John Nicholson and John Logan inspect the old Model brand treadle print press they are working to revive. Photo/Chris Steel
John Nicholson and John Logan inspect the old Model brand treadle print press they are working to revive. Photo/Chris Steel
A treadle print press will be the highlight of a historic working print shop being set up in the Western Bay Museum.
Waikato printing engineer John Nicholson has been working with Katikati's John Logan and Malcolm Moore to get the 150-plus - year-old Model 3 brand printing press up andrunning.
Mr Nicholson said he used to own two treadle print presses, but the Model 3 one at the museum is the first one he has heard of. "What you have here is a rare machine."
Museum curator Paula Gaelic said the print shop will be in the interactive section of the museum and they hope to use the treadle press to print invitations and that type of thing.
The trio were at the museum recently working out how to position it in the building. Being a hand-platen print press means the paper is fed in and removed by hand and it is worked manually by someone working the treadle.
"You feed one sheet in and one sheet out. It's a bit like a one armed paperhanger," said Mr Logan, who has been in the print industry for decades.
Mr Moore is in the process of dismantling the press, cleaning it up and repainting it and liaising with Mr Logan and Mr Nicholson regarding any parts that may be needed.
"There'sagood chance the press hasn't been working for 100 years so everything is gunged up," Mr Logan said. The rubber on the rollers was worn out so new rollers are being made along with two feed trays.
When Mr Logan was in the Merchant Navy he worked on an Arab machine, but the one at the museum is quite a lot smaller, he said.
"It's good for business cards and small sheets of paper, the maximum is about an A5 size."
Old Girl: A side panel of the Model 3 treadle print press, believed to date back to pre-1900. Photo/Chris Steel
At the museum's print shop there will be a printer's cabinet with type trays full of type (letters) in about five different fonts. Back then each letter was put into the type cases by hand, even the leading (spacing between letters) was put in by hand.
Times New Roman was the type most used from about the 1930s onwards, mainly for newspapers. Mr Nicholson said there was an order of frequencies of letters in the type trays with e, t, a, o, i and n being among the most used letters.
Paula hopes to have the Western Bay Museum officially open in July/August and is keen to hear from anyone who knows where the print press may have come from.
