The odd placement of the crossbars on the f and t lead me to believe that some serious fiddling has gone on, including a certain amount of vertical stretching..

That's a good hint. Perhaps if I just look for the non-ascenders I'll find the base font. The 's' seems fairly telling.

-Simon

It's an old face called Binderstile. There were three weights--Medium, Bold, and Heavy. This appears to be Binderstile Bold. I am not aware of a digital version. (BTW, this is how it looks straight out of the box--no fiddling was done.)

@Mark, You seem to be very correct. Thanks. I found some images of the font based on your info. Binder Style seems to be from 1959 by J. Binder.

This looks like a great Fontstruct opportunity - if it hasn't already been done.

- Alex