Objects you don't see much anymore

[Minnesota Flats]

Now why on earth would you want to do that?

No kidding: I'd be afraid it would dissolve all the bristles!

 

[adorshki]

No kidding: I'd be afraid it would dissolve all the bristles!

Nah, it's only 100 proof. Might clean 'em better than turpentine, though.

 

[adorshki]

 

[Skywalker]

What is it ?

 

[Skywalker]

You can probably get enough of that just by eating fish these days.

 

[jp]

jp's post above tweaked a memory:

Printer's composing stick:

Composing stick - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Another item no longer seen: the big drawer of lead type commonly known as a "case". My junior high "home room" (where we'd spend the first 20 minutes or so of the school day, before classes commenced) was in the print shop, which was in the "industrial arts" wing of the school, which included a wood shop, an electric shop, a metal shop, a mechanical drawing/drafting shop and the print shop. Many of the other shops contained equipment that could maul or kill us, but other than a potential letterpress crush injury, print shop was less that way. The big admonition in that class was, "don't 'pie' your case!" The "case" was a drawer filled with individual, wooden dividers for organizing the type it contained (visible in the background of PIC above). "Pie-ing" the case meant dropping it on the floor while carrying it from the storage cabinet to your individual work station. If you dropped it, all the little, individual cast lead letters would fall out of their little slots in the case and get hopelessly mixed together with all the other little letters on the floor. This meant that you'd spend most of the rest of the semester sorting them back into the case before you could resume the assignment, which left you hopelessly behind and likely to fail the class.

There was an auto shop in the industrial arts wing of our high school, but not at the junior high, since we weren't yet old enough to drive while attending that one.

If I had the space, time, and cash. I'd love to buy an old flatbed press from the 50s-60s to make prints and posters. Housing that baby and entire families of typefaces, though, would require a warehouse.

 

[adorshki]

What is it ?

Mercury-based antiseptic removed from GRAS ("Generally Recognized as Safe") list by the FDA in '98.

 

[adorshki]

If I had the space, time, and cash. I'd love to buy an old flatbed press from the 50s-60s to make prints and posters. Housing that baby and entire families of typefaces, though, would require a warehouse.

Having been a purveyor to the printing industry for almost 25 years up through '20, I can tell you supplies are becoming harder to find as the industry goes digital. Large-format inkjet is basically taking over.

 

[jp]

Having been a purveyor to the printing industry for almost 25 years up through '20, I can tell you supplies are becoming harder to find as the industry goes digital. Large-format inkjet is basically taking over.

So true, and I get it. Another reason it most likely will never happen. I used to regularly visit R.R. Donnelley facilities throughout the midwest for press runs. The tech there seemed to change monthly. Also, having to learn to service a 75-yr-old press would be a challenge alone.

 

[5thumbs]

 

[adorshki]

Note the hole punch in the "London" logo.

Only pic I could find of an actual cut corner cover wasn't in compatible file format, and there was only one, at that.

 

[gjmalcyon]

Mom, the RN was a big believer in that stuff. I remember the smell, the way it dyed your skin and the way it stung. God forbid you showed up with some road rash from a bicycle get-off.

 

[JohnW63]

Merthiolate had mercury in it too. I had to look it up. I always wondered what happened to those to standby wound elixirs.

 

[GGJaguar]

 

[Rocky]

The answer to a problem that didn't exist. Also takes 10x longer to clean than to use.

 

[GardMan]

My grandmother had one of theses.. it worked like an electric chair for hot dogs. As I recall, it cooked 'em quick, but they sort of semi-exploded (big splits along the sides).

 

[bobouz]

Note the hole punch in the "London" logo.

Only pic I could find of an actual cut corner cover wasn't in compatible file format, and there was only one, at that.

Found a lot of great blues & jazz albums in those old cheapo racks!

 

[Midnight Toker]

Found a lot of great blues & jazz albums in those old cheapo racks!

Yep. Plus albums from big artists that flopped (but usually had a couple lesser known gems on them)... or albums that had a strong initial run, then completely fell off the map right around the time of an ambitious second pressing....they all found their way in the cutout bin over time. I have a bunch of them.