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You can also go to an appliance store and ask them for an empty refrigerator box. Then cut it down into two pieces that have 2 of side of the box on it. That will give you 2 pcs. refrigerator high by just about 60″ wide. then velcro mount one color felt on one side and another color on the back side. Then all you do is “lean” then up against the wall. White side out for dark colors, colored side out for lighter colors. Lay it down on your floor and use either side up for the color you need. Or lay it on your dining room table so you don’t have to bend over as much. Lean one up vertically at the end of your table and lay the 2nd one down on the table and you ave the perfect “L” shape for having the matching color on the flat bottom and the upright fake wall. If you have the vertical pcs of felt flow out onto the bottom piece you can get that “soft fabric roll” at the seam junction and you won’t have a hard horizontal line acroos at the 90 degree mark where the two pcs. come together.
Just more food for thought.
mike at mdcgfa
Yep.. done my fair share on stripping also :-).
Were were both a silkscreen shop and offset litho shop with full bindery operations. I came up through the ranks and did it all. Ortho graphic photography, dark room work on a large format camera, screen and plate making, printing on many types of presses, ink and color mixing, all bindery functions, die cutting, guillotine trim cutting, grommeting, spiral binding, punch presses and all shipping functions.
Used solvent inks, UV inks, water based inks, scratch off inks.
Clients, general Electric, Home Depot, Kentucky fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Walmart, West Clock, Stanley hardware, Martin Marrietta, Colt Fire Arms and a ton more plus doing the limited edition fine art print runs for numerous NY artists in our fine art publishing division. And toward the end some government work for Groton Ct submarine base and using elctro-luminesent inks.
But you hit the nail on the head, smack on.. “Times Gone By”.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Old Dad: With steel rule dies for cutting hand feed sheets, those Thompsons deliver tons and tons of pressure, depending on how you set the depth gauge during set-up. A finger down at the blade level will take a finger or part of a hand off.
I was running a small Kelsy engraving press one time and it closed nefore I got my hand out. It was my wedding band on my left hand finger that had enough resistance to stop that small of a press. A Thompson, Kulge or Miele and my hand would have been gone.
My partner had to come over and use a long steel pipe which was leaning against the wall luckily and relieved enough pressure for me to get my hand out. My ring was bent and hurting my finger really bad. I went to the local emergency room and they numbed up my left finger and had to cut my wedding band off. Nothing was broken. But I never worn any jewlery to this day ever. No watches, rings, bracelets.
Also all of those metals reacted with the gallons of lacquer thinner I used to have my bare hands in and would blister my skin close to the gold.
As years went by and I grew more knowledgeable and equity share holder, I protected our employees much better than I did myself during our first start up years. Open flw wheels got covered, ventilation, ear protection from the sounds, respirators to filter fumes, etc., etc. But when I first started, there was no protection awareness.
mike at MDCGFA
Sonia go to Hobby Lobby or Jo Ann’s Fabrics and get felt. What we bought was 60″ wide by only $.99 per YARD. We got a very light grey, white and a royal blue for clear glass and white items.
The reason for felt is that you can use velcro [pardon me] and stick it up on the wall anywhere. The felt texture sticks to the hard hook side of the velcro. Also felt does not wrinkle or crease like a cotton sheet does. And at 60 ” is more than enough to provide a solid back ground. Want to change the color, just pull on the top edge where you have the velcro on the wall and pull, grab another color, stretch it across and push with your thumb. Easy Peazy.
You can even put all three colors up on the wall one above the other and just roll up the two you are not using. Then unroll another color when needed. AND use a narrow, thin band of velcro to hold the 2 you are not using rolled up. Sort of like having three window shades on top of each other.
Just an idea… 🙂
Mike from MDCGFA
Hey G/G: Thanks. That is a lot of real old school stuff. Was in the printing / fine art publishing from 1972 until about 1998. Was present during the change over from solvent based inks to UV inks and from the graphic pre-press art depts. to all digital. Have hand cut my fair share of Amberlith and Rubylith color separations in my time and also making camera ready paste up art mechanicals.
But as I progressed and our business grew moved into VP of Plant Operations and Plant Consulting along with the Fine Art Publishing divs. The “good old days”.
mike at mdcgfa
Just a little update on what our Congress is trying to do on Capital Hill with regards to the E-Commerce Sales Tax laws.
Seems there is a bill up in Washington that is trying to get an exemption for the small business from having to charge and collect the Sales Tax in each state. Think they are targeting to exempt the small businesses that are under $10 million dollars which I would think would exempt most small Ebay, Etsy, Posh, Mercari, e-commerce sellers.
Interesting if it goes through. Platforms like Amazon whereby a lot of the Sales comes from smaller sellers if Amazon would have to pay the taxes because their take [sales] would be over the $10 million mark and / or would they pass that along to the re-sellers through higher fees.
???? Just a continuing saga of the unknown…..
mike at mdcgfa
These are called “Advertising Cuts” or “cuts” for short. They are type high. Usually .935 to .937 depending on what type of press and or other foundry type you have invested in as a printer.
They are used in letter press work or on a Vandercook flatbed press. But in most cases wooden type fonts are used on the Vandercook for internal store signage needs. On the more commercial runs of larger quantities metal foundry type is used on Kluge presses.
The zinc or copper plates prior to mounting on a wood block were first painted with an acid resist coating, then exposed to an actinic light source [usually under glass and using an arc lamp] were exposed. Then submerged in an acid bath and etched in the areas where the negative was black thus creating a positive but wrong reading image on the plate. Once etched to the proper depth, the plate was pulled and dropped into a wash bath to stop the etching process.
A product called “dragon’s blood” was used during the acid etching to keep the fine lines and type from under cutting by the acid, which if allowed to undercut, those fine lines without a wide based would break off during the press run when under pressure.
The plates were mounted on precision made wooden blocks to bring them up to the .937 inches in height needed to be level with the metal type slugs of foundry type.
All the individual letters of foundry type were kept in type face font cabinets which I am sure everyone has seen those wooden cases sold that had all the small rectangles in them. Those are called California Type Drawers and each drawer held a certain font size of type and 100’s of small individual letters all arranged in an order of use much like a QWERTY typewriter.
The Journeyman type setter would be handed a handwritten sheet with the news story on it and would then proceed to hand pick every single letter in a word, sentence and paragraph and lock that type into blocks on a device much like the holder for Scrabble tiles. Then that composed sentence would be placed into what is called a lock up chase.
This was amazing and very time consuming because not only did each character had to be pulled but it had to be done in “reverse” order or what is called a mirror image [wrong reading]. Took years to master and be accurate and quick at it. The advertising block cuts were inserted into the column rows as space allowed in between the news stories just like you see in modern newspapers.
Advertisers paid to have the photos and copy for their ads created and converted into a “cut”. Then they bought space in the newspaper and paid by the column inch. In America a column inch is 11 picas wide [or 1.83″ wide] x 1″ deep.
In the case of your Mercedes cut[s] measure the height [top to bottom of the wooden block or the back side of the plate] and Mercedes would have paid a fee per inch x those inches. Then paid by the “issue” of number of times per week, month the ad ran.
The type and cut are all inked in relief, meaning on the high, flat surface [planographic in art terms] by a leather in older days and rubber in more modern types, roller over the flat surface and deposit ink on the flat surface. then as the press closed and pressed the paper against the inked type fonts and inserted advertising cuts, the image would be transferred to the paper as a black “Correct” reading image.
This process is called an “offset image” and is the bases for the modern high speed litho presses used today and why art reproductions done on the modern presses using thin plates now days are called “Offset” Lithographs. OFFSET being the keyword of the transfer of the ink from the metal type to the paper [substrate].
On a Kluge style letter press the inking rollers roll up and auto by mechanical means as the press opens, a stack of blank paper stock that was previously loaded is pulled one sheet at a time off of the “feeder” hopper and slide into proper aligned register against side guides, then the press closes and pressed against the whole story composition of type that has been locked into the platen side of the presses. Then opens again and a second arm with air suckers pulls that sheet off and releases it into the catcher bin underneath the fed stack.
These style letterpresses presses are called “clam shell style” because of this whole opening and closing of one side of the press against the other. Many decades later many of these style presses were converted into embossing or die cut presses. Many decades ago, when I and my first partner started our first print shop JME Graphics in Connecticut, we had two old “Thompson” letter presses which we converted to die cut out the sheets we printed. I have hand fed tons and tons of sheets into those things. Also still had an old Kluge press we printed on. We used all of these for special effects on fine art prints though.
I saw about a dozen of them at an auction a few years ago. I recognized them right away and told my wife Susan watch this, I will get these for a song. I knew that nobody knew what they were. Yep got all 12 for a dollar $1. They all were for Carnation Malted Milk and Carnation Milk Products.
I did not use the word “cuts” as the lead in or first words in the title or description because I knew most buyers would not know that term. I used Etched, Engraved, and put cuts toward the end.
I sold all of them within a few months. I sold the small 1” ones for $29.95. Here is one of the links from Worthpoint.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/carnation-malted-milk-etched-engraved-1867901379One of the things I did was to ink up the cut and make a hand pressed paper image of the ad block. That way I had a photo of the image “correct reading”, so buyers could see what the advertising said. Make sure to clean the ink off the metal using lacquer thinner so it won’t dry on the metal surface.
Interesting though the link for the smallest ones above was the only ones Worthpoint picked up and is showing. So, FYI, the others sold between $40 and $75 each. BUT with it being Mercedes Benz, that might be worth even more.
So, there you have a rough, brief art school history of metal foundry type, advertising cuts and how they were combined and printed.
I suggest you also hit up Wiki and search on letterpress advertising cuts, foundry type faces and things like that.
Good luck and sorry for the “wall of text”, Jay calls it.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
The team at MDC Concepts, Inc.
Susan, Lisa, Jean, Karen, Christie and MichaelSharyn this is true. If a typo took place and any number larger than 1 was entered, then if one sold, the listing would still relist itself, but as you said under the same item number. Also the store listing should say, “1 Sold and Only 1 more available” or “Last One”,…something to that effect.
mike at MDCGFA
Hey Jenna:
Yes we have had this happen about 4 or 5 times in about a 6 year period. The way we discovered it was through our 3rd party listing software. The first 3 or 4 times we were using WonderLister and these programs keep all of your records for every transaction forever, including stats, financials, sales history and even buyers home addresses, phone numbers and eamil addresses. We run a cross check every quarter for sales vs. existing inventory and found 3 or so that had been sold and were still showing as in stock. We delted the Ebay listing and our WL was accurate.
But a few years ago we started our Etsy store and cross listing about half of our stock there. We had a buyer want 2 of something that we only had one of and she bought the one on Ebay and then within a minute or less bought the same one on Etsy. Well turns out that the new SixBit sogtware we now use, couldn’t process the transaction quick enough and we had to cancel one and complete the other. The buyer was very understanding.
The last instance was an item we sold but it was our own fault. We use a numerical inventory system and can find most things in a heartbeat. But in a case where we have to go and pull an item because of a buyer question and then replace that item back into storage but in the wrong bin, we are screwed. We told the buyer we couldn’t find it and had no record of a previous sale, but if we found it we would send it to him free of charge. He was the only one who gave us a neg. feedback and said we were full of bull. But we did find it about 3 months later and sent it to him free as we promised. Not a peep out of him.
But we did have some sold items that Ebay must have never deleted or got relisted some how.
But as you said it has only been a few times in years and years, so we just rolled with the flow.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
Aperture: To add a little something extra and agree with your comment about these prints. The lighter fading / graduating tone in a couple areas in the landscape “could” be a hand done wash over the base printed ink. But that subtle fading could also still be wet printing ink being pulled off the paper during the process of it “sticking” to the bottom of the silk screen or having sticky [too thick ink] on a planographic surface such as a Lino block. But to do a lino block, usually done in a reductive process”, thus inking larger areas, then cutting away some of lino material, inking, cutting away more and then inking the next color, would eventually reduce the lino surface down to just a few thin tree areas [the darkest color] and that would mean every bit of the lino material would have to have been carved away by the time the artist got to this last color.
That is a lot of lino removal and leaving very thin lines. But from what I can see the dark color was printed last and over printed the underneath lighter colors. Labor intensive, yes, doable absolutely.
But as we both agree can’t tell too much without seeing the actual print.
The last thing that got me thinking about these prints again is the nomenclature area under the image. This is where the artist pencil signs, dates, provides the title and the “state” of the print. Well here we have a pencil signature only. But no title, date or state which is very important in items getting a higher value.
The state in an edition is usually presented as a fraction number. Example : 23/125 meaning this is the 23rd print done out of a limited edition of 125 total prints at which time the printing device, plate, screen, lino block, wood block is supposed to be destroyed by the artist so no more can be printed or after death repro houses buying the plates or screens and doing re-runs of what was supposed to be a closed limited edition. Several houses in NY used to do this all the time with Picasso plates and others.
But my point here is that neither of these prints states they are a limited-edition print. So, is it an artist proof just being done to see where he is at in the process, but he-she signed it? Is it a staged image, Hor’ Commerce print, part of an edition and it has the flaws we discussed and the artist culled it out as a reject and didn’t include it in the numbered run and if it is a reject the artist should have destroyed it.
OR IS IT A MONOPRINT, which is a process of changing the ink colors and printing pressure on each print and resulting in a different look on each print. But if that is the case “Monoprint” should be pencil stated on each print.
Digital prints and print on demand technology have opened a whole new school of ethics on original, hand done limited edition prints. Basically, limited to anyone and everyone who is willing to keep buying them. i.e. Danbury Mint, Thomas Kinkade, and so forth.
Most hand done originals, litho stone, etchings, collagraphs, screen prints, monotypes and such should be limited to under 125 per run, 250 is OK and 500 pcs. is the cut-off point. But is “Offset” lithos where the speed of the auto presses [non-hand done inking and printing process] is 3k to 5k impressions per hour there is no way to control such a small run and get a stable consistent image on each sheet. Thus, we see “repro” editions signed and numbered as 2,500, 5,000 and I have even seen signed, titled, and numbered pcs. reaching 10,000 and above. That must take forever to sign, date, title and number that many by hand in pencil. Even at 1 print per minute that is 167 hours [about a month at 40 hours per week] of just having the artist sit down and complete that task.
And the value after what we call a large edition [500] starts to go down. Even very famous, well selling primary first market level gallery represented artists don’t go much over 250 or 500 max. Working artists are more interested in getting on to exploring new and different work, not depending on selling the same concept over and over.
Or is it a student in an art school printing class learning the process, only did a few prints and put his name on them.
So, there is so much to think about when evaluating art, and who the artist is, is of little value if you still have a low-quality work in front of you. That is why many galleries in NY or other artists from New England came to me and our company or other New England Fine Art Atelier’s and paid us to print their limited-edition artwork for them.
So that is a jumble of art goopy gop to start your morning off. BTW… very hard to sell quality, hand crafted art on Ebay. Most people just buy an image they like and don’t give a hoot about the intrinsic quality or value of a piece of art. They just “Buy a Purty Pitcher”!!! LOL
Man, I didn’t need that third cup of coffee this morning and I should have been listing used glass and brass “stuff” during this time. That’s where the money is, “used bowls, dishes, china, candle holders, flower vases, and kitchenware. To heck with fine art.
As I always say, my opinion and a Master of Fine Art Degree and 35 years in the printing business along with a whole $1.00 these days will buy me a third of a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Oh BTW, I can make more selling a vintage, rare Starbucks coffee mug than I can selling a hand done, pencil signed original limited edition print these days.
As the wicked witch in the “Wizard of Oz” movie said, “What a world, what a world”. !!!!! LOL 🙂 🙂
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
and Master Printer LOL 🙂I can’t tell too much from the photos either. Close personal examination would tell the story.
I think they are both serigraphs. Probably done with Tousche and glue technique directly in the screen.Look up tousche and glue to familiarize yourself with the technique and look at some examples to help you identify. The over lapping of colors and the thin lines are hard to do in a lino block print, but not impossible. I think the voids I see in some of the solid areas would indicate silk screen ink that is too thick and a too hard of a durometer squeege blade being pulled across the screen at a too low of an angle and possibly not enough downward pressure. And with a vacuum table to suck and hold the paper down to the press or print table surface, the paper stuck to the bottom of the screen and when the artist pulled and or peeled the print away the thick tacky ink remove some from the surface.
The mis alignment of the colors to the degree I see also indicates not much knowledge of a good registration system for both a lini block or silk screen print.
In either technique I also would not have used such a heavily textured substrate. Thos high and low peaks and valley’s in the paper create some of those bubble like voids. That hard squeegee isn’t flexing enough to push the ink down into the valley’s and is riding across the high spots of the paper.
Mid level student grade work in my opinion. Given about 1 semester I could correct and bring this artist efforts up a few notches and eliminate these mistakes from happening in the future by teaching them some control techniques.
But all of this as I always say is just my personal observation and opinion and that and $.50 will get you a quarter of a cup of coffee.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
Yes ++ to what Sharyn said. Ebay has a long list 300 to 400 companies [I think I recall] of companies who are on the list. Many have company names that are branded and products that contain their name or they have patents on the products. Kleenex is one, John Deere [I have had several items unlisted by John Deere, Jack Daniels, Velcro of course, etc., etc.]
For Velcro you have to say “Hook and Loop” [the male and female pieces that stick together.
Here is the Ebay list of companies that are in the Verified Rights Owner Program.
Also, worth a large note is even if the brand is not an issue many of these companies also do not want anyone reselling their products unless you are an authorized reseller. John Deere is one. Try selling John Deere hats, shirts, bobble heads and newer toy tractors and you will get a VERO because they don’t want anyone that is not a John Deere “Authorized Seller”, meaning part of their network who sells their new products. Also, many companies don’t like the old “used” versions showing up on the market.
Why do you see many, many listings that don’t heed the VERO list? Because Ebay can only police just so many violations and only the few whom they see or find get caught”, or if a company itself sees a listing and reports you.
To add to that, many companies who are very strict about their brand and policies have their own employees and teams who scour the internet daily searching for their brand names and products being listed by non-authorized sellers, re-sellers and the appearance of their key words in listings and then they report these to Ebay, Etsy and the other platforms. Ebay really sticks by their big brand name companies and will kill your listing in a heartbeat once you get reported by the main mfg.
So read, study or print and tape a copy of the VERO Program companies and learn which ones to avoid.
As Jay says, “it’s like speeding, many do it but only a few get caught, but those who get caught pay a hefty fine”.
Good luck,
Mike and our management team for
MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Small Equipment divs.
Capitol Atlantic Properties, LLC
J&R Sprayfoam, LLCSee if this is of any value to those thinking about the New Dim weight and how to figure if it applies to your items.
How is Dimensional Weight Calculated?
First, you need to find out if the package is larger than one cubic foot. The equation for that is:
(L x W x H)/1728
The 1,728 is because there are 1,728 inches in a cubic foot. If the result of the above equation is greater than 1, you need to find out the Dimensional Weight of a package. To do that, you need the Dimensional Weight divisor, which for USPS is now 166 (for FedEx and UPS the divisor is 139 for all sizes).
(L x W x H)/166 = Dimensional weight
If the result of the above equation yields a higher weight than the actual weight of the package you are shipping, you must pay the Dimensional Weight instead. It’s also important to note here that Dimensional Weight will replace what was formerly referred to as Balloon Rate on Priority Mail packages (Priority Mail pieces weighing less than 20 pounds and measuring more than 84 inches, but 108 inches or less, in combined length and girth, charged the price for a piece weighing 20 pounds.).
Let’s look at a couple of examples where this would and would not apply.
Example 1:
16 x 12 x 10 package, weight 15 lbs., shipping Zone 3
Is it larger than one cubic foot: (16 x 12 x 10)/1728 = Yes (1.11 cubic feet)
Dimensional weight: (16 x 12 x 10)/166 = 11.56 lbs. (round up to 12 lbs.)dimensional weight calculator
In this case, you pay for the actual weight of 15 lbs. rather than the rounded up Dimensional Weight of 12 lbs.
Example 2:
14 x 12 x 14 package, weighing 12 lbs., shipping Zone 4
Is it larger than one cubic foot: (14 x 12 x 14)/1728 = Yes (1.36 cubic feet)
Dimensional weight: (14 x 12 x 14)/166 = 14.17 lbs. (round up to 15 lbs.)2019 dimensional weight calculations
In this case, you’d pay the Dimensional Weight of 15 lbs. rather than the 12 lbs. actual weight. This can prove to be extremely costly. Looking at what a Priority Mail package would cost for Zone 4 at 12 lbs. versus 15 lbs. in 2019 increases the shipping cost from $15.93 to $18.42.
If that box were 14 x 14 x 14, the Dimensional Weight would increase to 16.53 lbs. (round up to 17 lbs.) and you’re looking at an increase to $20.35! A couple inches of box size could cost you $4.42 more to ship a single package.
As you can see, this can multiply quickly and drain any shipping margins you might have.
This change in calculating shipping for larger packages makes it crucial for merchants shipping larger packages that contain potentially lighter items to optimize packaging. If you can reasonably fit items into a smaller package, you’ll absolutely want to explore your options.
mike at mdcgfa
Hey Jay.. Looking at the new rental photos, I think I got “lost”. How do you get into the place? Where is the door / entrance? Down the side stairs to the sides or back, then back up a set in inside stairs to get to the top level? Not through the main store level?
I see from the front view a set of stairs on the left and a shot up a set of stairs, guess that is one and the same.
Love the 3 horses and large “jack stone” on the top shelf over the coffee area! 🙂
mike at mdcgfa
T-Satt: I will check our SixBit for the process you outline, but first to clarify a point.
isn’t the 12x12x12 just the USPS way of saying 1,728 cubic inches. In the past, and I will check this out today, that DIM WEIGHT always applied to items over 1,728 cubic inches, [lengthxwidthxheight] and the USPS just uses the 12x12x12 as a model.
To ship a long, folded up tri-pod or a fishing rod that both are 5 ft long [60″] x 4″ wide x 4″ high is only 960 cubic inches and would NOT be an oversized DIM WEIGHT package, at least in the past. So a box that is 18″ long x 16 x 10 is 2,880 cubic inches and IS OVERSIZED and priced with the DIM WEIGHT and the new ZONES. BUT that same object-item that would fit into an 18″ long x 9″ High [cut down to be a better fit] x 10″ wide is only 1,620 CUBIC INCHES and would not be an over sized package.
so the 12 x 12 x 12 I think is just their way of stating the 1,728 cubic inches, and not that all dimensions have all got to be less than 12″ period! At least that is the way it has been for years now.
So before I go changing every thing in SixBit on all of our items and then the fact we are cross listed on Etsy, I think I will call USPS today and verify this. If the 1,728 cubic inches is still the real bench mark they are going by, then most of our listings are safe except for a few.
And in those cases we always list 3 or 4 shipping choices and a buyer can easily see that FedEx Home delivery is their second line choice and it would show as much cheaper and they could select that. If the buyer will read and think, AND DO MATH which many don’t.
This whole thing is a good reason to gravitate toward free shipping, take our lowest seller cost to ship to Zone 8 and just build it in on top of our already high mark-ups. Due to the new forced Etsy policy of FREE SHIPPING we are having to seriously think about that anyway.
Will have to see what USPS says today.
mike at mdc galleries and fine art
