million rectangles (IV)

some of the process (the part that i did a bunch of times)

this is the paper after doing some printing i had it stacked in a spray booth (it is still there as of this writing but will soon be in my studio (i'm getting ahead of myself)) in the printmaking studio. each box weighed about 128 pounds.
this is the roller that i used to put the ink onto the plate.
the roller, a can of ink, my palette knife, and the ink after spreading it with the palette knife and roller.
the first inking of the plate
these are some of the earliest prints... i pulled three prints from each inking of the plate: one was the original, one was the ghost print (from the ink leftover after the original print was made), and one was the transfer print (from the ink on the original). so the original is the darkest, the ghost is the medium value, and the transfer is the light value.

million rectangles (III)

the day my paper was delivered.

this is my pallet of paper that was delivered to the loading dock on the side of the school. used the lift to bring it up and into the building.
seven boxes of paper, each with 1,000 sheets.
the pallet after getting it into the studio.
each sheet of paper is 18x24 inches
the first box that i opened. two stacks of 500 sheets. the total weight of the paper was around 900 pounds.

million rectangles (II)

once the plates were put together

i went on to use a hand plane to scrape off the finish from the wood (i would have sanded it off but the wood shop is pretty strict with how the tools are used, and being that i was using salvaged wood i wasn't allowed to use the nice big sander).
after i scraped the plates i used the table saw with a dado blade to cut half inch grooves that made the grid of 144 rectangles (12x12 in case you didn't want to count).
i made four plates thinking that i would need that many, but after i started printing i realized that two was enough. these are the plates stacked on the printing press with a felt blanket underneath (the blanket is used to protect the press).
this is a block of wood that i salvaged from the scrap bin and modified with the thought that i would use it to align the paper on the plate.
another view of my alignment block... it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth and i aligned the paper by touch with my fingers.

million rectangles (I)

this is the first real post about my million rectangles. i say "real" because i want to start with the beginning of the process after having done the planning and test prints. after considering for a while what kind of material to use i found that i could use stair treads that are relatively cheap, so that is what i used for the test plate. after printing ten sheets i decided to try and find a more cost effective material for the plates and in a conversation with my Dad we discussed using a piece of furniture (deconstructing and then making plates from the wood). with some shopping behind me (unfruitful shopping because most of the furniture i found was made of particle board and other shoddy materials) i went out on a date with Shauna to get some treats for breakfast and we happened upon a thrift store that was going out of business. the top floor didn't yield anything so we went downstairs and discovered a bookshelf that seemed to be the perfect wood for the job (it was hard enough and old enough to have pretty good grain)...

this is the shelf in the thrift store basement after taking all the books and shelves out
with help from my buddy Brad, we dismantled it and hauled it down to the school so i could start building plates.
these are the shelves which ended up being the primary material.
another shot of them.
the edge of a shelf after i drilled for the dowels
the glue "smooing" out from the edge glued/doweled/and clamped wood
three plates clamped (or at least parts of plates, i had to build some of them with more than two pieces of wood)
after the gluing i put them in the corner of the wood shop to dry. so there is the first step of a few to get a million rectangles printed.