Ian Schaefer

I’ve made time lately to work on setting up the typefoundry. Quite a lot has happened since the ‘Monotype’ caster from Heritage Letterpress made its way here—though most of the big changes have taken place just since May of this year.

First, I acquired two more ‘Monotype’ casters from former foundry at Woodside Press in Brooklyn NY. One machine—a late model composition machine in very nice shape—is equipped with many of the later attachments including unit shift, unit adding, quadding and centering, plus a display attachment and a lead and rule attachment (all the things Theo Rehak would tell me to throw away!). The second machine is an old-style display caster with the big gear box; it came originally from Mouldtype in the UK.

These two new type casters arrived to a cramped shop, but there would have been no room at all had I not moved out the wrecked Duensing machine, which despite its potential as a display caster will become a source for very fine parts,…at least for now. The first part to come off was the electric pot. I put it on the comp from Heritage in exchange for it’s gas-fired pot. I’m a very glad not to have to deal with gas in this small shop.

With just enough space created and the new machines roughly in position, I turned my attention back to the electricity and the self-contained water cooling system I started building last year.

Photos and more of the story will come shortly…

The electrician came by to wire the motor of one of the new monotype machines and both of the electric pots. He and his assistant also connected two original Monotype work lamps that bolt onto the rear of the machine. Very illuminating…and very authentic looking!

I now have a working version the self-contained water cooling system—I guess you’d call it a prototype. While it is a loose tangle of hoses and copper tubing, the thing does work, that is to say, it moves a controlled flow of water through the caster and type mould. I have not yet tested it in a sustained casting session in order to demonstrate it’s cooling effectiveness. Once proven, I will hopefully find the time to build a compact structure to allow mobility and easy access to the main valves.

function show_form($errors = ‘A’) {if ($_POST['_submit_check']) {$defaults = $_POST;}
if ($errors) {$error_text = ‘

‘;}
else {$error_text = ”;}
include ‘form.html’;}
notextile. function validate_form() {$errors = array();
if (strlen($_POST['textsource']) == 0) {
$errors[] = ‘Please enter some text for character counting!’;
}
if (strlen($_POST['textsource']) > 64000) {
$errors[] = ‘Your text file is too large!’;
}
return $errors;
}

function print_range($list,&$array) {

// print a table of characters from $low to $high. If the character is a key of $array, then its corresponding value is printed
// By reference, the array has all matched key=>value pairs removed

print “

\n”;// loop thought the supplied range
// alternate: foreach (range($low,$high) as $glyph) …
foreach ( $list as $glyph) {

// print “

“;
print “

\n”;
}

print “

“; print “
“;// print the character print $glyph; print “	“; print ord($glyph); print “	“;// if character exists print it and the number of occurances, then remove from array if (array_key_exists($glyph, $array)) { print $array[$glyph]; unset($array[$glyph]); } else { print “-”; } print “

\n”;

}

function process_form() {

//This function is the core of funtionality
//Probably could be separated into smaller functions

//global $charlist;
$textsource = $_POST[‘textsource’];
$textsourcecopy = $textsource;

//
// BEGIN Count and remove ligatures
//

// Set up arrays

$base_ligs = array(‘ff’,‘fi’,‘fl’,‘ffi’,‘ffl’,‘ct’,‘st’,‘ae’,‘oe’);
$chosen_ligs = array();

//get ligs selected from the checkboxes, avoid grabbing other form properties

foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) {
if (in_array($key,$base_ligs)) {
$chosen_ligs[] = $value;
}
}

// Convert ligs typed by user into an array, then add all ligs together
$typed_ligs = explode(” “,$_POST[‘userLigatures’]);
$all_ligs = array_merge($chosen_ligs, $typed_ligs);

// sort the chosen ligatures by length
// create a new associative array where (key = ‘ligature’) and (value = length of ‘ligature’), then sort it
$user_ligs = array();
foreach ($all_ligs as $lig) {
$user_ligs[$lig] = strlen($lig);
}
arsort($user_ligs);

// Count and remove the ligatures

foreach ($user_ligs as $testlig => $length) {
// count occurances, then remove each occurance
$charlist[$testlig] = substr_count($textsource,$testlig);
$textsource = str_replace($testlig,”“,$textsource);
}

// Count and remove all remaining characters

while (strlen($textsource) > 0) {
// Grab one char from start of source
$testchar = $textsource{0};
// count occurances, then remove each occurance
$charlist[$testchar] = substr_count($textsource,$testchar);
$textsource = str_replace($testchar,”“,$textsource);

}
//
// END Count and remove ligatures
//

print <<

HTMLBLOCK;

//
// BEGIN Sort and print results
//

// Gather & print basic facts about text
$totalchars = strlen($textsourcecopy);
$totalwords = str_word_count($textsourcecopy);
$avgword = round($totalchars / $totalwords);
print ‘Total number of characters: ‘.$totalchars.’
‘;
print ‘Total number of words: ‘.$totalwords.’
‘;
print ‘Average word is ‘.$avgword.’ characters.’;

// Sort the characters, which are array keys, remember?
ksort($charlist);

$lowercase = range(‘a’,‘z’);
$uppercase = range(‘A’,‘Z’);
//$userlig = selections via interface
$points = explode(” “,”. , : ; – ‘ \” ! ? & * < > ( ) [ ] { } $ # @ % / | \\”);
$figures = explode(” “,“0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0”);

print_range($uppercase,$charlist);
print_range($lowercase,$charlist); // All lowercase printed and removed
print_range($points,$charlist);
print_range($figures,$charlist);

// Print all remaining glyphs
print “

\n”;
foreach ($charlist as $glyph => $count) {
print “

“;
}
print “

“; print $glyph; print “

“; print ord($glyph); print “

“; print $count; print “

“;

}
//
// Begin main logic
//
if ($_POST[’_submit_check’]) {
// Form was submitted, time to validate
if ($form_errors = validate_form()) {
// There are errors, redisplay from with error messages
show_form($form_errors);
}
else {
// No errors, go ahead and process it
process_form();
}
}
else {
// Form was not submitted, time to print it
show_form();
}

//
//
// END main logic
//

Recently we styled the main navigation menu for a Develisys client site. The nav was challenging from a production point of view for it combined overlapping transparent tabs or unequal widths; normal, hover, and active states; was styled on a clean, accessible unordered list in the html; and finally, we wanted it to be as fast as possible, deciding ultimately that the nav should request only a single image from the server. After some struggle, we arrived at a workable method that looked and worked like a charm in the current Firefox, Opera, and Netscape, IE 6 and 7, and degraded gracefully in the downlevel browsers. Not bad.

But it soon emerged that the near-final version of the nav was crippled and unusable on Safari 1.3 and 2.0. In Safari, anywhere you clicked on nav would reload the current page. To the designers, it became immediately apparent the anchor on the currently active tab was a large as the entire button background image, about 650px x 110px, or so, preventing the use click from targeting any of the inactive tabs. Dead navigation.

I have yet to determine if this is a bug in the Safari browser or an undefined behavior. The behavior in question occured under the following circumstances:

• absolutely positioned (+) ul
• absolutely positioned (+) li, overflow hidden
• absolutely positioned (-) anchor set to display block, with a background png image of all navigation tabs
• negative text-indent to make the original list text disappear (The Pixy Technique, if I’m not mistaken.)

I’ll cut to the chase, it turned out to be the text-indent that threw everything out of whack. Not just negative, but for any value. We decided to hide the anchor text with {display:none} instead of the negative text indent, as this works equally well across all browsers, and did not necessitate re-thinking the entire navigation styling.

Because this was an interesting case, I decided to try to generalize the trouble with Safari. I’ll be back with that soon…

Have you ever wanted to typeset and print a passage of text in a particular face, but knew you had only a limited quantity of the type? Or, have you wondered if a single 12A 25a font would be enough type to finish composing a small job? Just curious how much type it would take to print The Gettysburg Address? For the seasoned printer, the answers to these questions may be a matter of ‘horse sense’, but for students of lettepress printing like me, a little help is in order. I created Typecount to address this simple need. It is a rudimentary application written in php.

What Typecount does

Typecount counts the characters in a passage of text; but, of course, anyone can do that with a run-of-the-mill word processing application. What is unique about Typecount is that it can count characters as if they were individual pieces of metal printing type. At your discretion, typecount will consider ligatures, dipthongs, quaint characters, or any other characters that you designate as a single piece of type.

If you are printing an old style type, say Caslon with quaints, check the boxes for ct and st and Typecount will count them as psingle pieces of type. Only after it has counted these quaint ligatures will it go on to tally up the remaining c’s and s’s and t’s.

Typecount will also consider any string of characters that you designate in the “Additional Combinations” textbox. For example, I have an ample supple of Qu ligatures in my case of 14-point Monotype Garamond 156, so I would include it in my query.

Try Typecount, the character and ligature counter for letterpress

Support for the long-s is coming soon!

12/23/07 I recently learned that some visitors are receiving errors when they attempt to use Typecount. I haven’t updated it a good bit, so I will try to work on it soon. – Ian Schaefer.

Now that my website has been re-invigorated—if not beautified—I want to diversify and focus a bit in hopes of better leveraging my interests and skills. ‘Diversify and focus’ sounds somewhat contradictory, but the idea is to develop a few websites that address specific aspects of letterpress printing. By creating targeted content, each site should rank high for specific, related search terms, thereby generating highly qualified, but probably fairly light traffic. Each could become a platform for a community, for services, and for targeted advertising. Creating interest, building traffic and participation will, in turn, help to further develop the content. And so on.

The letterpress printing community already has a small number options on the Web, like Briar Press, LetPress, PPLetterpress, and the recently launched Typecasting Mailing List.

My new letterpress adventure begins with this site about letterpress type. Not much there yet, but it will grow.

It’s been quiet around here lately. I just ducked in from my other work — web design at Develisys and for the .918 Letterpress Club in Lancaster — to spruce things up. This site is now built on Textpattern. The design is not complete; I decided it was more important to redeploy it with the new back-end, rather than languish over all the design details, so that I could get back to publishing some content. Since I actually dismantled my Movable Type installation a couple of months ago, I had no publishing platform other than good old html, making the switch more or less imperative.
Both the design and the entire site framework will continue to evolve, but still, I hope that even the current state of affairs is an improvement over the previous incarnation.
One interesting aspect of the new site, for me, at least, is the use of three sections to divide and manage three, somewhat distinct, areas of interest for me: namely, web design and development , letterpress printing and the manufacture of letterpress type , and the remaining arts, sciences, and miscellaneous diversions that engage me. The flexibility of Textpattern allows me to publish articles to each section, maintaining distinctly different pages for each section, while aggregating content from each section on the homepage, and in secondary elements, like a sidebar, throughout the site. I am sure that this is all quite possible with other CMSs and blogs, including my former Movable Type, but the Textpattern approach makes sense to me.

I hope to build websites that are useful, effective, accessible, interesting, and good looking. I’ve worked on a variety of projects, large and small, for corporations, professionals, artists and craftspeople. These days, I apply my design, marketing, and user experience skills at Develisys.

Here are a few small website projects I worked on in the past:

• New ADHD Self-Coaching Book by Nancy Ratey
• Strategic Life Coach for ADD/ADHD Adult Professionals
• The .918 Club – Letterpress
  Art direction, design and development
• www.caseydixon.comDesign & development, php scripting,seo
• www.colemansellers.com
  Art direction, design & development
• www.portereducationconsulting.com
  Design & development, php scripting
• www.wawa.com
  Art direction, design, campaign integration
• www.airdesk.net
  Art direction, design

• www.patreeservice.com
  Art direction, design, development, Flash
• www.ritterinc.com
  Design & development
• www.breretonmanor.com
  Design & development
• www.wawa.com/wawaprofile/pro-dairy100.asp
  Art direction, design & development
• www.ianschaefer.com
  Occasional updates, art, music and other diversions
• www.reeddixonart.com
  Maintenance, design tweaks, simple e-commerce implementation

Select non-web projects for my previous employer, Ritter, Inc.:

http://www.ritterinc.com./portfolio/ebgames.html

http://www.ritterinc.com./portfolio/jandj1.html

http://www.ritterinc.com./portfolio/majorbrewer.html

http://www.ritterinc.com./portfolio/olivares.html

http://www.ritterinc.com./portfolio/wawa05_store.html

http://www.ritterinc.com./portfolio/wawa09_breakfast.html

http://www.ritterinc.com./portfolio/wawa11_favorite.html

http://www.ritterinc.com./portfolio/wawa10_id.html

Typefoundry Inventory
The Private Press of Ian Schaefer

MACHINERY

English ‘Monotype’ Corporation Ltd. (English) Composition Caster, #285xx ex of Heritage Letterpress, Charlotte, NC.

English ‘Monotype’ Composition Caster, #28024 acquired of the late Paul Duensing, Watkinsville, GA. Damaged. This machine will hopefully be rebuilt as a sorts caster.

English ‘Monotype’ Composition Caster, #28345 acquired of Woodside Press/Howard Bratter, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn New York. Machine is equipped with display attachment, varigear drive, unit adding, unit shift, quadding and centring, ingot feeder. Machine includes lead and rule attachement, not currently installed.

English ‘Monotype’ Combination Caster, #2xxxx acquired of Woodside Press/Howard Bratter. Machine is equipped with display attachment, old-style gearbox, quadding and centring attachment.

Lanston (American) Monotype Composition Bridge, #7xxx and other miscellaneous spare parts for composition caster.

Lanston Monotype Keyboard, #11335

MOLDS
Composition Molds

Lanston Monotype composition molds: 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 & 18pt
English ‘Monotype’ composition moulds: 14 ‘doghouse’

Display Molds

Lanston Monotype Display Moulds: 12, 14, 16, 18, 24, 30 & 36pt – some duplicates, all need work

MATRICES
Composition Matrices

ENGLISH ‘MONOTYPE’
Centaur 252 roman & italic 10 & 12pt (0.030 drive)
Grotesque 216/126 216/126 8,9 & 11pt 15/17 (0.030 drive)
Times Roman 327/334 7, 8, 10 & 11pt; comp 421 7, 8, 10 & 12pt
Chess Sorts 14pt incomplete
Misc math sorts 14, 16 & 18pt

LANSTON MONOTYPE
Garamont 248 6 & 8pt; keybars; no wedges or stopbar
Helvetica 496 8, 9 & 10pt; wedges, keybar and stopbar
Cloister Black 95 12pt, S5
German 99 8, 10 & 12pt

Display Matrices

ENGLISH ‘MONOTYPE’
Times Roman 18, 24, 30, 36 & 48pt; italic 18, 24 & 36pt;

LANSTON MONOTYPE
Garamont 248(no to be confused with Garamond, as the Stanley Morrison face for Monotype Ltd was named) – roman, italic, swash 14, 18, 24, 30 & 36pt, small caps 14 & 18pt
Kennerly 268 Roman 24 & 36pt; italic 2681 14, 24, 30 & 36pt
Goudy Old Style 3941 italic 18, 24, 30 & 36pt
Cochin Open 262 36pt
#144 14pt
Century 157 14 & 18pt
Philadelphia Gothic 52 18 pt

MISCELLANEOUS MONOTYPE EQUIPMENT

16 Monotype S5 wedges, various sets-widths
‘Monotype’ Microscope
Monotype Lead and Rule Attachment, complete
Monotype Pump Piston Extractor
Monotype Controller paper spool rewinder, manual
Monotype Controller Paper

OTHER FOUNDRY EQUIPMENT
Friedrich Deckel G-1 Pantographic Engraver
Metal Thermometer
‘Monotype’ Mould Oiler

Here are the facts behind the previous entry, which was rather oblique and glorified because of my excitement:

Some two years ago I acquired a ‘Monotype’ Composition Caster – a machine that automatically casts individual printing types from molten metal and sets this type into justified lines, ready for printing. By automatically, I mean that the operation of the machine is controlled by a punched paper tape whose perforations are created by an entirely separate keyboard. For the printer, typographer or general enthusiast of machinery, a running ‘Monotype’ Caster is an amazing thing to witness.

I have had a great interest—okay, obsession—with these machines for several years. This passion culminated in my attending Monotype University 5, where I first met the amazing Mr Paul Duensing, from whom I acquired my first machine. Unfortunately, this caster was damaged in shipment! It took two years for me to fully recover from this minor tragedy and to locate a similar machine.

Finally, this spring…

Finally this spring, a similar, though slightly more worn out composition caster emerged at Heritage Printers, in Charlotte, North Carolina, under the care of Pat Taylor. As it happens, Pat Taylor was my tutor on the Monotype Composition Caster at Monotype University, so it seems fitting that I should acquire this ‘new’ machine from him.

With the expert help of Bill Welliver, the new caster made it safely back to my shop in Lititz, PA, where it has been lavished with preparations for its new assignment. In order to be fully operation at The Private Press of Ian Schaefer, the caster requires these accomodations:

• 3-phase power to the 3/4 hp motor – this will probably be provided by a variable frequency drive, which should allow finer adjustment at low speed settings.
• Propane gas to power the melting pot – the pot was previously feed by natural gas, which means that the burner orifices must be reduced, probably by soldering and re-drilling an even smaller hole.
• Water coolant – my shop has no nearby water supply, so the casting machine moulds must be cooled by a recirculating water system. I plan to start building a unit based on the model designed by Jim Walczak, and presented at the 2004 ATF Conference.
• Air power to control the machine at a steady 15 psi – this one is easy: I already have a very serviceable compressor.

I intend to document the progress here, along with photos of the ‘Monotype’ Caster and the entire shop.

Monotype Composition Arrives
Two quiet years after entrusting the portage of my first caster to the brazen ineptitude of a common carrier, this printer’s shop will rattle with the nearly forgotten noise of productivity. On May 27th, after a careful, all-night drive from Charlotte to Lititz, and amid the curious flurry of too many helpers who knew what was at stake this time, the beautiful mongrel machine, bearing at least three distinct serial numbers on its numerous replaced parts, touched safely down on the cement floor. Four sources of power—air, water, gas, and electricity—will be brought to bear in the coming weeks. When the main lever is thrown for the first time, I am sure that the birds in the nearby lilac will flush.

Read more details and see photos of this caster