We had a full page Illinois Power Company ad each week in our weekly newspaper. We would receive the mold for the ad in the mail from the power company. It would be a hard and thick single layer paper material with the image embossed in it. Maybe twice as thick as card stock, and hard and brittle. It would have the text and any picture they wanted in the ad. It was a mirror image, of course. We would set the mold up in a holder (can't remember the proper name) and pour hot lead in the cavity between the holder and the mold. We used modeling clay on the back side of the mold to keep it from bending out from the weight of the lead, which would leave an unwanted dark spot on the printed page. The finished casting would be about a quarter inch thick. After it cooled, we would carefully strip the mold away and see if we got a good cast. If we did, (it rarely failed) we would drill small holes in the corners of the casting, then carefully nail the casting to a piece of wood about 3/4 inch thick (so it would be at the same elevation as the type). Card stock was used for shims behind the wood to fine tune the height. You strived for a clean image without indenting the paper.
It was an interesting place to work. I was a teenager, so that was 55 or so years ago.
The machine that we poured the ads with had an open hot lead pot with a big handle that would tip the pot to pour the lead into the molds. After the last casting was made, the shop owner would lay a sheet of newspaper on the surface of the hot lead, then set an old coffee pot on the newspaper. The newspaper sheet would turn brown, but wouldn't ignite, and it would "float" that coffee pot all evening. I never did figure that out.
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Today's Featured Article - Restoration Story: Fordson Major - by Anthony West. George bought his Fordson Major from a an implement sale about 18 years ago for £200.00 (UK). There is no known history regarding its origins or what service it had done, but the following work was undertaken alone to bring it up to show standard. From the engine number, it was found that this Major was produced late 1946. It was almost complete but had various parts that would definitely need replacing.
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