Here’s a remarkable video posted recently on Vimeo: the exceptional skill required to carve a steel punch that creates a matrix into which molten type metal can be poured to make a letter.
The art of punch-cutting
Here’s a remarkable video posted recently on Vimeo: the exceptional skill required to carve a steel punch that creates a matrix into which molten type metal can be poured to make a letter.
The video is very exciting for all the information the film of a punch being cut and struck into the matrix blank and the interview with Matthew Carter give on the processes involved. The question that arises for me is how were earlier, pre-nineteenth century matrices formed? In this film Paul Rädisch’s squared-all-round punch is struck and and the matrix registered with very sensitive machinery. Early punches were not squared up, they were thoroughly irregular except for the face, and I wonder how the exacting task of striking them into the copper at 90 degrees and to a consistent depth was achieved.
Dear Robin,
I too wondered this and imagined that there must have been some kind of rudimentary device that held the punch above the matrix that prevented it from being driven past a certain depth. Unfortunately no early type-casting equipment has been found. The truth is probably that the work of squaring up the matrices required quite a bit of filing, much as each piece of type produced by the matrix also had to be “dressed”. Another of life’s mysteries! All the best, Alix
I agree with Alix that there was a simpler alignment device to position the punches before the matrix was struck.
Remember that the finished matrix can be moved under the mold casing to adjust the ultimate position of the letter on the type body. This is done today with Thompson and Monotype casters when the operator moves the matrix in small increments to position the letters appropriately on the type body.
The thing I have never been able to figure out is how the depth of the matrix strike was controlled. A small amount more or less in striking the punch with the mallet will cause the punch to plunge deeper or shallower, causing potentially great differences in the overall depth of the letter.
A shoulder filed into a punch would allow a control point for depth, but I have never seen such a shoulder (though my exposure to punches has been very limited). I plan to visit a number of foundries and museums in the next year to look into this deeper, and formulate a better idea of how the Z dimension of matrix-making was/is done.
Brian P. Lawler
California Polytechnic State University
Shakespeare Press Museum
During the puzzling-out part of my research before writing “Gutenberg’s Apprentice,” I too imagined various devices that
would stop the punch as it was being driven into the matrix at a fixed and standard point. Perhaps this is something that Stan Nelson has figured out? Please, someone, ask him, and let us all know!