Home Lithography Studio - Roller TLC
Вставка
- Опубліковано 20 вер 2024
- In this video, I am giving my neglected leather roller some much needed love. I haven't been using it recently, as I haven't needed it for my foil lithos or relief prints. On occasion I will take it out, scrape it, roll it up in ink and put it away again. As you might imagine, it was long overdue for attention.
I decided to try to recondition it with information I found in the Tamarind Techniques for Fine Art Lithography book, which suggest using mutton tallow. I was going only from written instructions, and therefore had no clue how much tallow was needed. Either way, it certainly seemed to help remove a lot more old ink than scraping alone. Caring for tools is very important, albeit probably not the most exciting part of art making. Now I need to go draw on a stone to put my roller back to use!
Thanks for watching!
Great information! You inspired me to recondition my “sleeping beauty“ roller and bring it back to life!
What's funny for me is my roller is just a bit too large for my teeny stones! So even though I'm working with stone again, it's easier for me to use a brayer for printing.
It is probably a good idea to coat all of leather, not just where the ink was, since it conditions the leather to prevent it from drying out.
Thanks. That is a good idea!
I was always curious as to how these litho rollers were constructed . . . whether the leather would have a smooth and not grained or a sueded finish...maybe something like Kangaroo. I'm still wondering what the leather is wrapped around...is it like a rolling pin or solid underneath or padded? The one mystery for me as well is how the leather is joined where the ends meet after wrapping around the roller base...as in my thinking if the join isn't flush you might end up with a crease line in the ink on your stone if not made flush somehow. The lamb tallow reminds me of when I used to work with leather and would make a concoction of Ivory soap and lard(soft-buttery-goopy consistency). I did a lot of round braiding(plaiting) so it was necessary for conditioning and lubricating as the strands had to slide easily to be pulled tight etc. I later resorted to just a thick froth of ivory and glycerin as the lard could be too messy and difficult to clean off of the work later. Anyway, I'm just reminiscing a bit. Thanks for the video...always educational.
The leather has a sueded finish and is supposed to retain its nap. I think there is solid wood, perhaps with a little padding before the leather?
I can imagine the difficulty of cleaning lard of your leather works! I will be doing the tallow treatment again soon to put it into temporary storage. Hopefully that will help when I take it out again.
And yes, you have to be careful when scraping near the seam. You can tell on mine where the seam rolled over my ink slab, but that hasn't seemed to show up in the prints. I wouldn't be choosing it for a solid flat, however, and instead using my large rubber roller that is smooth all over.
это перекаточный валик для специальной жирной краски