Solarplate intensive, relief, part I

There are lots of pictures to show, so I'm breaking them up into two.

The plate was made as a relief plate; paper was BFK, dampened; printed through the etching press w/ little pressure, no blankets, just a cardboard. We tried both plate on the print bed and paper on top, and paper on the print bed and plate on top. This was printed with the plate on the print bed and paper on top.

So this plate was just lines of different thicknesses and text at different fonts and sizes:



Detail 1—look at how the 0.1 pt line wiggled around! The 0.5 pt line also has a bit of trouble:



Detail 2—8 pt line, a lot better. You can click on the images to see larger views:



Detail 3— good view of a solid area:



The edges are all definitely moving around some for everything—text, solids, and lines. I'm going to guess that's mostly due to how we're printing them—through the etching press with a cardboard on top. I can picture in my head how the way the roller moves across at a very slight pressure would create a subtle movement. And notice that the soft edges are mostly on one side of the solid lines in detail 2 & 3 above! So my guess is that if I were to mount this type high and print it letterpress, I wouldn't see those wiggly edges on the bottom of the thick lines and the square.