This is a 1937 Vandercook No. 4 flatbed cylinder press, serial number 7252 (which is registered on the Vandercook Census here.) It was purchased by The Bindery in 2022 from the former Locust Street Press in Belvidere, Illinois where it lived for many years prior.

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The press is set up for American type-height (.918") and the bed is flat and level. It runs on standard, single-phase, 120v power and other general model specs can be found here if you're not familiar.

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When we bought this press it was dirty, rusty and not fully functional (more rehab details below). Today it stands as a beautiful, solid workhorse ready to print. The many brass fixtures have a wonderful patina that we purposely kept as-is, plus it has the older style base cabinet (which we prefer): it has ample storage below with closable cabinets that keep sticky ink/dust away! The knobs and hinges are all brass.

This press has been very lightly used at The Bindery, mainly for educational purposes: printing posters and cards during group classes and private lessons. It is easy to use, clean, and maintain.​ The press is currently set up and available for showings right here in our shop in Milwaukee, WI. We're happy to host serious buyers for a visit.

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Important: this model-version is a little rarer in that it does not have a foot pedal to open the paper grippers. The grippers are instead raised automatically during the cylinder's return to the feed board when the press is in motion. We like this for two reasons: 1) it makes the press more accessible for those who do not have use of their feet--it can be fully operated by arms only!... and 2)it can highly speed up production to not have to return the carriage to the feed tray, fully stop, press on the pedal, and then start again. Instead the paper can be loaded in, gripped, and printed all in one smooth motion. If this is hard to envision, we're happy to show you!

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The press's rollers were redone in 2023 and have been very rarely used. They are in excellent condition. (We have an SP-15 that we use for most things.) Other refreshes are discussed below. The press is clean and has been lovingly oiled and maintained.

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Transparency (aka is there anything wrong with this press?)

Like any vintage press, it's certainly not "perfect" and could have some minor tweaks and adjustments performed to make it so! The only slight issue that we haven't 100% fixed yet is with the inking assembly: it takes a little fussing sometimes to get the vibrator, riders, and form rollers all spinning together well to fully distribute the ink when the motor is on.

This, we believe, is fully fixable--perhaps with just minor adjustments--but we haven't investigated more because, again, with a little fussing around during set up, we can get it work just fine with everything happily rolling along. We'd rather spend 10 more minutes with a screwdriver and some masking tape each time, than try to suss out any grander issue. To be clear: the inking works fine--with patience :)

The price reflects this.

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Otherwise we did the brunt of the work already to get this press cleaned up and fully operational again! Any lover of letterpress knows that each press has its own "personality" and this beauty is no different. With a little love from the next owner it likely could be perfect, but we didn't feel the need (again, it prints fine as-is) and we'll leave any further modifications to you!

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