Over spring break I traveled down to Austin, TX to get away from Dallas for a bit and see some family.  I also wanted to drive out to Manor, TX (pop. 1,204) to see a Chandler & Price 8×10 letterpress circa 1907 that’s been for sale on Briar Press since August ‘09. In the advert’s photo the press looked rusty/dirty but all in one piece, and the $750 price tag seemed reasonable considering that most presses of this type are priced somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000.

I went out to Manor on Monday and looked at the press. It was being stored in a warehouse facility and seemed to be in pretty good shape. Dirty? Yes. Rusty? A little rust here and there, but not nearly as bad as the photo made it appear. And it worked! We plugged it into a regular old extension cord, turned it on, and watched it hum into motion. Everything moved smoothly and, after a close examination, I couldn’t find anything wrong with the press at all.

I left Manor really wanting to get my hands on this little beauty, but — though $750 is a good price for a functional letterpress — I’m flat broke. Being a graduate student doesn’t pay well (or at all in some cases), and I’m lucky just to break even with my Interbirth projects. I’m also trying to take care of a wife and son, and $750 letterpresses aren’t in the family budget. But having a press is one of my goals, so I wrote the press’s owner, Ben Sargent of Sargent Brothers Typography & Printing, and offered him $250 and an explanation of my financial situation and work with Interbirth Books. Almost immediately Ben offered to sell me the press for the generous price of $300, even being so kind as to offer me a payment plan. Needless to say, I jumped at the offer and agreed to buy the press.

The next day I drove over to Ben’s house and made the transaction. He gave me a feedboard and two chases and showed me his workshop. Tucked away in a backhouse is a C & P 10×12 press circa 1904, tons of type and furniture/drawers, a heavy-duty antique paper cutter, shelves of handset books, and a model train all immaculate and in perfect order. He gave me a few of the items he’s printed (an anthology of railroad songs/poems; a little book containing Jonah and Father Mapple’s sermon on Jonah from Melville’s Moby Dick; the Sargent Brothers’ Specimen Book of Type & Ornaments; and a piece of ephemera that reads, “In the City of Washington stands a statue of old Ben Franklin, its square pedestal inscribed on each side with one of the great man’s noble distinctions. One the back and sides are engraved Patriot, Philosopher, Philanthropist. But it is the front which bears the word PRINTER“) and offered to trade knowledge at some point in the future, even suggesting we collaborate on a project in the future. I think I’ll take you up on that, Ben.

After getting some good moving advice from Kyle Schlesinger, I rented a flatbed truck with a lift gate and picked up the press. Roy at R&L Transfer loaded the press onto the truck with a forklift, and my brother-in-law Lewis Melendez and I strapped it down and hit the road. Four hours later we rolled into Dallas with the press, met up with my cohort Fred Seigmund, and set to work unloading the press. After lifting it with a simple pallet jack and forcing it over to the lift gate, we discovered that the pallet wouldn’t fit squarely on the platform but would have to hang over a bit in order to clear the bed of the truck — a risky and dangerous situation. However, out of pure excitement and its accompanying stupidity we decided to give it a try despite the risk. As soon as the pallet started to go over the edge, things got scary real fast. I could feel the pallet jack start to roll away from me, and Fred and Lewis started screaming “It’s going! It’s going!” With my heart dead in my chest I jumped off the truck, started the engine, and hit the switch to lower the lift gate. Lucky for everyone involved, the gate lowered smoothly and the press was safely on the ground.

We swung the press around, reinforced the pallet with some 4×4s, picked up some wings and beers, and rested up for the trip back to Austin. After almost 8 hours of driving the next day, I was back in Dallas again, cleaning up my new press. I’ve got a lot of work to do (all cosmetic), but things are cleaning up pretty nicely. The pictures/video here are the press before I did anything to it, but I’ll continue to post images of its restoration in progress. Until then . . .