The printing process of laser cut woodblock printing plates
This is a continuation from
this post where I design and produce woodblock printing plates. The next step was to print the sandpaper sheets for the book, which will be in folded sections. For this I used the Albion Press, which is large enough to print 6 plates at a time! It also applies a good amount of pressure for crisp clean prints. I chose black ink so that they are clear against the light brown colour of the paper side of the sandpaper.
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| I had to roll the sheets of sandpaper over the edge of the table to reverse the curling that had occurred while rolled up. |
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| First plate inked up... |
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| Test print - looks good! |
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| 6 plates inked up ready to be printed. |
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| Sandpaper was still a little curly so in order to keep the sheets in place and avoid messy printing I weighed them down with what I had around. It was a pain, so next time I will try to prepare the sheets better. |
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| The template for the plates on the press. |
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| Due to the curling, they moved about in the process so they weren't always perfectly positioned. I do like this in a charming way though. The prints still come out clean! |
