Great Northern

One of the printers’ gatherings I’ve enjoyed in recent years is coming up soon: the Great Northern. This informal weekend event, started by the late Bill McGarry and now run in his honor, began as a swap/sell meet in the Minneapolis area. Now it’s grown and found a home at Midwest Old Threshers Museum in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.

Midwest Old Threshers is a working museum, complete with operational steam engines, old farm machinery (including threshing machines), dolls, an antique carousel, and a steam locomotive you can ride. It’s all wonderful to see. But to me the main attraction is Printer’s Hall. Thanks to the efforts of many hobby printers, Printer’s Hall is a working letterpress print shop full of antique machinery that’s fully operational.

The Great Northern Printer’s Fair is a golden opportunity to work with letterpress equipment firsthand. And there’s plenty of it: Vandercook presses, Linotype machines, a Heidelberg Windmill, an iron hand press, a steam-powered Babcock newsletter press, and an old folding machine that will amaze you as it reduces a full sheet of newsprint to manageable size. This year a Hickok ruling machine will be in action, too. All of these machines will be up and running for the Great Northern. But they’re not behind velvet ropes. You can actually work with them. In fact you’re encouraged to get inky and try them out. And if you’re new to letterpress, there are lots of experienced printers to help you out.

The icing on the cake is the Sale/Swap Meet on Saturday, followed by the Auction. Buyers wander around and study tables piled high with type, cuts, and every type of printing equipment you can imagine. There’s lots of opportunity to chat, share stories, and learn more about letterpress. My husband and I number ourselves among the hopelessly addicted, fascinated with what’s for sale and who’s there to talk with. And you never know when you’re going to score a terrific bargain at the auction on some item you’ve been eying!

Thursday starts with workshops, demonstrations, and instruction on the various pieces of equipment. Start a project and continue it on Friday, with expert help if you need it. Load up on letterpress type and gadgetry on Saturday at the Swap Meet and Auction. And get a chance to chat with some of the folks who love letterpress. In my experience, they’re some of the kindest, most helpful people you could imagine. What an opportunity for fun and camaraderie!

This year’s Great Northern runs September 16-18. If you’d like more information, contact Chuck Wendel at pchazman@hotmail.com or Rick von Holdt at vonholdt@netins.net . Or check the July 7th posting on Briar Press: http://www.briarpress.org.

Below are some pictures my husband and I have taken at the Great Northern over the years. We’ve certainly enjoyed being there!


Printing on the Chandler and Price platen press.


Demonstration of casting metal type by Skyline Type Foundry.


Preparing a form for the Babcock newspaper press.


Running the Babcock press is a two-person operation.


Take a ride on a steam locomotive at Midwest Old Threshers Museum.


Row upon row of old threshing machines greet you at the museum.


The Swap Meet in full swing. Old type, new type, cuts, gadgets, and equipment galore -- you can get it all here.

Printer's Pie (Pi)

If somebody offers you printer’s pie, just say no! Unlike the dessert, printer’s pie (or more properly, pi) is a mess of dropped and disorderly type that slipped from some printer’s fingers. It’s type cobbler if you will, but without any of delightful aspects of that homemade treat.

Rather than praise and drooling, printer’s pi calls forth unprintable language and despair. All that hard work hand setting type one letter and one space at a time has to be done over again. Sometimes it’s even worse: try to fix pied type, and often more will pi. It’s the law of gravity at its worst.

Have I pied type? You bet. Every printer who’s set any amount of type has probably pied a line or two. Thankfully for me (knock on wood), it’s seldom been much more than that. But there are printers who can tell horror stories of huge forms sliding off metal galleys or falling out of the chase after lockup. Hopefully that’s not you. If it is, you have my sympathies. I know what it’s like to try to fix pied type. It takes the eyes of an eagle and the patience of a saint. As letters accidentally go back into the form out of order, upside down and standing on their heads, it feels like if anything can go wrong it will.

Fortunately I had a good teacher, my dad, who showed me basic techniques to avoid the dreaded printer’s pi.

1) Fill out lines completely and evenly when setting type. Don’t set type so loosely that it wobbles in the composing stick, or try to squeeze in too big a piece of spacing material. When setting smaller type, add em quads or larger to the ends of lines to help hold the type upright.

2) Slide type from the composing stick directly onto a galley whenever possible, and block the lines in with wood or metal furniture to keep them from falling over. My husband and I like to use magnets on our galleys for further security.

3) After locking up the form in the chase, test the lockup before lifting it. Put a piece of wooden furniture under the one edge of the chase and push down on various parts of the form. If anything moves, the lockup needs to be re-done. That is, unless you like picking up pied type!

Even with every precaution, the most careful compositor can still pi type. It’s the nature of the beast. Thousands of slivers of metal standing on end next to each other are an invitation to human klutziness.

But printer’s pi does have one good aspect (doesn’t everything!) Sometimes you can get nice type given to you that somebody pied and didn’t want to straighten out. We’ve acquired a few attractive fonts of type that way.

Mostly though, printer’s pi is far from sweet. Instead it’s a recipe for frustration. Do yourself a favor and stay far, far away!



Blocking in the Form on the galley with wooden and metal furniture and magnets.

Checking the Lockup for loose characters that could pi. A piece of wood furniture props up the chase.

Mr. Willow Press: Gary Hantke

During the mid-1950’s my father Gary Hantke worked at Trane Company in La Crosse, Wisconsin as a designer of air conditioning equipment. Though still an active hobby letterpress printer, much of his energy necessarily went toward providing for his wife and two young daughters. By now his basement print shop housed about 20 fonts of type and two presses, a treadle 5 x 8 Pearl, and the faithful Baltimorean tabletop. Then he made an acquisition that absorbed him in letterpress printing in a big way.

My father learned that A.A. Liesenfeld, founder of a quality commercial print shop that had been in business for over 50 years, was being forced to sell his type and machinery because of poor health. As Dad tells the story in Brief Biography of a Basement Printer, “It was then that I visited him, hoping to buy a few fonts of used type. The old printer was reluctant to part with the material he had worked with for so long, but realized that he could never again use it.”

I visited A.A. Liesenfeld as a little girl, and remember he was kind to me. Dad had been having a hard time talking the old printer into selling the shop. Maybe Dad thought his daughter would help to establish his reliability. I wonder now if the old man somehow sensed his print shop would be carried on to the next generation. At any rate, he agreed to sell to my father.

Dad began hauling. And hauling. And manhandling literally tons of type and cases and equipment down the steep stairs into our basement. Fortunately there was an anchor point -- a large willow tree in our back yard. My father tied heavy ropes around its trunk to lower the 8 x 12 Chandler and Price press and 25” paper cutter into the shop.

So Dad named his press Willow. As he explains, “Custom dictates that any printery, private or commercial, have a name; and since this is perhaps the least costly item required, my shop too can afford this small luxury. It will be called The Willow Press, not for its flexibilities of use, but for the willow tree in the backyard. Had it not been for a stout rope slung around its trunk, the press might never have reached the basement in usable condition.”

Now the real work began, as Dad sorted galley after galley of standing forms, putting away type that hadn’t been distributed in years. The resulting cases of type overflowed. Apparently in the commercial shop it had been easier to cast new type rather than putting things back where they belonged.

After over a year of sorting, Dad got the shop in order. He kept it in order through years of use, and taught me the value of running a clean shop by keeping up with form distribution. To this day Bob and I distribute our forms soon after printing – most of the time! A good discipline -- thank you, Dad!


Advertisement for the Liesenfeld Printing Company - Notice the two-color registration, printed in two separate, carefully aligned impressions.


Dad setting up a form for the press. The form is locked up in a rectangular metal frame called a chase.


Dad with a copy of "Brief Biography of a Basement Printer". A 1923 ATF specimen book and a copy of a Gutenberg Bible page are on the desk in front of him. Notice also our 1950's era TV in the background.


Carole with the Chandler and Price press, shortly after it was moved into the house. The big paper cutter is on the left.