Alex,
I’m very glad to hear that, man! Let me know if you need any detail photos for the reassembly.

Daniel Morris
The Arm Letterpress
Brooklyn, NY

Thanks Dan & Fritz. I had already scoured the area around the press, cabinets, type drawers, under the palette, etc. and had come up empty. On a hunch, I went today to the King Library Press, across campus, where the press was disassembled before it moved to its current location, and I just started looking around corners & under tables. i knew of one particularly promising pile of crap where I immediately found the gripper trip rod assembly – covered in a tell-tale distinctive coating of dirty dried grease. After 30 min searching for parts with the same complexion, I found, leaning in a corner next to the c&p’s, the trip bar. We joked that it may have been used as a pry-bar for some c&p operation. In a completely different pile of crap i found a plastic bag containing all the sundry bolts and pins needed for re-assembly [the bag's bottom promptly fell out upon lifting, spilling bolts all over the floor]. I still haven’t found the cylinder trip plate & safety bar, but I’m going back next week to look more. I may have to find/make the last few parts, but the outlook is much better now – I was dreading trying to find all the required bolts.

-alex

All the parts listed can be readily made. The NS-444 is the most complicated with 3 parts and some rivets. I just looked at the blueprints for each of these parts and there is nothing out of the ordinary that the machine shop we work with can’t make. The cost is undetermined at this point, but I roughly guess at around $600, and if that gets an otherwise good press into operation, then that’s a valid investment. It should not become a parts press.

Hey Alex,
This is pretty bad news. I have been looking for pretty much any 320 parts I could round up over the last year and didn’t find too much.
First thing I would suggest is that you look at bit more around that place and see if a box is hiding somewhere. If that fails you might consider trying Ted Salkin (check the Briar Press classifieds), but I suggest you push for photos of anything you are buying from him first because a lot of his stuff sat out in the desert for years.
If you can’t manage to get it back together get in touch and I’ll buy a big heap of those parts off you.

Daniel Morris
The Arm Letterpress
Brooklyn, NY