News 44, Autumn 2001
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News No 44, Autumn 2001BAPH Watermarked Paper Special paper made by hand at Wookey Hole in Somerset, with BAPH watermark, in un-torn sheet form and packs of note paper with envelopes is offered for sale. Details of the paper, costs and order form available on this web site. BAPH Visit to West Ferry Printers, Isle of Dogs, London, 25 July 2001 West Ferry Printers (WFP) is one of the largest web offset printers in Europe. The business was created in 1984 after a decision to move the southern editions of the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph from Fleet Street to a 12.5 acre wasteland site in London's Docklands. In 1986 the firm produced its first commercial newspaper at the Docklands site. By 2000 they were producing around 27 million newspapers every week, on 18 Goss presses for around 60 different titles including the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times and The Observer. BAPH members were greeted by Mr. John McCarthy and his colleagues, Tony
Curtis and Lee Palmer, then shown a short video detailing the history of the
company, before touring the print works. This followed the sequence of producing
a newspaper, from raw materials to finished product, so began in the Reel Store.
WFP uses 280,000 reels of newsprint each year from 20 suppliers. The tour proceeded to the Production Desks where the printing is monitored. Newspapers are removed from the press and checked for print quality. If anything is amiss it is then rectified; no mean feta given that all 18 presses run at a maximum speed of 17 to 19 newspapers a second. Printed newspapers are folded, supplements inserted and then moved to the Packing Room where they are bundled and loaded onto lorries for distribution. The whole process takes place in a building specifically designed to take in newsprint reels at one end and distribute newspapers from the other. We viewed another important area, the Plate Room. Here, the made-up pages are received from the journalists via fax from which a negative is generated. After checking, the negatives are developed onto aluminium printing plates from which the newspapers are printed. This visit to WPF was very interesting and informative. For me, the most
impressive aspect was the scale, that no statistics can convey adequately, but
which must be seen to be appreciated. I would thoroughly recommend a visit. Lorraine Finch Parchment Did you know that 'one sheep yields no more than a single sheet (two leaves)
of parchment for a folio book'? Thus 'a very large flock of sheep might have to
be slaughtered to obtain the parchment needed for a single codex'. and just for fun... Phil Crockett noted from Webwatch a suggestion that now computers have taken over from paper, we can fold the redundant paper into flying machines such as the paper helicopter and the blimp. Instructions: www.paperairplanes.co.uk Update on the Paper Trail The Paper Trail at Apsley in Hertfordshire is a project conceived to save an important heritage asset - the site of the world's first continuous papermaking machine - into a national centre for paper media. As a registered charity, Apsley Paper trail now owns the freehold of the site and secured a 150 year lease on Frogmore Mill where paper is once again being made. With a full-time Project Director, supported by a team of specialists, plans are on target to celebrate the 200th anniversary of mechanised papermaking on site in 2003. Paper Age Pipes 'A man of the Paper Age could smoke his pipe tobacco out of a
paper pipe ... moulded from wood-pulp or from sheets of absorbent paper' and a
thimble of porous earthenware is placed in the bowl to prevent burning. Recycling 'His dingy white collar and cravat had died the death of old
linen, and had gone to their long home at the paper-maker's, to live once again
one day in quires at a stationer's.' |
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