Meet Wilhelmina, she's been living in my barn since May. Fate brought us together in a very unusual and unexpected way.
Some of you might be asking what this beastie is, and I'll tell you. She's a Heidelberg Original (better know as a Windmill) single color platen printing press. For awhile I had always, half seriously alluded to wanting to have my own printing press, yet I never thought it would happen.
Ink Cement: Very filthy on arrival, this is what years of neglect will do to a press.
Some of the junk that was cleaned out from inside.
Off and on I'd been doing a little research online about letterpress ownership and most of the time the cost of just acquiring a press was prohibitive, especially considering that I was a minimum wage factory girl at the time. Seeing that there were other people that had their own private press only pushed me harder to find one of my own. For those who don't know Raven has an extensive background in printing, beginning in trade school at age 16 (where letterpress was still taught) to a four year university degree. Many of the people who had their own presses came from a fine arts background instead of a technical one I found, so going into this I knew I had a leg up on them.
All clean again.
Wilhelmina (named so because she's German) came from a local auction that sells just about everything (mostly junk, like 1980s furniture), a place where most people wouldn't expect to find a printing press. This turned out to be a good thing for me, I now have my own press and it was affordable even with hiring a truck to have it dropped off at the barn. I the next couple of weeks I hope to have it moved into it's final position and off the skid. And although I was hoping to have it up and running before the holidays it didn't happen and probably won't until after the new year.
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