These are the traditional, floor-standing, hand-operated, horizontal-bed, platen presses that are directly descended from Gutenberg's original of 1451. The old wooden presses, remained basically unchanged for over 350 years, so that Johannes could have walked into Ben Franklin's shop in 1760 and gotten straight to work. By the mid 19th century and the Industrial Revolution, improvements in engineering and metallurgy caused an explosion of new hand press designs, most of which were attempts to improve the weighting and leverage necessary to put the appropriate pressure on the form. A few of these presses from the 19th century still exist and today are used by purists for true "hand printing". If you want to go back even further, you can build or purchase a reproduction of a Common Press such as might have been used by Franklin.

{Price: $5,000 and up}

{Examples: Hoe, Columbian, Albion}