Letterpress plates

[DavidP]

Is there anyone here who is a letterpress printer? Looking for the type of plates you use.

 

[Widmark]

I do printing at home on my little C+P tabletop and work part-time at a small shop that prints on C+P platens and Vandercooks. From my own experience and from reading the Letpress mailing list and the discussions at Briar Press, conventional wisdom has it that metal-backed plates may print a bit better but on cylinder presses have a tendency to drift, while adhesive-backed plates stay in place better. I know many people use the adhesive plates for the highest quality work, so I wouldn't mean to imply that they don't print perfectly, just that I've read people say that in their experience the metal backed plates print better. Maybe they're more forgiving?

I've only have a little experience with both and would have to say also that I find it easier to place and adjust the adhesive-backed plates than to deal with placing and adjusting the metal plates, but that may be due to lack of experience. All the plates, adhesive and metal, that I've used have come from Boxcar.

 

[Lammy]

I run a Heidelberg S cylinder. We use a bunting base and KF152 plates from Boxcar. If we need more packing to get a better impression on large solids and halftones we do run into a problem with the plate sliding away from the gripper on the base. We're still trying to figure out what to do about it. We're considering the adhesive sold by boxcar as well as bending the lead edge of the plate and locking it into the chase. We've also considered making up a pin system. The reason we went with metal backed plates is the adhesive will tend to loose it tackiness when reused and we run some fairly large plates. We only run between 500-1000 pieces each time and re-run the same image every couple of months.

I use adhesive backed plates on a table top and they work great but I rarely reuse them.

I also use 11pt magnesium plates locked into sterling toggle base, which is about as easy and simple as it gets with no issues. The plates are very expensive though.

 

[Craig]

Check out Owasso Graphics, that's where we get our letterpress plates.