Gwen Raffo
2015

Interview with the Colonial Printer in Williamsburg – Bookbinding Shop
Basically, the printer is like a big stamp. It works the same way as a stamp so if I want to print a copy of that, the first thing I have to do is ink it. You use ink balls to put the ink on it. I rub them together to make sure the ink is spread out evenly over the surface of both. You now beat the ink onto top. It’s called beating. You grab the next sheet of paper and mount it in position now you fold the cover down then put out it under the press. Most of the ink, but not all of it, should now be on the paper. Once the sheets are printed on both sides, the paper is set to dry. Then the sheet is torn in half along a straight edge. Each half sheet can later be cut to the size of the book.

How long would it take to print a book?
It depends on the book. If it is just a small pamphlet then it would take a few days. To make a book, it might take weeks, or months or in an extreme case, maybe a year. The printing goes pretty quickly, but the book takes a long time. The biggest hold back is changing the letter blocks.  There are about 1,800 letter blocks on a small page. Just one page alone can take over an hour to set. There are 3 pages here so you are looking at 3 hours just to set 3 pages worth of letters.

Caleb KB
2015

Interview with the Williamsburg Printer – Print Shop

How would you get the paper?
Well most of the paper was shipped overseas from England until the war when we might not even get paper. For example, newspapers from before the war were bigger than during the war. We stopped printing the Gazette for a little bit because they literally ran out of paper.

How long would it take to make a Gazette and how many copies would you have to print?
The entire paper doesn’t have to be reset because some of the ads are the same, but some of the stories are different. 2/3 or 3/4 of the paper has to be reset. The bare minimum of papers that I would have to print is about 250-300 copies. In Virginia, if you print a new edition more than one time a week, then you wouldn’t make enough to make it worth it. Whereas in a large place like London, you could do it every day but of course you had to hire more workers. For a 16 page pamphlet, you would probably have to sell a few hundred copies to make it worth it. Now let’s say I’m doing a 300 page book, then I would have to sell several thousand copies. Do you think that people in Virginia will buy several thousand copies? No, probably not.