The process stays visible
Posts show the order of work rather than a tidy result. Roller setting, quoin pressure, ink mixed by hand, the proof pulled before the run. If a step was skipped or rushed, that gets written down too.
If you run a press, keep a binding bench or publish short runs, the most useful thing you can send is a specific question: a stock that keeps crushing your hairlines, a roller that marks the sheet, a thread that frays halfway through a signature. Those are the notes that turn into the next post, and they are usually more interesting than the ones I start on my own.
No form to fill in here. Write directly, describe what the press is doing, and mention the material you are working with.
The Mills, 66 Carr Street, Newtown, Johannesburg, 2001, South Africa
For operators, binders and independent publishers, the useful part is rarely the finished print. It is the sequence behind it: what was checked, what was adjusted, and what went wrong before the pull came out clean.
Posts show the order of work rather than a tidy result. Roller setting, quoin pressure, ink mixed by hand, the proof pulled before the run. If a step was skipped or rushed, that gets written down too.
Stock weight, grain direction, thread tension, board thickness, the humidity in the room on the day. Numbers appear only where they were actually measured, and a note says so when they were not.
When an earlier note turns out to be wrong, the fix is added next to it instead of quietly removed. A misread registration mark or a bad ink ratio stays in the record with the correction beside it.
A proof is read on the actual stock before a run, not on screen. Type is checked in the stick, then again in the forme, then once more on the first sheet off the press. The third check is the one that usually catches something.
Photographs are taken at the bench as the work moves along, not staged afterwards. They show the state of the press, the sheet and the bench at that moment, including the mess left from the previous job.
Tools and suppliers are described by how they behaved in a specific job, not ranked. There are no scores, no endorsements and no claims about what a material will do in your studio, only what it did in this one.
Questions about a technique, a tool or a material can be sent to hello@hunterashworth.com or raised by phone at +27 72 704 6819. Written notes can also be posted to The Mills, 66 Carr Street, Newtown, Johannesburg, 2001, South Africa.
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