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Show of Hands: Ever use a waxer?
- Thread starter sigmadog
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Yeahman those were the days. Even when we converted over to digital prepress, there was old artwork we didn't want to reproduce so we kept the pasteboard. Layers and layers of waxed paste up.
Same here. Those exact scenarios came up at least once a day back in the 90s when I was working in prepress.
Yes
To help offset college costs, I worked as a technical illustrator. I can't say that I miss the days of waxers and stat cameras. I did work with some incredibly talented people tho.
To help offset college costs, I worked as a technical illustrator. I can't say that I miss the days of waxers and stat cameras. I did work with some incredibly talented people tho.
I don't think anyone has mentioned a proportion wheel. "Let's see...this logo is 2 7/8" wide and I need it to be 3 5/16" wide...."
I also have a Pantone process color sample book but it's so old I have no idea if the colors are still accurate or if they have faded several shades.
I also have a Pantone process color sample book but it's so old I have no idea if the colors are still accurate or if they have faded several shades.
I think in 1990 (or perhaps 1989) we bought a flat bed scanner in the studio. (AGFA I think) Cost around £3K, which was a lot of money then. We couldn't afford the trannie unit as well so had the brainwave of rigging up an anglepoise light and using a sheet of tracing paper to diffuse the light. (The yoof of today don't know they're born etc etc...)
Ever and still
After several decades, I've graduated from professional to professing graphics at a local college. Every session all the students hand in a printed proof, per instructions. Every session I make notes on those daily proofs, using a database I doodled up in FileMaker®. The printed notes are waxed, cut into strips and and affixed (by a brayer, with satisfying finality) to the proof prints for display and return at the following session.
Add "cut down" and "cast off" ( galleys) to the nostalgia-orama; and for my part, good riddance. It was the curse of graphics to end up as a "wrist" when you thought you were a "designer."
After several decades, I've graduated from professional to professing graphics at a local college. Every session all the students hand in a printed proof, per instructions. Every session I make notes on those daily proofs, using a database I doodled up in FileMaker®. The printed notes are waxed, cut into strips and and affixed (by a brayer, with satisfying finality) to the proof prints for display and return at the following session.
Add "cut down" and "cast off" ( galleys) to the nostalgia-orama; and for my part, good riddance. It was the curse of graphics to end up as a "wrist" when you thought you were a "designer."
The first scanner we had (see my previous post about the tight-fistedness of my old boss) was a hand-me-down from the parent company. Three passes for a colour scan -- one for each channel. Speedy, it was not.
Cheers
Jim
We would put our "paste ups" in a package and drop it into the UPS box outside to go to the pre-press house. A few days later our proofs would come back with a few random lines of type printed diagonally. Why? As our waxed paste ups sat in the UPS box in the hot South Carolina sun the wax would get soft and the type would slide downhill.
Hand totally raised!
Late nights, coffee, freshly-printed pics & copy flowing in, waxed, cut, laid out ...
I'd actually really like to buy a waxer - one of the non-handheld ones with the nice, wide spindles and a reservoir of wax. Oddly enough, Ebay has nothing to offer ... is this a hard-to-find collectable now or just something nobody's looking for?
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Our HS paper was printed in town, had to have it in by 2AM and we often pushed that limit (which I'd say made newspaper onto of the greatest programs in school - you make friends when you hang out all night that often).
My memory is of coming into school after a late night to find our bundles of freshly-printed papers only to discover that they had inadvertently squashed a fly when they shot the image of our front page ... if it were a baseball card it would have been a big deal, instead it was an unnoticed ink spot to all but the few who knew just what had happened.
Late nights, coffee, freshly-printed pics & copy flowing in, waxed, cut, laid out ...
I'd actually really like to buy a waxer - one of the non-handheld ones with the nice, wide spindles and a reservoir of wax. Oddly enough, Ebay has nothing to offer ... is this a hard-to-find collectable now or just something nobody's looking for?
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Our HS paper was printed in town, had to have it in by 2AM and we often pushed that limit (which I'd say made newspaper onto of the greatest programs in school - you make friends when you hang out all night that often).
My memory is of coming into school after a late night to find our bundles of freshly-printed papers only to discover that they had inadvertently squashed a fly when they shot the image of our front page ... if it were a baseball card it would have been a big deal, instead it was an unnoticed ink spot to all but the few who knew just what had happened.
All those things and more...
...remember spec'ing type? A lost art.
PMTs were so common and veloxes were a luxury. I remember type and stat deliveries a couple times a day. I still use a proportion wheel and I keep a Lucite roller by my desk for the occasional need to paste up something (but these days it's StudioTac instead of rubber cement, wax or Spray Mount).
Don't forget French curves. How about spending half the day cleaning out all your Rapidograph pens down to the wires?
Now I spend that half a day trying to figure out why a software update broke a workflow script.
Yep. Those were the days.
...remember spec'ing type? A lost art.
PMTs were so common and veloxes were a luxury. I remember type and stat deliveries a couple times a day. I still use a proportion wheel and I keep a Lucite roller by my desk for the occasional need to paste up something (but these days it's StudioTac instead of rubber cement, wax or Spray Mount).
Don't forget French curves. How about spending half the day cleaning out all your Rapidograph pens down to the wires?
Now I spend that half a day trying to figure out why a software update broke a workflow script.
Yep. Those were the days.
A waxer? Yes
Non-photo blue? Yes
I used to work on the school newspaper in high school (art guy) and I LOVED going to the local newspaper office at night to get stuff done.
Waxing was awesome, photo blues were cool (until you got a tad too heavy with itoops), watching the woman with the super large photo/machine/scanner that would reshoot a photo and enlarge or reduce the photo size for us.
Non-photo blue? Yes
I used to work on the school newspaper in high school (art guy) and I LOVED going to the local newspaper office at night to get stuff done.
Waxing was awesome, photo blues were cool (until you got a tad too heavy with itoops), watching the woman with the super large photo/machine/scanner that would reshoot a photo and enlarge or reduce the photo size for us.
All of the above. Reminds me of doing a rush brochure (any other type?) late one night which had to go to repro the next morning. Got to about 4 pages from the end and the galley copy was too long to fit.
We just chopped the bottom off to the baseline and the saying was born of "Nobody reads it anyway"
We used to do work for BT, instruction manuals, they insisted they kept the artwork, came to do a reprint with alts and they found out the room that housed it all had been taken over and all the master artwork thrown out, we had to do them all again!
Spray booths anyone?
We just chopped the bottom off to the baseline and the saying was born of "Nobody reads it anyway"
We used to do work for BT, instruction manuals, they insisted they kept the artwork, came to do a reprint with alts and they found out the room that housed it all had been taken over and all the master artwork thrown out, we had to do them all again!
Spray booths anyone?
I worked in a small publishing house in the 70s. The owner still liked to use lead type to create his galleys, but transitioned to phototypography during that time. Out waxer never seemed to work right, so he bought rubber cement - several gallons at a time. The direct mail system was an Addressograph machine he had salvaged from General Petroleum (later Mobil Oil, now Exxon Mobil). It stamped out address plates, or which he had 16,000 cataloged in specialized binders. I learned to read upside down and backwards during this time.
Yup, long ago, in a galaxy far away as the line goes
Waxer and non-photo blue date from HS.
Ruby lith, hand set metal type, casting headlines with a Ludlow machine, using a proofing press, using a small Heidelberg job press, marking up copy for the Linotype operators (trivial Linotype typing myself), using a plate camera, stripping the film (opaque black is your friend), burning an offset plate, distributing pie, Letraset letters, ... all date from my college years.
After a decade or so hiatus, electronic typsetting in the early days of PostScript image setters.
Waxer and non-photo blue date from HS.
Ruby lith, hand set metal type, casting headlines with a Ludlow machine, using a proofing press, using a small Heidelberg job press, marking up copy for the Linotype operators (trivial Linotype typing myself), using a plate camera, stripping the film (opaque black is your friend), burning an offset plate, distributing pie, Letraset letters, ... all date from my college years.
After a decade or so hiatus, electronic typsetting in the early days of PostScript image setters.
I'm a software developer, so... no. But I am vaguely familiar, and I since I have dabbled with hardware, I've actually done some circuit-board layout with some hokey stick-down tape. And I've SEEN it done with Rubylith.
One of my first professional projects was writing firmware for a gas pump. This was in the 1970s. We started the project using the Intel 4040 chip set. A 4-bit processor and was a fairly expensive (I think about $200?) set of chips. After starting the project, though, we caught wind of the MOS Technology 6502, a single-chip, 8-bit processor that was to sell for $25.
My boss was a wheeler-dealer who could talk anybody into anything, and he quickly arranged a trip to the MOS Technology headquarters in Pennsylvania. We spent a day there, hosted by Chuck Peddle (who would go on to design the Kim and the PET Computer), as well as the chip designer (whose name I'm afraid I cannot recall).
We were given the tour, which included the layout/drafting room. They had a drawer of common circuit elements pre-made on film, which they would plop down on a layout, and make connection by cutting rubylith.
The chip designer had initially drawn the 6502 design on the wall of his office, using different-colored markers or pencils. There was a "hole" in the design where there was no circuitry. That was the cutout for the electrical outlet on the wall!
We returned to Michigan with two precious gems: A 6502 prototype (with soldered-on cover). And a 9-track tape with a 6502 assembler written in Fortran, and a small loader/debugger program (the KIM was only in prototype and not yet available) which I deposited in the tape library at my university, then loaded from the tape to my timesharing account. I would write code on the timeshare system, run the assembler, and then send the output to an ASR33 paper tape. The first thing was to assemble the loader/debugger, punch a paper tape, and load it into a PROM burner, then plug the PROM into a wire-wrapped breadboard system that we had to build ourselves. Then the schtick was to write code for the gas pump, assemble on the timeshare system, punch a tape, load onto the breadboard system, and test.
This, interspersed with filling a measurement can (your state Weights and Measures uses these...) with mineral spirits pumped by the gas pump....
One of my first professional projects was writing firmware for a gas pump. This was in the 1970s. We started the project using the Intel 4040 chip set. A 4-bit processor and was a fairly expensive (I think about $200?) set of chips. After starting the project, though, we caught wind of the MOS Technology 6502, a single-chip, 8-bit processor that was to sell for $25.
My boss was a wheeler-dealer who could talk anybody into anything, and he quickly arranged a trip to the MOS Technology headquarters in Pennsylvania. We spent a day there, hosted by Chuck Peddle (who would go on to design the Kim and the PET Computer), as well as the chip designer (whose name I'm afraid I cannot recall).
We were given the tour, which included the layout/drafting room. They had a drawer of common circuit elements pre-made on film, which they would plop down on a layout, and make connection by cutting rubylith.
The chip designer had initially drawn the 6502 design on the wall of his office, using different-colored markers or pencils. There was a "hole" in the design where there was no circuitry. That was the cutout for the electrical outlet on the wall!
We returned to Michigan with two precious gems: A 6502 prototype (with soldered-on cover). And a 9-track tape with a 6502 assembler written in Fortran, and a small loader/debugger program (the KIM was only in prototype and not yet available) which I deposited in the tape library at my university, then loaded from the tape to my timesharing account. I would write code on the timeshare system, run the assembler, and then send the output to an ASR33 paper tape. The first thing was to assemble the loader/debugger, punch a paper tape, and load it into a PROM burner, then plug the PROM into a wire-wrapped breadboard system that we had to build ourselves. Then the schtick was to write code for the gas pump, assemble on the timeshare system, punch a tape, load onto the breadboard system, and test.
This, interspersed with filling a measurement can (your state Weights and Measures uses these...) with mineral spirits pumped by the gas pump....
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I must be older than you... I remember having to use this to paste things down:
And this to clean up the excess cement (we called it the "Goo-Grabber")
And every desk had one of these stuck to the side (though mine had black tape as well):
And one of these sitting on top of the desk:
And then these godforsaken pieces of garbage got popular. Each one was guaranteed to work for exactly 12 seconds before clogging.
I'm in my mid-40s, but I used a waxer from May 2004 until mid-2013. The newspaper I work for was not direct to plate and wasn't even direct to negative. The way it worked for us was we printed out 11x17 pages of our pages on a laser printer. If we had color we made PDFs and then printed seps from Acrobat to the laser printer. This had to be done at our linescreen of 75lpi.
We had gridsheets for our paper size in spreads. Once we had the prints we took the black plate and ran it through the waxer. The black plate was pasted down on the gridsheet making sure the page folios were aligned at the top. The rest of the seps were left loose (if a color page). Pasting down went by imposed spreads. I.e, first and last page, then inside pages till you got to the center spread.
The whole thing went down to camera and was shot as a spread to film. Then it got run through our plate maker and finally put on the press.
Eventually our quality suffered so bad and film was getting so hard to find that the owners decided to outsource the printing.
Now I just make PDFs.
We had gridsheets for our paper size in spreads. Once we had the prints we took the black plate and ran it through the waxer. The black plate was pasted down on the gridsheet making sure the page folios were aligned at the top. The rest of the seps were left loose (if a color page). Pasting down went by imposed spreads. I.e, first and last page, then inside pages till you got to the center spread.
The whole thing went down to camera and was shot as a spread to film. Then it got run through our plate maker and finally put on the press.
Eventually our quality suffered so bad and film was getting so hard to find that the owners decided to outsource the printing.
Now I just make PDFs.
Pretty much my story as well. I kind of miss those days. There was a real craftsmanship to it.
Yeah. I remember all those things. Still got my percentage wheel somewhere around here. I used rubber cement occasionally, the rubber cement pickup; I had a full set of Koh-i-noors (with spare parts). Finally, I still have that tape dispenser clamped to my drafting table because tape never goes out of style.I must be older than you... I remember having to use this to paste things down:
And this to clean up the excess cement (we called it the "Goo-Grabber")
And every desk had one of these stuck to the side (though mine had black tape as well):
And one of these sitting on top of the desk:
And then these godforsaken pieces of garbage got popular. Each one was guaranteed to work for exactly 12 seconds before clogging.
These days I'm milking Adobe CS6 for all it's worth in hopes it will last me till retirement in a couple years.
Oh, yes, I still have a burnisher in my office. Rapidographs, Amberlith, T-squares, line tape, and how about those sheets of rub off symbols and lines? My first waxer was a hand-held little thing. When it leaked I had to put some kind of plastic gasket in there. After two gaskets, you were supposed to just get a new waxer, but we just kept using it and let it leak. My first scanning program required having your stuff to scan perfectly straight. It only turned images in 45 degree increments. I'd have to paste up the art bits and logos I wanted to scan so I could afterward paste them up for real.
It is a great, classic post!
I have more memories connected to these things than hands-on experience. One of my uncles was a commercial artist/art director whose career started in the 1940s. I spent a bit of time at his elbow. My grandfather and father had accounting clients in many areas of the printing and graphics trades; I spent time at more than a few as a youngster - photostat cameras the size of a small bedroom, blueprint machines, cold type, copperplate engravings.... As a journalism student I toured the old NY Times facility on W. 43rd. St. - they were still doing paste-up, a combination of hot type (Linotypers working through their last years before retirement) and electronic typesetting, they hadn't yet converted the Goss rotary presses from those whopping, cast-lead plates to offset... In the early 70s, I was a gofer/assistant at a radio production house - spent a fair part of my time running around to 'stat and typesetting houses on behalf of the in-house art director, stopping at art supply shops for sheets of Letraset....
But this also parallels my mainstream experience in photography, audio, and film production. I started with vacuum tubes, discrete transistors, Tri-X, analog magnetic tape, razor blades and splicing tape, darkroom chemicals, retouching prints with SpoTone, hand-held light meters and Kodak exposure charts, Moviolas... and made it through to the digital age unscathed.
Came across this site while looking for the proper spelling of SpoTone: http://www.forgottenartsupplies.com/ Seems to be quite on-topic.
I have more memories connected to these things than hands-on experience. One of my uncles was a commercial artist/art director whose career started in the 1940s. I spent a bit of time at his elbow. My grandfather and father had accounting clients in many areas of the printing and graphics trades; I spent time at more than a few as a youngster - photostat cameras the size of a small bedroom, blueprint machines, cold type, copperplate engravings.... As a journalism student I toured the old NY Times facility on W. 43rd. St. - they were still doing paste-up, a combination of hot type (Linotypers working through their last years before retirement) and electronic typesetting, they hadn't yet converted the Goss rotary presses from those whopping, cast-lead plates to offset... In the early 70s, I was a gofer/assistant at a radio production house - spent a fair part of my time running around to 'stat and typesetting houses on behalf of the in-house art director, stopping at art supply shops for sheets of Letraset....
But this also parallels my mainstream experience in photography, audio, and film production. I started with vacuum tubes, discrete transistors, Tri-X, analog magnetic tape, razor blades and splicing tape, darkroom chemicals, retouching prints with SpoTone, hand-held light meters and Kodak exposure charts, Moviolas... and made it through to the digital age unscathed.
Came across this site while looking for the proper spelling of SpoTone: http://www.forgottenartsupplies.com/ Seems to be quite on-topic.
My first job out of high school was at a local ad agency. I was doing video editing, but the art department was still doing mechanicals and had a waxer. They still sent out for typesetting and it was delivered by courier ... in 1988.
My great uncle ran Linotype machines in San Francisco and later worked for Mergenthaler, installing systems. I have held "hot type" and the brass slugs. There were also spools of punch tape around.
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And then these godforsaken pieces of garbage got popular. Each one was guaranteed to work for exactly 12 seconds before clogging. [IMG said:
I was in a local blueprint shop a couple of weeks ago to have some large format scans done. They still had the big retail display for Koh-I-Noor. I should probably offer them something for it.