Brian Queen, Castle Paper & Press

Brian Queen, Castle Paper & Press

   This is my Franklin brand straight pin perforator which is similar to a Rosback and about the same age, roughly 100 years old and operated via a foot pedal. I purchased it for $300 from a printing equipment dealer in Toronto and had it shipped across the country to Calgary where it now resides in my studio. It perforates a line 20” long with 303 pins but 50 of them were missing so I purchased the minimum 500 pins from Rosback and replaced them all. My pins are 40 thousands of an inch in diameter while the holes in the bottom plate measure 45 to 55 thousands of an inch which indicates that this machine has perfed a lot of holes! As a result I get mostly hanging chads unless I use a backing sheet. A friendly engineer at Rosback told me that the holes should only be 1 thousands of an inch larger than the pins so I’m looking into having a new die plate machined to complete the restoration.

   The front and back plywood boards were in bad shape and not original so I replaced them with MDF but these new boards clash with the antique look of the rest of the machine so I plan on replacing them with stained solid wood boards.