I recently found this McCormick Sovereign 350 with a strange orange/red background. The odd background shading stuck out to me immediately. At first glance, it looks like to me the red ink was brushed or wiped in some way while wet. The problem with that theory is if the ink were disturbed while wet, it would have spread across the white borders, which it obviously didn’t.
I reached out to a couple friends who I thought may have seen something similar over the years. My friend Steve Birmingham replied with some very interesting insight on how the streaking effect was created:
It’s another interesting one, your thought that it was wiped while wet is really close, and you’re right that that should have caused red being spread into the borders.
What that’s from is the pressman wiping the inking rollers while operating. A bit sloppy, and not all that safe but it’s done. If the result didn’t look too bad it probably would have been allowed to slide through. Especially late on a Friday 🙂
Sometimes the ink will be too heavy, or will start to dry on the inking roller leaving bits of dried ink that can cause a bunch of flaws. Usually over-inking just gets adjusted away. Drying ink is a bigger problem, and can come from under-inking.
The exact roller washed in this case would be the final inking roller that transferred the ink to the stone. The ink is in a bin of sorts, and a series of rollers spreads it evenly onto the final roller. Washing the earlier ones wouldn’t usually show up on the final product except as a bit of under-inking; wiping the last roller would get transferred to the plate as a streaky impression like this card has.
We don’t see more of them because that wiping isn’t a regular thing, usually only being at shift/days end, or during a changeover to a different ink or job. Having the ink get too dry to spread is really unusual, I think I only saw it happen once in a bit over 2 years. It has to be a very dry day with a really light ink pass (Either from not having enough flow or if a light coating is required).
The solution to massive over-inking or drying ink is basically the same. The ink flow gets adjusted, and if the problem doesn’t seem to sort itself out the inking rollers need to be washed. Basically wiped down with a rag soaked in solvent. As you can imagine that leaves some really uneven ink until the rollers even it out and things get back to normal.
It’s also done at the end of the day to wash off the rollers for sitting overnight. Pretty much the entire press gets washed. The inking system cleared out and cleaned, plate and blanket cleaned. That way it’s clean and ready for the next day, or next shift or next job or color.
This card would technically be one of those tweener scraps. It shouldn’t have been released. On the other hand it’s a neat insight into the process and practices used at ALC at that time.
A big thank you to Steve for being kind enough to share his expertise with us!