Thursday 26 April 2012

Printers' Pie; part 2: Tie Up & In the Galley

Last Autumn, a neighbour gifted us a few buckets of printers' pie which had been abandoned in a store room. Dan Sr. of Glasgow Press, a time served hand compositor, set about the task. He has been very industrious over the winter months - even foregoing his Christmas jigsaws in favour of sorting type of lead and wood.
The sorting is ongoing and these pictures show a font being tied up before being stored in a galley. When all the buckets of pie have been sorted, Dan Sr. will distribute each font into a case.
In a caseroom, jobs which were likely to be repeated would be stored in the galleys in this way. The tying is a delicate task, which takes a steady hand and a fair bit of practice..

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