Me and my No. 4

Hi all, Over the past couple years I’ve visited this wonderful resource often and just wanted to go legit and introduce myself here. I found my No. 4 by pure coincidence two years ago deep in the warehouse of a folding carton plant where I worked in suburban Los Angeles. I had been in production, planning jobs on a 40″ Heidelberg and various Bobst cutter/stampers and folder/gluers but found the work, producing cheap packaging ultimately intended for the trashcan, to be soulless and unrewarding. Discovering this forgotten proof press and, in turn, letterpress, changed my life. I was fortunate enough to acquire the rusted beast for a song. It had sat there for at least 30 years untouched and even the most senior employees couldn’t recall why this relic occupied the same building as a 6 color perfecting press that could pump out 12,000 sheets an hour. I spent the next few months restoring and relocating the press(with a lot of help from previous posts here) and began to learn to print. I’ve included before and after photos below. I’m working mostly with PP but have a small collection of wood type and old cuts from which I pulled my first printed sheets. Going forward I’ll have more questions than answers and would like to thank everyone in advance for their input and patience with newbies like myself. Cheers!

Also, I don’t know the history of this specific press. The serial # is 19008. I gather it’s from the late 50’s but how it ended up in a folding carton warehouse I have no idea. If anyone could help with this I’d be incredibly grateful.

Johnny