Adana 8x5 Refurb Part I

Being keen to get started printing as soon as we possibly can (we're like kids waiting for Christmas), we spent most of this last weekend tinkering with our lovely little press.

As per my last post, we bought an Adana 8x5 letterpress from ebay, she's been stored in a garage since before I was born and is looking a rusty, dusty ol' mess, poor thing.

This first go was really just a tester, to get the press cleaned up and get our eye in as to how it all goes together. I'm delighted and really rather surprised to tell you that we managed to get everything reassembled and working again with no bits leftover at all. A small achievement by some people's standards perhaps, but for me, this was nothing sort of miraculous.

So, here's the level of grubiness we started with:

Ready to go:

Disassembly begins. Sam Boy spent quite a bit of time considering and planning and saying things like "now let's just think about this", where I was more "oh just hit it with a hammer!". A combo of these approaches worked well:

The point of no return (I'll admit, I was worried):

Clean-up begins (I got to be drier-upper, thank goodness):

The serial number is revealed under the grime:

Quick break for lunch:

(only kidding, obvs, we're soaking the nuts and bolts in vinegar)

All clean!:

You don't see this so often these days:

The following day, reassembly begins:

Umm, is that all the bits?

And ta da!! Here's where we're at for now:

The eagle-eyed amongst you will spot that we're still missing a few key components, most importantly the rollers, we'll be buying those new this week, hopefully.

We decided against re-painting for now, as we were rather concerned that in the time that took we might forget how to put the damn thing back together again! We've got the spray paint ready to go though (a brighter red than this, but still sympathetic I think), so that's a job for another time.

We also decided against putting the ink duct bit back on, as it was kind of rusted beyond all rescue, and initially at least, is above and beyond our requirements. 

The process of taking the press apart and putting her back together again has been a real eye-opener for me. Not only am I not quite as useless as I thought, it has only served to increase my estimation of this wonderful little machine. The press is so elegant in its simplicity, so well made, so logical, I cannot wait to get started printing... I just want to hug it! But it's a bit oily and kind of spiky. 

Ok, that's enough for now. More to follow when the rollers arrive. Woohoo!!