Last time I was in the United States I figured I may be able to pick up a mimeograph or duplicator pretty easily. I trailed the junk stores and antique markets, without luck.
Until finally, one day, trusted eBay lead the way… I discovered a Roneo 250, from a seller in the UK, Bath – 30 minutes from my home town. A few minutes later and 50 pounds poorer, I was the owner of my first ever printing press - well duplicator. This is probably going to become an expensive habit. Actually looking now, there are still some available online, and it hasn’t quite fallen into that crazy Adana price.
I took about a year until I finally got round to figuring out if the thing works or not, and to set about fixing it up… It took about that long to become a member of the Bristol Printing Society and access their library. There is really a very small amount written about the maintenance and mechanics of these machines – and unlike letterpress, it currently has a very small online community.
Luckily, very luckily, it was in pretty good condition. Well, the mechanics were all operational, the inking drum, however, had been left with ink in it, which had all dripped out through the holes onto the base. As is often the case, cleaning was the main aim of this operation. It took me a day to peel back the layers, and often the ink had worn into the paint, eroding the metal and inciting rust. So I decided to sand it all back and give it a good paint job, and if you are going to paint something, may as well make it more bright.
Once you get the machine working, the second part has been to find a way of producing the wax stencils. These were a big part of the discussion in the Mimeograph conference – that these are no longer produced. After much trial and error, I found a few alternatives.
The most expensive/ time-consuming was Gampi paper (the thinnest works best) coated in furniture wax. This is pretty easy to cut on the lasercutter. It can get fine detail – when set to engrave. However, is easily torn.
Plastic coated paper for food. This is cheap and abundant, however, I am 70% sure the plastic is not the PVC – chlorine releasing type which is not laser-safe. Only 70%. Also, the plastic melts and so it is tricky to get to balance between cutting through, gentle engraving and nothing happening at all.
Baking Paper! I found the not so heavily plastic, soviet style, brown baking paper did the job. It was light strong and did not seem to allow ink to seep through. But will further these experiments.
Finally I put this to test during a workshop. I'm not sure that it worked exactly, as I was struggling with the paper-feed. However, this is something which I have now re examined the handbook of instructions and discovered that I did not flip a certain switch. I will have to re-try this. However, the students seemed to enjoy just pressing their prints onto the stencils. The only further issues were the slowness of the laser cutter, which is a big issue with this kind of workshop.
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