Spent a good few hours this afternoon and evening doing press maintenance, a thorough cleaning that my poor Vandercook badly needed and probably hasn't had in a decade. After being stored unused for years in a newspaper print shop, then in a leaky barn, a dusty garage and finally my studio space (which happens to be located between a surfboard shaper and a carpenter), most of the guts of the press were caked with a thick black layer of sawdust, dirt, grime and dead cypress leaves.

We carefully took the press apart, wiped each gear tooth clean of an ungodly amount of dirt and caked-on grease and dried ink, readjusted the tympan, cleaned the rust off the press bed, oiled every bit that needs oiling and put it all back together. The press is clean and the cylinder rolls easily along its track. Michael took me out for Indian food to celebrate.

A new year, a new start, a clean slate - a clean press, anyway.

I'm almost completely done moving into the studio. Through random chance, I checked my email not long before we were leaving on the first trip up from LA with the U-Haul (and all my furniture). It just so happened that the one new email I had was from a guy in the Valley selling a fully restored Chandler and Price Pilot Press. I called. We haggled. I said, I'll come pick it up right now. He said sure, plus I'll throw in a bunch of other stuff. I almost peed myself.

M and I unceremoniously shoved the red couch out of the back of the U-Haul to make more room and drove straight to Canoga Park, where I scored not just a lovely Pilot on its own rolling stand, but a type cabinet, several cases of type, box after box of random printing ephemera and a couple extra typefaces. M pointed out the cool vintage radio cabinet in the living room, and he offered it to us for another $20. M is now in the garage turning it into another art piece. More on that later.

The Vandercook also arrived safely, thanks to my favorite super-cute Jim Salazar and Company employee, a giant flatbed truck and a pallet jack. He even moved the iron lung galley cabinet for the low-low cost of a sandwich. The rusty ginormous non-OSHA-approved-lose-an-arm guillotine paper cutter has been disposed of (no room, no desire to fix it).

Everything fits. The DSL works. I have a place to go to work that isn't my house. I had this incredible realization at about quarter to nine on Monday morning that for the first time in over four years, I can actually go to work. The couch will miss me, as will the laptop, but I've had enough of working in my bathrobe at noon.

So, first order of business is unpacking and arranging and figuring out what I need and what I don't. The fact that both presses came with a bunch of random stuff the previous owners clearly wanted to rid themselves of in bulk has left me with lots of duplicates and more than one box of tools I can't figure out how to use. The best part of going through this, though, has been organizing the type. I'm planning on getting rid of a lot of it, as is evidenced by my huge number of ebay auctions. Some of it is conveniently labeled with the face, manufacturer and size - some even in its original packaging. Others, mostly what I got with the galley cabinet, are mysterious and defy identification. If anybody reading has ninja master type-spec skills, help in identifying the faces below is appreciated. I'm pretty sure the one at the bottom right is ATF Stylescript. I forgot to reverse a couple of the images - that's why some are backwards (correct) and some are forward (easier to identify).

It's been a lovely, meditative week so far, alphabetizing, cleaning, organizing, sorting, wiping years of dust and old ink off with a rag soaked in horribly toxic solvents. I wouldn't trade this for the world.