I’ll be raising it to type high (0.918 inches).
The 1/8-inch veneer provides enough relief from the background. This will be attached to 3/4-inch plywood. That gets you to 0.875", or 0.043 short. The adhesive will be a few thousands of an inch. Using chipboard and other materials under the base of the press brings it type high.
cheers, looking forward to seeing how it progresses.
Hmmmm, not quite sure what you mean. The Proofgrade veneers, available in maple, cherry and walnut, come with a strong adhesive on the back. There is a nonstick backing on the adhesive, which you would peel off after laser cutting through all layers.
I’m simply confused — I haven’t cut enough of it, apparently! Thank you! (I have some on hand I’ll have to check out.)
The fibrous glass should be fine; fiberglass is another name for it. SDS says no hazardous combustion products.
You might want to consider treating the whole project like you would a polymer plate and engraving around your text block.
That way you can do all your typesetting in illustrator (or whatever) and then just print it.
Trying to print individual wood blocks and stick them down in perfect alignment sounds crazy making to me!
It is basically what I did here:
I milled a Delrin block that when combined with the early proofgrade plywood I had made it exactly typehigh, but you can certainly get there by stacking things up.
You might want to consider treating the whole project like you would a polymer plate and engraving around your text block.
That way you can do all your typesetting in illustrator (or whatever) and then just print it.
Trying to print individual wood blocks and stick them down in perfect alignment sounds crazy making to me!
This is just for some large numbers used for chapter openings. You would not believe the nonsense I’m registering, though.
I am so excited seeing this project unfold.
I can’t believe that it didn’t occur to me to start one until I read this. 
so much easier to deal with. especially since you can link to non-Amazon items on the amazon list.
and on the amazon items, you can use something like keepa to track price changes over time.
I’m also a letterpress printer. I do a small amount of bindery work, and what I know about Elmer’s, or any other ‘white glue’, is that it is not archival. It will fatigue and turn into a yellowed, brittle mess. I use PVA because it is reversible, stays flexible, and makes a good paste when mixed with a non-nutritional wheat flour. I use Wondra because it is so devoid of food value that nothing wants to eat it.
As far as individual types, go with a plate and forget the separate types. I use a pantograph to cut new wood type if I have a model when I run short in a case, but if I had a choice, I would cut a plate.
I use EVA myself.
Totally foolish of me—I’d mistaken what my bookbinder said. She’s using a standard PVA glue. In the end, I used a 3M 468MP material cited above without any trouble! I was able to tape it to the bottom of 1/8-inch Proofgrade plywood and the cut went perfectly through it.
In my case, I didn’t stick it on first, as I was concerned about how it would all work together. I later had some 3/4-inch MDF cut to a square of a slightly larger size, and then adhered the numbers individually to those blocks. And, wow, Jules was right—once adhered, it doesn’t give a micrometer. I stuck a putty knife underneath to see if I could pry it gently off, and it was effectively impossible without ruin the wood, as Jules noted.
I realize my confusion—I wasn’t cutting veneer, but the 1/8th-inch plywood. The veneer doesn’t offer enough of a relief for letterpress printing. You need some minimum offset between the printable surface and the surface onto which it’s mounted to allow ink rollers and then paper to pass without picking up any background.
Well, your project came out fantastic! Very cool process.
Oooh! VERY nice! You never think about what goes into printing in multiple colors like that, but it looks absolutely perfect! Great job! 
Very nice prints from the wood and glad the 3M worked. I haven’t tried it yet and the verification that it instantly sticks is something I will need to keep in mind.
Beautiful work, the registration skills of a master! 
Wow! Now I’m really disappointed to have missed out on an earlier order
date. Are you using transparent white (such a confusing label) to achieve
the tan? That’s one clever type high gauge.
