) around the pipe to hold the top board. Dowels to make sure everything lines up consistently with the bottom board.	My first prints did not look very good.
I got better. One thing that helped was stapling cork to the bottom of the top board.	This is what happens when you make a press and forget to put a piece of paper in. A damp rag cleans off the ink and then a dry rag dries it all up. Fortunately, I only did this about three times.	Making progress, but had some issues with some of the names.
At this point, I was pretty sure it was going to work. Just a matter of working out the problem names.	And here's me trying to see if I had 20 good pieces for everyone. That was my goal.	I got a bit pickier as I got better. These did not make the cut as good prints.