Hi, I just bought a box of old leady type from a small print shop. It's a display sized Black Letter family. There seem to be mixed pieces of 72 and 60 pt in the box.
¿Any idea on how to clean this? Most of the dirtiness is dust but there are also some rusted pieces.
TIA
Lye and a stiff toothbrush.
Better to polish the corrosion off by laying down a sheet of emery cloth (1000 or finer grit) on a hard, flat surface and using gentle, orbital motions...
Beautiful stuff (& photo's BTW)!
A treasure chest, but filled with lead and not gold!
Héctor,
Actually, you might try denture cleaning tablets like Polydent but get the cheap generic brand.
Watch out for type lice!
Don't use anything hard to rub it. There are some leather pads, you can buy in any supermarket for cleaning plates and whatever. Its useful. On the oder hand: You don't want to print with it anymore, do you? So you can use harder solutions, too.
You might see the round marks on the side of the types? This are "Gussmarken" - I don't know the english word. This is one from Schelter & Giesecke:
http://www.bleisetzer.de/cms/front_content.php?idcat=58&idart=826
Your american types should have an height of 23,32 mm. German height is at 23,56 mm.
If you need any more types, use: ;-)
http://www.bleisetzer.de/cms/front_content.php?idcat=69&article_id=670
> I don't know the English word.
I think it is just called the notch.
Gussmarken are called pin-marks in english. There used to be a great collection of these on the old BriarPress website.
You can still get to it from the internet archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060923081616/www.briarpress.org/cgi-bin/bri...
I use lacquer thinner and a tooth brush
Excellent, thanks all.
I'll show you the result soon.
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