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Feeling a bit too under the weather today to attempt ring/cylinder and motion adjustments on my Parade, I decided to do something that I've wanted to do for a long time: compare silk, nylon, and cotton ribbons on a number of my machines.
The results are below. Each of the ribbons is from Ribbons Unlimited and freshly opened for this experiment. The paper is Hammermuehle A4 20lb laser printer paper (it's what was on-hand).
In general, as others on this forum have pointed out, silk outshines nylon. It is interesting, though to see how very differently the three behave on each machine. I do like the way cotton shows on pica and tend to use that on most of my pica machines, even though it requires more type slug cleaning. I'd not tried silk before today.
And please excuse all the smudges and increasing mistakes as it goes along. Perhaps I should've stayed in bed and attempted this another day...
(click to get to the full resolution scan)
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HI Rob,
Thanks for doing this. Such a nice comparison.
Too bad, we did not get to see of photo of your fingers all inked-up after all that work.
Get well soon !
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That's where a pair of latex or vinyl examination gloves come in really handy (pardon the pun). Put the gloves on, do your ribbon work, take the gloves off and hands still clean.
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Thanks for sharing this, Rob!
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skywatcher wrote:
That's where a pair of latex or vinyl examination gloves come in really handy (pardon the pun). Put the gloves on, do your ribbon work, take the gloves off and hands still clean.
Amusingly, I was wearing nitrile gloves (just as when I'm working the car) when I did this, and having those gloves on made some part of my brain go, "Well, since I've got gloves on, my hands are clean no matter what, so I don't have to wipe them after changing a ribbon" - hence all the smudges and my having to frequently wipe the keycaps off...
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I have gotten pretty good with 2 pairs of long-tweezers when it comes to changing ribbon...no longer need to use gloves.
.
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I use gloves when changing ribbons on my Smith Premier machines. Bigger ribbon, more ink.