Printing and bookbinding for schools

by Samuel Jesse Vaughn

Fig. 21.

Furniture, Fig. 21, and b, c, Fig. 20, is the name given to pieces of wood and metal, which are used to build around the forms in the process of locking them into the chase. Furniture varies by the em in width and by 5 to 10 ems in length when cut labor saving. Metal furniture is more modern and makes possible more accurate work; but for beginners, it has its disadvantages. The metal is soft and of considerable weight, making heavier forms; and if a piece is dropped upon the stone or even upon the floor, which frequently happens, it probably has a corner or an edge battered. In the lockup, occasionally this small defect may cause the “pi” of the whole form. Reglets are a kind of wood furniture similar in size and use to leads and slugs but are largely used as furniture in locking up forms. In leaded forms which have to be kept for sometime, reglets are substituted for the leads and slugs. They are very much cheaper, and they relieve the necessity for large quantities of the more expensive leads and slugs. Wood furniture, which comes by the case or by number of pieces, is cheap, durable, not easily injured, and on the whole, quite satisfactory for school use. A small amount of metal furniture, which is sold by weight, is desirable in every printshop.

When the furniture has been built in at one side and one end of the form as indicated above, quoins are placed at the other side and the other end about midway between the type and the chase.

Fig. 22.

Quoins, Fig. 22, are devices for locking the forms into the chases. There are two chief kinds, one consisting of two separate wedge shaped pieces of hard metal with notched sides, which by the use of a key are made to slide in opposite directions against each other. The danger of these quoins in the hands of schoolboys is that, not realizing how easily good forms are held, they persist in trying to screw the quoin to the last notch, frequently endangering the chase and ruining the quoins. The other kind is constructed of two pieces of metal joined by springs and opened by the use of a key operating a nut which, after a slight expansion of the quoin, releases its hold and allows the parts to spring back together. This quoin is safe for the form and for the chase, and is itself not battered in the process of locking up.

After the quoins have been put into proper position, pieces of furniture are fitted in on both sides of the quoins.

The pieces of furniture are usually a little longer than the sides of the form against which they fit. They are always placed around the form in such a way that they can not bind against each other so as to prevent the pressure from striking the type squarely, Fig. 20.

With the key, Fig. 22, the quoins are very slightly and uniformly tightened. Then the planer is used.