I've been meaning to get a small Adana Letterpress forever. I saw one a couple of years ago, and I could never get over it. Because of that, I've had an eBay search setup for years, waiting for the day the perfect specimen showed up. It finally did.

The Adana Agency was founded in 1922 by Donald Aspinwall in Twickenham. I find it extremely fascinating how it always seemed to be directed towards the hobby printer. The machines are reliable and easy to maintain. They have no bearings, most moving parts are metal on metal with only oil to ease their movement. They are still fairly popular and there's a decent amount of information online on how to take care of them. In 1987 the company was purchased by Caslon who still provides some parts for these machines today.

I got myself a small 6×4 model. The High Speed 2, as it seemed to be called, is a nicely sized machine. It is perfect for postcards and other small prints, it's also a tiny, lightweight machine which is perfect for my tiny, lightweight apartment.

It was in good shape, had some corrosion, but all pieces seemed to move and most importantly, be there. I wanted to get it done over a weekend, so I had to plan accordingly.

I started work early on Saturday, disassembling the entire machine and sorting the pieces that were rusty and the ones that were only dirty. This took quite long, a lot of nuts were rusty enough that removing them was challenging. I used a lot of bike chain oil (I like using it in lieu of penetrating oil) and waited, eventually most of them gave in and could be unscrewed. Luckily, the nuts that couldn't be removed didn't really prevent the rest of the machine from being disassembled. By the end of the day, I had all my pieces ready for cleaning.

On Sunday, everything that was rusty went into a bucket with Evaporust. I was doing most of this in my living room, so Evaporust was the only real rust-removing solution I'd be able to use safely. Everything was left in the solution and I checked it every 30 minutes, removing the pieces as they became rust-free. I didn't want to leave anything longer than what was absolutely needed because I worried about things like springs become brittle.

By the end of the day I had cleaned everything and I left all pieces out to air dry. I couldn't finish the project on time, so I had to do a couple of final things on Monday before final assembly. All moving parts that had rust removed received a spray of WD-40. This should prevent them from rusting right away. They would get some bike chain oil once the machine was assembled as well. I built a small plywood platform to mount the machine on, once it was fully assembled.

Assembly was nice and quick, most pieces only fit in one way, and it's not hard to figure out¹. Once done I oiled all moving parts and filled in the small oil ports that cover the machine. I did this a couple of times until everything felt well oiled and no squeaks remained.

I proceeded to mount it on the board I had prepared, oil everything again and 3d printed a couple of holders for rollers and the ink disk. Finally, I was ready for a test run.

I don't have type. I also don't think I want to have type. I would love to have type, but I am generally speaking, scared of lead. If I managed to find non-lead alternative to type I'll use that. In the meantime, I am experimenting with 3D printing, my first attempt went well enough, and I think with a couple of small improvements it'll be good enough for the kind of things I want to print.

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