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TIL the old bindery on 3rd Street in Portland still has its 1912 cast iron nipping press bolted to the floor | Bookbinders - Vivisector

the_wesley•19h ago

TIL the old bindery on 3rd Street in Portland still has its 1912 cast iron nipping press bolted to the floor

Wandered into a print shop on 3rd Street in Portland last month while killing time before a bus, and the owner pointed at a cast iron nipping press from 1912 bolted right into the concrete. He said the bolts have been there so long nobody knows if they go into bedrock or just old framing. I asked if he still uses it and he laughed, said a wooden press board would get crushed flat. My grandfather's setup was half scavenged junk and half stuff like this, built to outlive him. Does anyone here still run old iron, or has everyone moved to the steel and screw setups?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_oliver11h ago

That sliced bread thing isn't right either, sliced bread didn't show up in stores until 1928, so a 1912 press beats it by more like 16 years, not a couple. The funny part is that bread slicing machine was invented in 1912 too, same year as that press, so they're the same age. Your Chandler & Price story is real though, those bolts strip if you look at them wrong because the iron gets brittle after 70 years of holding tension. The press on 3rd probably isn't sitting on bedrock at all, old shops like that usually just poured a deep footing and set the bolts in lead, which is why nobody can figure out where they end. My grandfather always said the machine outlasts the man and the building both, and that press is proof.

angela_patel7511h ago

That press on 3rd is older than sliced bread by a couple years, which means it's also older than every skill I bring to a print shop. I once tried to torque down a 1950s Chandler & Price and stripped the bolt, so old iron and I have a complicated relationship. Still, there's something about a machine bolted straight into the floor that says it plans to outlast the building.