This past year, CCI continued its commitment to industrial artifact conservation with the treatment of a Chandler & Price 12 x 18¹ platen printing press for the MacBride Museum of Whitehorse, Yukon.

The press (serial no. D1129) was made in Cleveland, Ohio, at the turn of the century and was one of the first ever used in the Yukon. It made its way to Whitehorse via Bennett, B.C., in the year 1900, and was used by the Whitehorse Star — the first "gold rush" paper — until the 1940s. Its history is linked to the settlement of the Yukon, the Klondike gold rush, and the building of the White Pass and Yukon Railway.

For interpretive purposes, the MacBride Museum wanted the press to be restored to a semblance of its condition of last use. This would allow it to be operated slowly by hand in order to demonstrate its complex sequence of movements to museum visitors.

Description and History

In many ways, this artifact is a paradigm of everything involved in the treatment of industrial artifacts. Like many industrial artifacts, the press is utilitarian in nature, designed strictly for business with little thought for beauty or sentiment. This accounts in large part for its sorry fate. Once it had outlived its usefulness in the 1940s, it was literally pushed aside by the march of progress. Difficult to throw away and impossible to melt for scrap in a remote non-industrial town, the unglamourous machine gathered dust in a corner of the Star building until the 1970s. The newspaper moved to a new location at that time, and the decision was made not to take the old press along. Finding a suitable home for it was not easy. Its relative newness and its cumbersome size and weight (2200 pounds/1000 kg) gave it little appeal in the eyes of private collectors or antique dealers. Through the years, parts had been removed and recycled for other uses, so the press was no longer functional or complete.

Due to severely limited indoor storage space, the press was stored outside on the museum grounds. This machine was designed for indoor use, so a period of several decades outside naturally took its toll. The bare steel surfaces (approximately 45% of the total surface area) were completely rusted and every one of the 50-odd movable parts was seized in place. More than 40 parts had been lost or stolen, including two wooden feed tables. Over 90% of the original finish had been destroyed by the elements. A number of cast iron parts had been broken. The 27 oil holes, which consist of nothing more than vertical or oblique holes in the tops of the bearings, filled up with dirt and water and served as miniature flower pots for moss, causing deep pitting in the surface of the journals inside.

Over the years, the press was repeatedly vandalized, serving on many occasions as an altar for the sacrifice of discarded bottles. Dirt and debris continued to collect in every crevice and cavity. In an effort to spruce up the grounds, the rusted surfaces were eventually covered with thick coats of grey enamel paint.

In the late 1980s, the museum turned its attention to the long-overlooked press. Restoration was the natural course to choose, but the resources necessary for such an undertaking were too limited at the museum or at any other site in the Territory. CCI was contacted and, after years of delicate negotiations, the press made its way here in June of 1994. Restoration concentrated on three areas: 1) making the object complete; 2) rendering it movable; and 3) recreating an authentic finish.

Before Treatment

After Treatment

Because of the often lamentable condition of old industrial artifacts like this press, treating them may strike some conservators as a bleak prospect. The saving grace of these objects, however, is the fact that they were mass-produced. Mass-production means that the object was produced in substantial numbers, usually by an identifiable manufacturing company at a fixed location. It is not an anonymous, one-of-a-kind, or eccentric object. It was created and functioned within a complex supporting infrastructure. Considerable effort went into perfecting the design of the object and the machines and processes that had to reproduce it repeatedly and successfully. In addition to design and manufacturing, the infrastructure included marketing, distribution, and servicing. In general, the infrastructure disintegrates with the passing of the original company, but many of the pieces seem to survive, often in less obvious forms and places.

The conservator has a world of information and resources to tap in the course of treating such an artifact. With a little luck and a lot of detective work, it is possible to track down descriptive, illustrated trade literature and numbered parts lists; surviving examples of similar machines can usually be located in private or public museum collections; interchangeable replacement parts (either discarded originals or new replicas) can often be acquired and incorporated in the reconstruction or can be used as patterns for reproduction work; and collectors and restorers willing to share their technical experience will frequently be encountered along the way. Fortunately, much of this has materialized in the Chandler & Price project.

The National Museum of Science and Technology (NMST), for example, displays and operates a smaller version of the Chandler & Price press in its print shop exhibit, and it has some rare trade literature (a 1902 sales brochure and a 1930s illustrated parts list) in its library, all of which proved invaluable. Letterpress operation is a popular hobby in North America. Two journals devoted to the subject are published every month in the U.S.A. It was through the publisher of one, The Printer, that CCI acquired many missing parts for the MacBride press.

Other museums and archives across Canada have been equally helpful, kindly searching through their catalogue files, storage areas, and libraries for links to Chandler & Price's past.

Several interesting problems became evident fairly early on in the project. For one thing, the 12 x 18 model from this era is relatively rare. Being the third largest of six sizes ("Large Quarto"), it was too large for most small print shops, which printed mainly handbills, tickets, and calling cards. This press was made for a more limited clientele, one that ran off limited editions of weekly newspapers. Moreover, Chandler & Price redesigned their presses and included much needed safety features in 1911, reintroducing the line as the "New Series" to distinguish it from what would thereafter be called the "Old Series." Being large, heavy, and dangerous, the "Old Series" presses have never been favoured by collectors. One literally cannot give them away, even to museums. Only one other intact example has been located, in the Burnaby Village Museum just outside Vancouver, B.C.

This problem of model size was not expected to cause difficulties; the Chandler & Price press is, after all, considered to be the Ford "Model T" of printing presses. Over 34,000 such presses were said to be in use in 1910, and the company remained in business until 1978. But Chandler & Price, unlike most automobile manufacturers, did not economize by sharing parts between its different model sizes. Only a No. 12 part will fit a 12 x 18 press. Thus, even though two complete 10 x 15s and one 14 x 20 model were offered to CCI, not a single part could be used from them.

Treatment

The press was disassembled with the help of heat, penetrating oil, and paint stripper. Stubborn assemblies were persuaded to come apart with a rain of hammer blows against hardwood blocks and, in one instance, with a six-ton hydraulic jack (courtesy of the NMST railway shop). The parts were cleaned with Grit-O'Cobs organic air abrasive to remove residual paint, dirt, and grease. As mentioned, almost 45% of the surface area is bare machined steel and all of it had rusted. Traditional industrial and conservation techniques were judged to be inappropriate for this project: the former would be too aggressive and the latter would be not aggressive enough. The ideal solution, as suggested by Michael Harrington of CCI's Furniture and Wooden Objects Section, was to use 3M "surface conditioning" materials (Scotch-Brite) and pneumatic tools. This material removes oxide without erasing the original tool marks and wear patterns on the metal substrate.

All of the rusted surfaces have now been derusted and polished, and the moveable assemblies can be turned manually with little effort. As an improvement on the original design, the 27 oil holes have been filled with felt plugs. These will allow oil to reach the bearings without abrasive dust entering.

Painted Finish

A few traces of original bright blue paint were uncovered during disassembly and cleaning. These traces were no longer representative of the original appearance, since they had weathered to a dry pigment state. Mixed with linseed oil and/or oil varnish, the saturated pigment would have appeared much darker — so dark that most restorers believe the presses were originally black.

Analysis by CCI's Analytical Research Services Division (ARS) revealed that the original pigment was artificial ultra-marine blue. No white lead pigment had been added to lighten the hue, perhaps because it was once judged to be incompatible with this blue². No other white fillers such as zinc oxide or chalk were found either, suggesting that dark blue was the intended colour.

ARS also analyzed a black metal filler that had been used to smooth out the surface of the cast iron parts of the press. The filler was composed of boiled linseed oil mixed with a black mineral filler similar to ground slate. Recipes for this kind of paste filler are common in early 20th-century texts on painting.

The press was originally surfaced with this filler, then was painted with the translucent, dark blue paint. This would have given it a distinctly blue-black lustre, which is most evident when it is compared with true black paints.

Decorative gold striping followed the coats of blue, apparently after the press had been assembled. Traces of gold lines on the parts from both Cleveland and Whitehorse indicate that the lines were fairly heavy (generally 3/8" [9.5 mm] wide) and that they stopped whenever the painter encountered an obstacle such as a gear. The execution was far from perfect. Some lines were off-centre and strayed from a straight path. They appeared to have been done by a practiced hand trying to keep pace with production.

The metallic pigment, according to ARS analysis, was powdered brass, a compound known as "bronze powder" in the paint industry.

For interpretive purposes, the painted finish has been recreated with modern materials: synthetic body filler (polyester resin) as a surfacer, followed by black industrial primer and a top coat of spar varnish mixed with ultramarine blue pigment. Gold striping has been applied by a professional sign painter. A final clear coat of varnish completes the finish.

Treatment of the Chandler & Price printing press is near completion. Once it is finished, the press will be shipped back to Whitehorse and will become part of a permanent exhibit at the MacBride Museum.

Endnotes

1. 12 x 18 refers to the inside dimensions (in inches) of the rectangular chase, the cast iron frame that holds the inked type. Unfortunately, the chase is detachable and is rarely left on the machine, so the size of the press must be determined in some other fashion. As it turns out, the first number (12) is impressed on almost every cast part, preceding the general part number. Thus, on this press, Part No. 78 reads as Part No. 1278. The same part on a smaller 10 x 15 press would read as Part No. 1078, and so on.
2. Maximilian Toch. The Chemistry and Technology of Paints, Third Edition. New York: D. Van Nostrand and Company, 1925, p. 87.