—The Ink.
—While of course you will buy your ink all ready to use you may like to know how it is made. Here’s a recipe for a printing ink that is as old as the hills and as good as gold: Balsam of capivi 4¹⁄₂ ounces; lampblack 1¹⁄₂ ounces; indigo ⁵⁄₈ ounce; India red ³⁄₈ ounce, and turpentine dry soap 1¹⁄₂ ounces; mix these ingredients well in a mortar with a pestle; then mix the mass with boiled linseed oil to the right thickness.
When buying ink for job printing get one that is a quick drier and this costs from 50 cents to $1.50 a pound according to quality. You can also buy colored inks in red, white, blue, yellow, green, brown and purple in 4 ounce cans for 60 cents a can.
The Rollers.
—While it is cheaper and better to buy ink rollers ready made, if you want to try your hand at making them yourself get 1 pound Peter Cooper’s best glue; 1 quart best sugar house syrup, and 1 pint of glycerine.
Soak the glue in rain water until it is soft, drain off all the excess water, put it in a glue pot and set it on a slow fire until it is melted. Now put in the syrup, boil it for half an hour, stirring it the while, and skim off the scum that comes to the top.
About 5 minutes before you take it from the fire add the other things and then pour the mixture into the mold, which is simply a brass cylinder of the diameter and length you want the roller. The stock, as the spindle of the roller is called, is set exactly in the middle of the mold and the composition is poured into it.
Printing in Colors.
—Printing in two or more colors, or color printing, is not only interesting work to do, but profitable, since you can easily get orders for it. It is a little harder to do a good job with colored inks than it is with black ink, but if you will use plain type and good colored ink you will have small trouble in doing a creditable job.