PROGAMER - animated gifs ;)

Sanding with 600 grit paper and burnishing with light oil after using a file to establish a 45° angle.
This is done to protect the paper and felts from the sharp (if unbeveled) edges of the copper plate. The press applies more than 10t of pressure to the copper plate, sharp edges would cut the felt, and that cut would show in every print pulled.

Close up of burnishing, smoothing down any crates that might still be there, being very careful not to slip upwards into the plate - that would destroy the fine etched grey values and leave an almost irreperable line. I somehow get a weird kick out of this part of the preparation - it's the dullest and simultaneously one of the most tense moments of the entire photogravure process.

Woop! Alternate.ClouD in da house
Laying down a sheet of Japanese Gampi paper on a wet, inked up plate. Applying wheat starch paste, brushing it out flat.

Japanese Gampi is a very thin -10gsm!- but incredibly strong paper. Due to the unique way Japanese papers are made the fibres stay very long, making the paper a lot stronger than European rag papers. However, it's too flimsy to display later on - so it gets printed in a process that it called chine collé, in which the thin paper takes the image (with more details than a European paper could) and simultaneously gets laminated onto a backing sheet of thick rag paper. The glueing agent is wheat starch paste, which is used in Asian scroll making since centuries.

After it is run through the press the Gampi paper is now glued to the backing sheet, adding that warm shine behind the image, as opposed to the clear white of the backing sheet.

mouz.Mana! If only printing would go as fast as in the gif - print, print, print