Blog

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, June 4, 2019

First Collaborative Print Shop in the Northeast Opens in Lynn The Brickyard Collaborative, a makerspace that just opened its doors in Lynn, has launched the only letterpress, intaglio and silkscreen print studio available for use on a membership basis in the Northeast. Master Printmaker Mitchel Ahern, through his affiliations with the letterpress community throughout New England and Rochester, NY, has assembled a fully functional traditional print studio, dubbed “Book Arts at the Brickyard.” Among the presses they own are a Daughaday Model 1 tabletop press, a small showcard press, a Golding Pearl #3 platen press, a vintage sleigh press, a Potter #2 proof press, a wonderful vintage intaglio press, a small 4x silk screen press, a large paper cutter, and a beautiful Golding Jobber #6 that just needs some loving care after decades of neglect. While there are many studios and educational institutions that teach classes in letterpress and book arts, Ahern’s at The Brickyard Collaborative is one of only two where an aspiring letterpress devotee can actually print on an array of equipment outside of a workshop or class, and continue their career in traditional printing. “Every year thousands of students graduate with art degrees in Massachusetts, many with degrees in printmaking. But, it is difficult and expensive to set up a print shop in a small apartment or even in an artist’s studio. We created the Brickyard Collaborative Book Arts studio for people who want to print, and need a place to do so. With letterpress, intaglio and silkscreen stations we’re forging a community of artists to print great things. Letterpress, silkscreen and intaglio printing have a physical presence you just don’t get from digital prints. You can sense the hands of the craftsperson in the work. There is a significance to a handmade print that enhances event invitations, posters, cards and other important ephemera.”      -Mitchel Ahern Side-by-side with 21st century digital printing and imaging workstations, the Brickyard Collaborative Book Arts Studio is a throwback to another era of handset lead type, cast iron and the unmistakable sounds of the 19th century print shop machines. A full range of workshops is offered, including Introduction, Intermediate and Advanced Letterpress classes as well as Letterpress Printing on Fabric.  More information can be found on the website, www.thebrickyard.org. About The Brickyard Collaborative The Brickyard Collaborative is a MakerSpace in Lynn community, with two additional facets – an entrepreneurship support network of shared business facilities, mentorship and resources, as well as facilities that augment the several academic STEAM programs in the area. The Brickyard Collaborative serves primarily the city of Lynn and surrounding communities of Saugus, Nahant, Swampscott, Peabody, Danvers, Salem, Marblehead and Beverly and will build Lynn as a center of innovative thought, work, and economic strength for the North Shore. The Brickyard Collaborative is founded on a philosophy based on the power of cooperation, collaboration, a positive and supporting community of diverse, creators, builders, designers, entrepreneurs and students of any age, and is fully equipped with a Digital Studio, a Book Arts Studio, a full machine and woodshop as well as 3D printing and laser cutting capabilities. Learn more at www.thebrickyard.org Contact The Brickyard Collaborative at ted@thebrickyard.org, or call at 978 621 5178.

 

Well, there was a reason I, personally, wanted to get this thing (the makerspace) up and running.  I have a motorized, robotic easel for photographing artwork that I’ve designed and built for about 10 years now, and I occasionally get orders for them…  right now I have two on order, and I had to block off some time to build them.  I got most of the parts in, and could start work this weekend.

For all the time and effort I’ve spend getting The Brickyard up to speed, this is the first time I’ve used the shop for an actual project.  I’ve used the 3D modeling station to design and refine the motor mounts, and the 3D printer to print them.  I used the wood shop to fabricate the frame, the metal shop to cut and make up parts of the mounts, and the electronics shop to wire up the wireless motor controls.  Between all that, while the stain and varnish were drying, I got to spend some time prattling around the shop, taking care of little details that needed taking care of.  You know…  emptying the trash and hanging some lights.

The layout of the shop works well.  I used mostly the table saw, and the new blade cuts like buttah.  There’s plenty of runout for it, which I needed with the new 102″ frame.  The cutoff saw had a few issues, which just required some adjustment on the blade guard.  While I was at it, I put one of our gang of shop-vacs on it, and solved the “cutoff saw shooting sawdust all over everything” problem.  The bench sander wouldn’t start.  What’s the first rule of troubleshooting again?  Check cords and connections?  If the motor is actually plugged in to the power switch, it works a whole lot better…  That gave me a chance to true up the belt and check the bearings, and make a note that we needed a new belt and disk.

One of the first things I did while the frame was gluing up was to assemble the new lathe and test that out.  It’s a sweetheart.  All of the tools are painfully dull, and by that I mean dangerously so, but I was still able to cut a little test cylinder on some scrap wood.

The scroll saw, the big one, had some seriously funky shit going on with the power switch, (an actual wall-light dimmer instead of a switch) and I jumped it and plugged it in to test it.  It works fine.  I left it wired up, dimmer discarded, with a little pigtail power switch we inherited from somewhere, and it’s waiting for some blades.

I threw together a little framing to support the vent duct for the Glowforge, and Casey was in making stuff on that, giving us a chance to test that out.  It’s not ideal, but it’s working about 80%.  It only gets backed up with fumes if you do a long burn with smokey materials.  Needs some more work, but it’s usable.

In the meantime, I got to see the thing at work, engraving some ceramic tiles.  Cool stuff!  Since it can use Adobe Illustrator files, there’s a cool crossover into the Digital Studio resources as well.

Finally, I needed to use the Electronics Lab to solder up the wireless power supply for the motors, and since it was the first time I’d used it, it took a while for me to collect all my tools and parts, but in the process I was able to unpack a lot of the stuff that came from the garage in Salem and get myself organized.  I spread out on the Big Table, and it was amazing.  In the past I’d do this stuff on the dining room table, or on a crowded workbench in an unheated garage.  I was able to test-wire up the speed controller for the motors (didn’t work, since motor controllers don’t like the negative voltage that happens when you reverse the direction) and go on to Plan B (a variable pot.)

All in all, 3 days of work, 3 days of seeing people coming in and out of the shop, using it for their projects, having some time to sit and chat, about 30 total hours of work, topped off with some amazing BBQ with Kelly, Luther and Teresa on the fringes of the rugby field in the setting sun of Memorial Day.

Sorry, no pictures of that.  My camera was about 10′ away, and I was sitting down in one of those chairs that makes getting up to get something you don’t really need to survive (you know, like another can of ThunderFunk, perhaps) an ill-advised effort.

A great weekend, and a fantastic Memorial Day at The Brickyard, Year 1!

Ted

Keep making stuff. Take care of people, play nice and clean up after yourselves.

Time for a story.  Kind of a geeky story, but here goes.

So, we’re 100% committed to the “reuse, repair, recycle…” etc thing, and one of the things we’ve been wrestling with is computers.  First there was this sweet 27″ iMac that suddenly wouldn’t power up.  We tested it, and put in a new power supply, and no luck.  It’s probably the logic board, and that’s too much of a repair to tackle at the moment.  We pulled the drive out and migrated it to the MacBook Air that’s driving the Epson printer, and we figured we’d put the drive back in the iMac when we got a board.

In the meantime, we got about 5 older Mac towers donated.  We went through them, and 4 of them are G5s – too old to bother with, so we’re going to scavenge the cases for parts, maybe build a Hackintosh or something. We even have an idea to use a case to build a filter for the laser cutter.  The other one looked like a Mac Pro – newer, Intel processor.  We pulled that out and fired it up.  The hard drive was junk.

There it sat, on the pile, until things slowed down to a dull roar and we could think about it again.  We tried a new drive, and burning a Snow Leopard install disk.  No luck.  We tried all sorts of things to get a new drive in there with an operating system that would work.  Foiled at every turn.  You know that drive we pulled out of the iMac?  Well that now wouldn’t boot up either.

Then, reading up again, there was this thing – “Restore” – in Disk Utility.  We started making a “Restore” disk of the old Macbook Pro that’s the daily drive around here.  That’s a sketchy proposition, because all the little drivers and stuff in the OS on a disk is usually pretty keyed in to the box it’s running.  A Macbook Pro OS might not be too happy running a big Intel Mac Pro.

Mind you, we hadn’t even really confirmed this machine was, in fact, an Intel Mac Pro.

We look at it again.  We go look at our work tower, a Mac Pro.  We look at the salvage box.  We get a thought.

Why not build a “Restore” disk from the Mac Pro Intel work tower, the one that has the complete Adobe Creative Suite, a bunch of other handy apps, and looks like a pretty similar machine?

Well, we did it, and couldn’t hardly wait to run back to the Brickyard with our drive and see if it would boot up the Mac Pro.  We plugged it in, and BAM!  Booted up like nobody’s business!  After running some diagnostics and tune-ups, the new/old Mac Pro is running like a dream.

The funny part…  once we got it up and running, we checked it out (“About My Computer”).  It’s EXACTLY the same machine as our work tower – same 8GB of RAM and everything.

Sometimes you win one!

Keep making fixing stuff. Take care of people, play nice and clean up after yourselves.

Every once in a while you have to stop for a minute and take a look at where you are.  As a rockclimber friend used to say, “You’ve got to keep in mind where you are, and what you’re doing.”  This morning we did just that.  Have a look.

Book Arts

Probably some of our biggest news is the opening of the Book Arts Studio, with classes starting on June 2.  We’ve got 6 working presses:  a Daughaday Model 1 tabletop press, a small showcard press, a Golding Pearl #3 platen press, a vintage sleigh press, a Vandercook #2, a Potter #2 proof press, a wonderful vintage intaglio press, a small 4x silk screen press. a massive paper cutter, and a project – a beautiful Golding Jobber #6 that just needs some loving care, after decades of neglect.

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Digital Arts

Jump from the 19th Century into the 21st, and we bring you the Digital Arts Studio.  We have complete video, still and sound editing, design and illustration with Adobe Suite, as well as Autodesk Fusion 360 and other 3D modeling software to drive our 3D printer.  Finally, the big Epson P8000 has been printing up a storm, and our Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 is good to go.

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Co-Work

We’ve got a nice little meeting/hangout area with our Office Co-Working space, and our second show is up, featuring the work of Haley Sullivan, a Lynn native.

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Wood/Metal Shops

We’re still picking up equipment, both functional and in need of repair.  One of the missing bits was the jointer, which we just got two of last night – we’re getting right to work cleaning them up, and restoring them to good working order.  Our horizontal hack saw is the new shop favorite!

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Of course, the Rock Star of the lineup is our Glowforge Plus laser cutter – all ducted and ready to rock and roll!

Recycling/Upcycling

We also have our “Take it or Leave it” area set up, and already a lot of stuff has been repaired, used, or re-used as inspiration for new projects and new solutions.  Open to anyone, members and visitors alike to keep needless waste out of the dumpster.  We’ve already kept tons.  TONS.  …of material out of the landfills.

Electronics, Robotics, Coding

Finally, probably the area where the most kids have had the most fun, as well as learned the most, we have the Electronics, Robotics, and Coding.  We’re making everything from paper sculpture circuits to programming Raspberry Pi and building our own robot toys.

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You get the idea…  this ain’t a place that’s clean and spotless, and you’re afraid of a little creative disarray.  It’s a place where people are getting things done!

Stop by.  Check our Facebook page for our weekend “Open House” hours, usually 10-noon on Saturday and Sunday.  See you at the shop!

Welcome to Brickyard 3.0!  The next chapter…