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Recent Bios FAQ

259639 Thomas Conroy 2016‑07‑21 Re: Block Plane - 1864 reference
Richard Wilson wrote: "....so my vote goes to printing blocks,  coming from the
home of Thomas Bewick?s prints, I can see the need for a fine surface finish to
be cretaed, used, planed off and repeated, in a size that is conducive to bench
work and a fine set plane.  Any blemish is instantly visible on the page, so
perfection in the surface is  requirement."


I don't think it would be printing blocks, at least not for use on a press. One
absolute requirement of a boxwood block for end-grain engraving, Bewick's
technique and the dominant illustration technique for most of the 19th century,
was that the block had to be absolutely even in thickness and exactly type-high,
in order to register with the type. Of course, for most ot the 19th century
every typecaster had his own type height, so the printer would have to adjust
the blocks to the type he was using. But the way to do this would not have been
to use a small plane; it would have been to place the block between type-high
runners and use a plane long enough to span from runner to runner, working
perpendicular or perhaps at 45 degrees to the axis of the plane. I don't know
that this was done for surfacing woodblocks, but the basic process was that used
in making type, planing the bottoms of many individual types at once to bring
them all to type-height. At the end of the 19th century, printers' suppliers
offered sets of plane and support table for doing this.  The low angle would be
fine, but neither the strike block nor the block plane seems well adapted to the
planing-down of printers' blocks using fixed-height supports.
Blocks for textile printing were different. These were cut with knives, chisels,
and gouges "on the plank," not with burins on the endgrain. Then a handle was
screwed to the back, and the block was inked and inverted, printed while held in
the printer's hand, just like a [very large] rubber stamp. You wouldn't need
precise type-high blocks fo this. But you wouldn't have any particular
difficulty in planing the working surface, either, since it was just radial or
tangential surfaces.
I still haven't heard any convincing explanation of either "strike bock" or
"block" as a name. And I suspect that there may not be one.
Tom Conroy.

Recent Bios FAQ