Don't want to run the risk of boring the pants off everyone, so this post will be mostly image-based.
To give a brief bit of background... we were lucky enough to acquire this press through a friend of ours at The Waiting Room. It's a rather convoluted story, but the short version is that we were given the press in exchange for a donation to the excellent Emery Walker Trust. I covered the moving of the press in a previous post, here.
The press most certainly has a fascinating history, if only it could talk. We know it lived at Kelmscott House at some point. It may be bit of a stretch to connect it to William Morris himself, though we can dream!
Some shots of the components before we got started:
(Apologies for the deceased arachnid in this one, at least he's out of focus)
I'm afraid I personally can't take much credit for the actual assembly work, I left that to Sam Boy, my Dad, and our mate Alex.
It was very much a 'boys in the workshop' day. They loved it. Here they are exhibiting some excellent teamwork skills:
One of the hardest things to contend with (other than only having an instruction manual from about 150 years ago), is the weight of the thing. Some components need 2 people to even lift them, and once the press starts taking shape, moving the frame of it becomes nigh on impossible without equipment (or putting your back out).
Some more work-in-progress photos:
(Rope is always handy)
Here you can see it really coming together:
Impromptu (grubby) photography studio:
Me pretending I know how to operate the thing::
Photos like this show quite how much work we've still got to do (of the cleaning and painting kind):
But we're still feeling pretty pleased with ourselves:
So long ways to go yet precious (that's a LOTR quote by the way), but progress made nonetheless. I really need to work on my treadle technique though:
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