1. An Unexpected Difficulty

There is another style of "restoration" common in the letterpress printing community which seeks to "prettify" or "gussy up" a machine so that it looks "better" than it did originally. Strip and repaint. Apply pinstriping whether it had it or not. Wire brush and polish machined surfaces just to make them shine. Within the letterpress printing community, such practices are still held in the highest esteem and the restorers who do this are proud of their work. But I have never been comfortable with this. I knew I wouldn't be doing it to the Barth, but, still, I was approaching the Barth as an industrial machine rebuilder.

Here's what happened: Back in the middle of 2016 I was doing my first serious work on the machine. (I thought I was running late then, having acquired the machine in 2014 - I had no idea that I would make no real progress until 2018!) At that time, I was treating the machine in the manner which is normal for this field: as a machine rebuilding project. That is, my goal was to get it back into service, and I would do whatever it would reasonably take to accomplish this. This is standard practice for industrial machinery, and for industrial machinery it is a normal and expected part of the life-cycle of a machine. If this Barth were a 30 year old engine lathe, then doing a standard industrial machine rebuild on it would be perfectly appropriate. But the Barth isn't a common machine only a few decades old. It's a highly unusual machine that might well be over a century old.

So I started working on its electrical system. Immediately I found problems and puzzles. For one thing, it was clear that with the exception of the pot heating elements themselves and the electric motor, no part of this electrical system should ever see service again. This machine as it stood installed at American Type Founders prior to the 1993 auction was unsafe and should have been shut down then as an electrical safety hazard. There is no indication that the machine was ever grounded. The insulation on the existing wiring had in several cases crumbled and fallen off. In one case a bare wire carrying 208V AC was within a quarter of an inch of touching the (ungrounded) machine. One good bump to the right place and the next operator to touch the machine would have died. In another case one of the pot heater wires, which initially was a proper heat-resistant wire, had been replaced by a Type TW wire. Type TW wire is an early thermoplastic insulated kind of wire common on house wiring in the 1950s. It is rated to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. It was running to a pot that would be operating in excess of 725 degrees Fahrenheit.

So there were basic problems to be addressed. In addition, the wiring was just plain hard to understand. It did strange things. The power wiring for the throat heater, for example, was wired to the thermal overloads (confusingly called "heaters") for the motor starter switch. What? I think I figured it all out, but as there were some missing connections (the machine had been ripped crudely from its installation at ATF) I may never know for certain.

With all of this going on, I figured that I should contact the other two custodians of Barth casters so that I could compare this one with theirs. What I discovered startled me. In every single case, the Barths which had been returned to service had had their pot electrics stripped off and had been reconverted back to gas pots (though the electric throat heaters were kept). As I understand it presently, only one other Barth retains its ex-ATF wiring. The rest have all been rebuilt with modern electrical and gas heating components.

I should emphasize at this point that there is nothing wrong with what was done with them. In each case, those machines came from one industrial service (ATF) and went into another (The Dale Guild and two private collectors). What was done with them was just the normal machine rebuilding which was appropriate to them at this point in their life cycle.

But the machine in my shop is different. It's the next-to-the-last one, and I have no control over the last one (and I'm not sure it is even wired up like this one - it probably is not). If I just continue with the standard practices in my field and rebuild it with modern electrics, reconvert it to gas, and throw away the old junk, then I'll have destroyed a significant and irreplaceable part of its machine history. If I just want to start making 60 point type for hobby and art printers, then I should do this (and get on with it). If I want to preserve the history of typecasting, I cannot.

2. A Discovery: Restorative Conservation

So I was stuck. But - entirely coincidentally - at the same time I discovered the path forward. I ran across a book by a respected professional in the field of historical conservation who addresses and deals with the kind of problem that I have with this Barth:

Watson, John R. Artifacts in Use: The Paradox of Restoration and the Conservation of Organs. Richmond, VA: OHS Press, 2010.

Watson is a professional pipe organ conservator. How is a pipe organ like a type casting machine? They're both big, complicated, expensive-to-maintain objects which take up valuable space. Both pipe organs and type casters will be scrapped unless they are used. If a pipe organ is used, it is a magnificent part of a building. If it's silent wood and pipe-metal, it's just blocking the view. If a type caster is producing type, people will tolerate its continued existence. If it's just cold cast iron, it's taking up costly real estate and has obvious value as scrap metal.

Moreover, both pipe organs and type casters are physical records of the practices of the past. They record information which exists nowhere else, and once it's gone, it's gone. So if we examine the wood of an organ pipe under a microscope, we can see the tool marks of its maker. We can see into the 18th century (or earlier) and learn how they worked. This knowledge, at this level of detail, is nowhere else available to us. But if we take this same organ pipe and run an orbital sander over it to refinish it, we've lost that knowledge. Not "lost" as in we misplaced it, but "lost" as in we chose to destroy it. Until recently, this was exactly what was done with pipe organs. It was called "restoration," and because the end result is pretty, it was valued. It still is valued in many circles; Watson has to make an argument - has to convince others in his field - that it is wrong.

We see this also in other fields. In antique cars, for instance, the winners of the Concours d'Elegance still contain many of the molecules of metal of the original vehicles, but typically they have been "restored" out of recognition and are very, very shiny new cars built out of parts of the originals. The original car is gone. (I'm exaggerating here, but not as much as could be wished.)

In other fields, however, attitudes are changing. These changes are documented well in another book:

Simeone, Frederick A., ed. The Stewardship of Historically Important Automobiles. Philadelphia, PA: Simeone Automotive Foundation / Coachbuilt Press, 2012.

Simeone's subject is antique car "restoration" and conservation, and his point is that because of "restoration" we are close to losing the last remaining pieces of the very history we wish to save. But his most telling examples - at least if you are skeptical - come from antique art and furniture restoration vs. conservation. This is a fully mature field of collecting, and in it the problem of "restoration" meets the bottom line: Auction-house values of original-condition pieces can easily be 15 times higher than those of even moderately altered pieces ( and heavily "restored" pieces are almost valueless). Not $30,000 ("restored"), but $475,000 (with its history intact).

What Watson outlines is a method of approaching complex and problematic historic machines which simultaneously returns them to service (thus keeping them from the scrap dealer and burn pile) while conserving them as physical original documents contemporary with the history we wish to understand and preserve. Watson calls this "restorative" conservation, but it might be easier to think of it as "conservation in working condition."

So it became clear to me that the approach that I must take with this Barth type caster is that of Restorative Conservation. What that really means is something that I'm still discovering.

3. The Path Forward

This journal entry isn't the place to try to lay out in detail the approach that I'm planning on taking in this project (or the way in which I want to take it beyond restorative conservation and into the realm of "engineering rediscovery" - because, yes, I'm crazy). For that, see the Notebook on Goals and Guidelines for this Barth Project.

At the same time, and in direct conflict with these Goals and Guidelines, I'm feeling some pressure. This pressure is entirely inside my own head; my friends in the typecasting community are exemplary people who are not applying any pressure at all. Still, I feel an obligation to them to produce a working machine. I've had this one for four years now, and have made scant progress. The 40th anniversary Conference of the American Typecasting Fellowship is coming up soon. I'd like nothing better than to have this Barth casting by then. I'm making no promises! But it is an obvious goal.

So for the first stages, now in May/June 2018, I'm going to adopt a plan of action which gets me to casting type as soon as is possible without violating any basic principles of restorative conservation. Primum non nocere. First do no harm. What will fall by the wayside, for now, is the more detailed documentation that I intend; this can follow after, so long as I keep good notes. Writing takes a lot of time.

In concrete terms, the first steps have to do with the electrics: motor and pot heating. It's pretty clear that the only parts which can be used in the original setup are the motor (a 1.5 HP Kimble 3-phase), the two pot heating elements (General Electric 1A170 Tubular Heaters), and the Nipple Heater. Fortunately, all of the other electrical components can be removed from the machine cleanly. This process has been photographed and will be documented; these components will be preserved permanently with the machine. It would be possible in the future to return the machine to the same state that it was in at the 1993 ATF auction just after it was removed from service.

Actually, I've already begun this process. On May 26, 2018, the motor on the Barth ran under power for the first time in at least 25 years. A new phase converter is in place to provide three-phase power for it. The next few Journal entries will begin the documentation of this phase of the project.

4. Known Problems

There are a number of problems that are inherent in this approach.

First, I'm likely to alienate my own community.

Over the past decade, it has been a great discovery and comfort to me to become a part of the typefounding and letterpress printing communities. Many of the people in these communities have become good friends and mentors. Yet here I'm asserting that everything we've been doing - in many cases, exactly what you have been doing - is wrong.

There is a fine distinction to be made here. Up until just about now, plain old industrial machine building was in fact the right thing to do. So if you're one of my friends in the typecasting community and are reading this, I hope you'll understand that I am not saying you did anything wrong. You didn't. But the times are changing. Typecasting machinery is getting scarce. The old type foundries and Monotype shops are gone - all of them. What was right a few years ago is wrong today. Nothing in this Barth project and my approach concerns what we did in the past. The only thing that is important is what we do in the future.

Second, I'm likely to alienate professional conservators.

I'm not qualified to do this. I'm certain to make mistakes - some of which will horrify real conservators. But if I don't do it, nobody will. The alternative is that the machine is either scrapped (as most have been) or that its history is destroyed in the process of rebuilding it.

Third, it isn't at all clear how to do this.

The technical literature in "restorative conservation" is scant. The technical literature even for regular conservation of industrial machinery is much less well developed than other areas of conservation (such as paintings or furniture). A start has been made. The Institute of Conservation [in England] now has a Dynamic Objects Network with a focus on things with moving parts. But a part of my process here is going to be to discover what I should be doing while in the process of doing it. So (again), I will make mistakes.

Fourth, I'm not even qualified in plain old industrial machine rebuilding.

My doctorate is in English and American Literature. I was a technical writer by trade. I'm a second-generation computer programmer by trade and training. I should have been a machinist, but I wasn't. I'm just a self-taught retired guy tinkering around in his shed. So you can't rely upon anything here for guidance even if you're just rebuilding an ordinary machine.

Please consider this as more than an idle disclaimer when it comes to any area involving safety: electrity, moving parts, molten metal, etc. I'm working with 240V AC at up to 30A, 1.5 HP geared way down, open mechanisms designed with Victorian (un)safety attitudes, and molten metal under high pressure. These things can hurt, scar, and maim you in an instant. These things can kill you. I'm careful, and I'm comfortable in what I do for myself in my own shop. I am presenting this as documentation of what I've done so as to preserve the history of this machine. I am NOT presenting it as any kind of guidance for you to do it too.