Nursing the printer

[randy_byers]

It's time-consuming, this business of printing a fanzine at home. It's not something I can just set up and leave to run on its own. It requires almost constant interaction in the process. Part of that is because of how I decided to do it this time. When I printed the guts of the last Chunga, I used the duplex mechanism, but I printed all 275 copies of one two-sided sheet at a time, then we collated by hand later. The thought was that this would save computer processing time. For AmaZed and CorfluZed #4 I'm letting the printer do the collation too, which means I'm printing the guts of each copy all at once, then stapling that copy while I print the guts of the next one.

Since the covers are on different paper, I printed all of the front covers at once. I tried to do the same for the back cover, but the paper tray stopped working for that weight of paper for some reason, so now I print the guts and then print a back cover hand-fed, then add the front cover and staple it. Just to make things more complicated, I'm printing the guts in color and the back cover in grayscale. That's because when I printed Chunga I discovered that a little bit of color toner was being used on pages that were nothing but black text. There's no color on the final page or back cover of the regress report, so it can be printed in grayscale, saving some color toner.

What this all means is that I have to send a print command twice for each copy of the zine I print, and I have to make changes to the settings for each print command. This introduces more opportunity for errors, and I've made a few. (If you get an all grayscale copy, you'll know why.)

It's time-consuming. It's hard to focus on other things (like writing an LJ post, or working in the garden) while doing this. I'm only willing to do it this way because I'm only printing around a hundred copies.

I have no urge to play around with mimeo or other older printing technologies, but working at this level does make me think more about how each copy of the zine is an individual artifact that for instance is stapled slightly differently than all its twins. This does get me thinking about other ways individual copies can be made distinct. Rubber-stamping? Hand-coloring? Changes in paper color? Who knows, maybe I will end up getting into something like letter press printing once I no longer have the money to blow on toner. (Although actually the convention is paying for the toner for the regress report.)

Meanwhile I'm nursing the printer. And being reminded how much I love the taste of fresh raspberries and granola. Heaven! I love this time of year. Ah well, guess it's time to stuff a few envelopes.

Update: I did take a break, by the way, and went down to the Fremont Street Fair to hang out for a couple of hours with R. Twidner, holyoutlaw, and juliebata at the Seattle Art Car Blow-Out. Gave Art a wee bit o' the creature. He told good stories about the first days of fandom and fanzines. Loved the art car with the slogan, "Who profits from your self-loathing?" Now I've got my nose back to the grindstone. Ambient music on the speakers, cool evening air mixing with the stench of toner. Raspberries for dinner!

Comments

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this newfangled Technology may be less work in the physics sense of ergs of energy expended (or however it's measured), but it sometimes seems to be _more_ work in terms of fuss and time consumed. Even worse (from your description and my experience) it's not really amenable to the Tom-Sawyer-fence-painting-FanParty solution. On the other hand, the results are much more spiffy.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

My sense is that mimeo was much more amenable to the many-hands-make-light-work approach.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I think so. And that's even when a hand-cranked mimeo was being used, because it's a mechanical process many fans can perform while participating reasonably intelligently (or as intelligently as usual) in conversation or some other social interactions. Of course, maybe you modern-generation young whippersnappers can do that while operating a computer, but I sure can't.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

Well the process is as simple or complex as you wish to make it regardless of what technology is being employed. The key question is always, 'Is this worth the extra time/expense/effort?' If it is then full steam ahead.

As for adding that personal touch well Cheryl Cline used rubber stamps on Mainstream (Jerry Kaufman/Suzle Tompkins) and her own fanzine, The Wretch Takes to Writing, Gerri Sullivan use to hand colour the feathers on each issue of Idea, and (I bet not many people know this) Harry Warner Jr employed changes in paper colour on many issues of his fanzines of the forties, Spaceways.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was thinking of the hand-colored feathers on Idea. Didn't remember the rubber stamping on Mainstream, although I'm not surprised. Rubber stamps seemed very popular in the late '70s and early '80s.

Since printing zines myself is a relatively new endeavor for me, I'm still figuring it all out.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

I've added a few touches of colour by hand myself on various covers. I think a few coloured highlights are actually more arresting than most fully coliured covers I've seen.

[jerrykaufman.livejournal.com]

We did one issue with a cover designed by Cheryl. As I recall, only a few of the images were actually stamped individually, and I did the stamping. (Maybe Suzle did some, too; I don't remember now.)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, that got me to pull out my collection of Mainstream. (I see that I don't have the first two issues, which I didn't remember.) Cheryl's cover is on the ninth issue. Great concept for a cover, too. Looks like maybe there are three unique stamps on my copy.

Ooh, gosh, and a Ken Fletcher back cover, too! I guess we've all been around forever, haven't we?

[wrdnrd]

The biggest nuisance about the hand-stamping i did for Cipher #1 was just waiting for it all to dry. Otherwise, i do love putting in small touches like that for my zines. If i ever do anything with a print run that i keep deliberately small, i'd like to do a little more to add individual touches to each copy.

You should take that letterpress class thru' the Experimental College. ;)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I saw your post about the class, and it's tempting -- but I'm just not ready to take that step yet. I feel like I've got too much stuff on my plate as it is.

[wrdnrd]

Oh, i totally understand you there. I wanted to take this class back in autumn quarter, but wisely realized that getting into letterpress at the same time i was knee-deep in the editing certificate was a Really Bad Idea.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Just yesterday at the Fremont street fair, Art Widner (old time fan) was telling us about a guy who letterpressed his fanzines back in the early days (the '30s, I think) because he was too poor for anything else. Too poor for staples, too, so he sewed his zines together on his mother's sewing machine. Art said his zines were Bento-sized, and that it took him a whole day to print one sheet. Can't remember if he said what the print run was.

[wrdnrd]

How times change. These days letterpress seems to be more on the art end of the spectrum, and i'm not sure how accessible it would be for a lot of people. In the 1st place, where would you find one? I mean, you can (tho' a lot have been scrapped for their metal [sniff]), but then you have to worry about getting it into running order and acquiring the type and.... This is why (a) i want to get involved with someone's *existing* letterpress studio (Bonnie has the machines and the type, so i don't have to!), and (b) my pipe dream to have my own desktop letterpress machine may just remain a pipe dream until we're living in a house where i'd (theoretically) have more room to store the machine AND the typecases -- because who could stop at just 1 typeface??

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not sure I understand all the nuances, because the other thing I've heard about letterpress fanatics is that there were a lot of them in the non-genre amateur press associations and that they were all about artistry -- or perhaps artisanry, if that's a word. Craftsmanship? Beautiful printing, in any event. Mimeos seemed to be the thing that brought printing to the masses, including people who didn't care so much about quality printing.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

So you remember the issue of Martin Tudor's Empties which he individualised with coloured paperchips, using a code only Martin knew (or claimed to)?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Ha! No, I don't think I've seen that one. Although it may be on one of the piles around here. Definitely wasn't active enough in fanzines at the time to be on his mailing list, but I know I've picked up some issues of that at various points since then.

Then there was hawkida, who stapled a playing card to each copy of one of her fanzines.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I ran into this with my DUFF trip report: the combo Brad Foster/Teddy Harvia cover had a lot of black in it and photocopying it on the regular setting resulted in a washed-out tone. So I got the covers professionally printed separately and then collated them with the interior pages that I'd done myself.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much what we did with the last issue of Chunga, which had so much color in both front and back covers that I didn't even want to try printing it myself. We had the covers done on a Docutech, and they looked great.

Hi

[(Anonymous)]

Hey Randy,
You are able to appreciate the taste of fresh raspberries--despite the stench of toner.
Wisdom and Taste! You have always had them. So, school's out, right? Do you get some time off now? I'm officially on vacation as of today. I'm thinking I might head up to
Seattle for a visit. Would you like to get together Thursday, Friday or Saturday? You wouldn't necessarily have to put me up as I still have connections @ Starwood Hotels. But I think I would like to stay with you if I could. I have been commenting on fb with Marc Laidlaw and I would like to see him. My cousin Kim is somewhere in Seattle too so I might try to track her down. Do you think cj would like to see me? I'm thinking I might just get in the car and start driving north Thursday. What do you think?
Can you send me your direct email address? Mine is chlesher@mac.com or chlesher@earthlink.net
see ya
Carl

Re: Hi

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Hi, Carl. I'm going to Vancouver for the weekend on Friday, so Thursday is the only night that would work for me. You're certainly welcome to stay at our place that night. We have a futon in the living room. Dunno what carl's schedule is this week, but I can check.

I sent you an e-mail message a week or so ago but never got a reply, so maybe it went into your spam trap. My direct e-mail address is fringefaan at yahoo dot com.

Let me know what you decide to do. I don't have any automatic time off during the summer, since we just keep plugging away during summer term.