LETTERPRESS SUPPLES
Most items are currently in stock. We can handle most requests and usually ship within 24 hours.
Enter our Store HERE
We carry more than 1,000 items for all your printing needs.
We are open for business as of February 3rd. Lots of snow and very cold nights. The snow means closed passes, slow driving, and lots of shoveling. Longer days if even a couple of minutes are a welcoming event. Our local ski area opened for the season to a record turnout. And our other ski area, Silverton Mountain, opens at the end of the month. The green of the fir trees now commands our views of the surrounding mountains with a mantle of white. The mountain peaks surrounding Silverton are capped with snow. We just finished getting 10" of snow which meant a good turn out at our local ski area. The train completed its season to Silverton in October and it will be next May before we see the trains again. Quiet has returned to the high mountain valleys.
We use Priority US Mail to ship orders where ever possible because it it is faster and usually far less expensive than UPS. Do not let the price for UPS on our order form scare you off as we use our judgement on each order.
There is a new item that we have to contend with. It's called inflation, and rising prices mainly on certain materials are often crazy. The most recent one is stainless steel. Simple things like line gauges and die cutting jackets have sky rocketing price increases. So as stocks of older material are used up, the new replacement stock is much more expensive. Unfortunately, we have to pass on these costs. The other thing is back ordered items that go on for months hoping that they will be available. Case in point is the 4 inch Lamson ink knife which we have been checking on for the last six months.
We have received our new order of Super Soap and it is now on the web site. Our introduction to this product was at the ATF conference held at Sunnyvale, California when we made a field trip to M&H Type in San Francisco and we were given samples. That was back in 1998.
We had some good news about Pressboard. Our mill order was made and it was picked up from the mill in Vermont, Monday, June 19. We began filling back orders by the following Monday, June 26. But the bad news is that the mill has increased its minimum order to 40,000 pounds. That's an awful lot of paper. The mill, formerly owned by Neenah Paper, started us off with pressboard by the 125 sheet carton, then by the 1000 pound skid, and now what amounts to a boxcar load minimum order. We will see what happens.
We operate out of a real store front, with regular hours, pay taxes, nothing under the table, have employees, and all that goes with a business. Some of our competitors in the letterpress field operate from their homes perhaps using a spare bedroom or the garage. Our prices are up front, on our website for all to see.
Our plan is to make it through the new decade alive. So far the plan is working. We face new challenges in 2023 but we have survived 2022 in one piece.
The UPS guy stops by daily and so does the FedEx person, and we see the occasional walker and car drive past. Our train that has been our mainstay for so many years ran two trains daily this past summer and is gradually returning to normal.
Some of our customers are taking on projects, especially their Vandercooks, now that they have time to work on them. We maintain a safe workplace and rarely have contact with outside people. The locals maintain their distance from the tourists to a large extent. Our construction business has remained viable with work on the county courthouse, a high-end hotel, and for our historical society.
Supply issues continue to be a problem as some products are no longer available. We do have adequate supplies of most sizes of tympan on hand. Don't count on anything being available in the future as we have in the past. Almost everyone in the letterpress supply business is past retirement age with few ready to take over.
We prefer that orders be placed through this website rather than phone calls. Our handwritten notes with the wrong hand are sometimes hard to read, so help out your order--there is a place on the web site order form to write about special needs or questions.
Fritz Klinke
Bev Rich, Loren Lew, Rick Hunter, Casey Carroll, Fritz Klinke having lunch in our old restaurant, the Pickle Barrel, 2019. These are the folks who have been instrumental in my recovery. Loren is also my business partner for the past 48 years.
Fritz's house, an 1887-era Victorian, Winter 2018-2019. The winters are very cold with most nights below zero. By a vote of the town last Fall, the use of off road vehicles is now prohibited. The past 2 summers saw a dramatic increase in their use to the point the vehicles overwhelmed the town. The train has resumed running as it comes back from Covid restrictions. We face the same problem as the rest of the country with a serious lack of people willing to work. We used to serve three meals a day seven days a week in our Silverton restaurant but the current owners are reduced to 5 days a week lunch only. Strange times.
