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Three years ago Colonial Williamsburg started work on a new common press. In fact, with a grant from the "Newseum" in Arlington, VA, they made two presses, one for the museum, and one for the Colonial Williamsburg working print shop. Here's a photo of the finished press.
Elm, from trees on the Williamsburg site, was selected, and the press was made primarily in the cabinet maker's shop. Elm was an authentic, but not popular, choice of wood. Structurally sound, elm has properties that make it very strong, due to the twisting of the fibers. These same properties make it difficult to work with, and the cabinetmakers I interviewed named the choice of wood as their most difficult problem. The screw for the press presented the most complicated problem in making, and was machined by a master blacksmith off-site, one of the few parts of the project that was contracted out. Here, a Williamsburg blacksmith shows the finished screw.
The common press used at Colonial Williamsburg is a replica, designed to be authentic to the period, based on research done on other common presses in use in the mid-1700's in the American Colonies.
Of more or less the same basic design, the Common Press was used from the time of Gutenburg in the 1500's,
and up until the late 1800's, when a series of inventions Printing on the common press involved a series of steps, which in a commercial shop would typically be carried out by specialized workmen. First, of course, the type was set by compositors, and the pressman then locked it into the chase. The type to be printed was then inked with leather balls, then printed on to dampened paper; typically a two man operation with an apprentice or "devil's helper," inking the type, and the printer "pulling" the press.
After the paper was printed, it was removed and hung on a line to dry.
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