Homecoming, Part 2

Back 22 February 1983, nearly two months after my father died, I got $500 and a truck and removed a 9x13 Franklin Gordon from John Renner's basement. This was the first press I bought after Dad's death, adding it to the 5x8 Kelsey front-lever press that I'd gotten from the guy who had bought Dad's shop.
     The Gordon came apart in a pile of fairly manageable chunks, all of which went into the truck bed and ended up laid out in the end of the one-car garage of the house we lived in at the time. After everybody had gone home & I was alone with the collection of parts, I began putting the press together in my mind, figuring out which piece would go with which part and in what order. By the next afternoon I had the entire press, with the exception of the bed, completely put together. I did it all myself, back when I was 40 years old and a lot more limber and given to fewer back problems.
     And I have to wonder if the back problems I enjoy now didn't get their first shove down the aging cycle from putting the press together back then, in the first place.
     I used the Gordon non-stop for quite some time afterwards, giving it a break only after I had resurrected the 10x15 C&P NS that I'd hauled out of the weeds behind Bill Thompkins' shop in nearby suburbia.
     That was nearly 25 years ago. At that point in time we had set up to move to the digs we've had for the past 22 years and the Gordon and the C&P made the move with us. One of the people who helped us move the shop then was Tom Ebbert, whom I had known from the AAPA and the QSL card printing business at the Dayton Hamvention. After we got the shop moved, maybe a year or so later, I decided to cut back to just the C&P and thus offered Tom the Gordon. After all, it made sense to me: Tom did all his QSL card printing on a hand-level Kelsey with many of the cards he printed being two or three color runs, one at a time on the Kelsey. I figured that he would be able to print more cards more quickly if he had a floor-model press with a motor & all the accouterments. Save wear-and-tear on his shoulder joints, among other blessings.
     So Tom came over with a truck and we loaded the Gordon and another press that I'd found locally into the truck and off the press went to be used for the past two decades in Tom's printing business. And in the between here and then time, Tom's business moved a couple times and he managed to keep in touch with other letterpress printers who helped him acquire even more and larger presses until he ended up with three C&Ps between 8x10 and 12x18, old series and new series, with motors and belts and all, eventually filling the 400 ft sq barn where he now has his shop.
     And the Gordon was sitting in the corner.
     So today, a month and two days before the 25th anniversary of my having bought the Gordon in the first place, Mikey and I went over to Tom's digs and coaxed the old press into pieces small enough to fit in the bed of Mike's truck. We just finished unloading it and Mike left to drive on home to a well-deserved nap.

I'd take a nap as well, but I'm too psyched about having this old beauty back.

I am of the opinion that Gordon presses of this vintage and design are fairly rare. It helps little that the press was produced pretty much copy-cat by two other 19th Century ironworks or that there are two different versions of the press relative to the way the roller arms were cast. Plain and simple, I don't think many folks can say they own a press that carries a 19th Century version of the manufacturer's trade mark and a sign of its vintage.
     The main roller action and bed draw bar assembly is a single arm mounted on the bull gear which carries the brass plate shown here, designer, manufacturer, date and all. It's almost as charming a piece as the little inking table that hangs off the side of the press, from a time before the invention & development of the ink fountain common to C&P presses of the early 20th Century.

This little press – which is not that little, weight and mechanism considered all together – is now back in my shop. It's not as small or cute as a Pearl but it's a lot more tough and the castings are better than anything I've experienced with Pearls. Straight up, I'm glad the little press is back home again.
     I'm gonna fix it up a nice place to stay, behind a good, solid, well-insulated wall with the same light fixture overhead as it stood under before. Then I'll repair a few pieces in need of machining, maybe get some rubber rollers made and get her a proper treadle, even if I have to get the theatre scene shop folks to make me one out of lumber that ends up looking like cast iron. At which point I can once again claim to having treadled off whatever I send to the bundle or otherwise feel good to have done.
     Again the familiar feel beneath my fingers and toes. It's a homecoming.