I’ve been absent for a bit but am hoping to be a bit more present as I wrap up a few large work projects. For recent changes and additions to the M. R. library, check out the Personal Narratives page for Jeff Schalles’ take on how the Beats came to use mimeographs, some newly updated stencil duplication images from Jonathan Zeitlyn’s 1992 Print book (the same volume that brought you “We No Longer Just Have to Consume”, and a new addition to the Resources page.
I’ve also cleaned up my postcard printer and bought some ink. Now I just need to make a new ink pad and get the first of the things I want to print ready for stencil-making.
4 replies on “July to mid-August update”
Looking forward to your experiments with the postcard printer 🙂
From the research I did about those, for making a new ink pad flannel seems to be the material of choice. The fuzzy side up for paste inks and fuzzy size towards the drum when using liquid inks.
Did you find something to use as stencil paper? I was kinda away from my project but I am still looking for a way to get something to act as a stencil for my mimeos 🙂
Hi Fred! I’m looking forward to it too (particularly the overcoming stage-fright aspect of it :eyeroll:).
I’ve actually got some flannel, but when I took apart the postcard printer, I saw that its inkpad actually had a thick layer of felt attached to it. So I’m going to dig around my kids’ old craft stuff and see if I still have any felt. I’ll try it without first, but figured it would be good to have some on hand in case it actually is necessary.
I’m still planning to start out with the Riso stencil master. I’m drafting up a post on washi paper, though… who knows, maybe it’ll inspire someone to start up a cottage industry to supply mimeo-users in North America. 😀
I should really get a roll of the Riso masters while they are still around. I can always find some cheap fax machine to start messing with it.
I am working on some unrelated projects right now, but I want to start experimenting more soon.
Nevertheless, looking forward to your progress and findings. Hope that after you break they ground, I will also overcome my stage freight of using the postcard printer. I was putting it off, because I’ve seen it as having too many variables for my stencil research… because after all, the stencil might have been fine, but I used a wrong ink pad or ink 😛 Especially that the ink-pad I had was covered in some old (but still wet :o) ink, and I had a single spare, which I didn’t want to break apart to see what’s actually in there.
Anyway. I am babbling. I will let you experiment and am looking forward to findings 🙂
This is the kind of situation where a public workspace/studio would be ideal – kind of bolstering each other along with a we-can-do-it attitude, right? Well, here’s to virtual bolstering! 😀