Making Rugged

The first font that I chose to work on is Rugged which is the American Wood Type version of Neuland. The biggest reason to start here is that my wife Geri requested it. The other reason was that I have two set of patterns for the font, though one is in much more useable condition than the other. The final reason is that I really like this font.

I have two sizes of Rugged from the collection, 36 pica and 27 pica. Of the two, the 36 was complete and in much better shape. Both sets of patterns are made of pine plywood that was tacked onto both sides of pine blocks.

From what I have found out so far about how to handle the tracing/reduction of these in the pantograph the rule seems to be that 33% is the smallest reduction you can get away with from an original pattern. So, since I am aiming at 6 line type, I made a set of original patterns at a 50% reduction–18 line. These are carved into poplar which is relatively cheap and seems to be OK for this purpose–not perfect, but OK.

Here are the completed patterns. You will notice that there is only 1 pattern for the cap O and zero. Also there is only 1 pattern for the 6 and 9. The only missing character is the semi-colon, which can be made from the colon and the comma.

These are the characters cut at 6 line from the patterns above. I used a 1/8″ router bit, a follower of 3/8″ and the ruler settings were 3 13/16″.

Here is the type all trimmed-up and locked into the press.

Here is the type after printing and wash up. Virgins no more.

This is the print that I pulled. Some of the characters need a little help in finishing–the counter of the A, the oblique angle at the bottom of the R and the counters in the ampersand. I am getting better at finishing the oblique angles, but I am still learning how to do this. I think I found a good setup for doing this now–good light and an improvised bench hook. I have a very sharp knife and a leather strop to keep it sharp.

Here is a bonus print from the sheet I put under the sheet I was printing on–a little blind emboss with the brayer run across it.

Letterpress Daily shows several different characters from his collection.