Benson's printing press

The press actually has a name, but we never use it. We always just talk about "Benson" this and "Benson" that, since he's the one who runs the place.

Benson is one of the printers who works for both ACTS and Joint Project (the two organisations for which I work). Most recently, Joint Project hired him to print their younger children Sunday School materials for 2008 and the upcoming adaptation of Pilgrim's Progress. So we went today to see how things are coming along.

I'd never been to a printing press before. It's not one of the field trips my class ever got to take growing up. But wow, was it fascinating! First we talked with Benson about the cover for Pilgrim's Progress. He showed us some samples, but his personal printer had just run out of yellow ink, so it was hard to imagine what they should have looked like. We took his samples to consider. Then he showed us the "sets" of illustrations for Pilgrim's Progress. Each sheet of paper was about 1 meter by 1.5 meters and had four illustrations on it. This was how a plate was made. (We got to see these plates later on.)

Then Benson showed us the laminating machine, which they use to make glossy book covers. From there we went through the collating room. There were about a dozen people there, standing around a table and putting pages in the right order--collating by hand each and every book to be bound. A young woman sat at one end and looked at every set to make sure the pages were in the right order. Beside her, at another smaller table, sat a man who put the cover and spine on each book.

We followed Benson back downstairs to the press room. It was noisy in there, and smelled of ink fumes. I tried to listen as much as possible to what Benson told us about the way the presses worked. Each piece of paper (80grams) goes through the press four times--first for blue ink, then for yellow, then red, and finally black. That's why the paper has to be reasonably heavy-weight. He showed us the plates that are used in the press, and I stepped forward a bit to see the press run. So cool! Who came up with the idea for this machine, anyway?

But then I got overwhelmed by the fumes and noise and had to step outside. We thanked Benson, said we'd be in touch about the cover, and bade him farewell. So now I've been to a real printing press!