Paper Grain

This is an area where most people do not understand.

Paper has a grain, and paper becasue it is a wood product expands, shrinks and will actually grow as the paper gains moisture, and this is Blank paper. Now we are going to put ink on this sheet and do all kinds of nasty stuff to this wood product.

To first understand, I need to give you a visual. If you took a paper straw, and take lots of paper straws, and lay them next to each other side by side, and measure the width of your straw mat. Now roll a rolling pin over these paper straws and flatten them all out. Now measure this width!

You will find that the flatten straws are some larget then the round straws.

this is the same as in paper.

When we run paper thru a printing press we smash the paper to put the ink on the sheet, and by doing this the paper will stretch.

This is why we purchase 5 & 6 color presses, so we can smash the paper on the first unit, and print on the next 4 units. This spreads out the sheet. But what happens when we need all the units?

We will watch the last two units and will track registration, as what fit in unit one sometimes does not fit in unit 6, and we will chase this color. To the person not really looking for it, you will not see it. But to people who do this daily, it is a very tough task.

Tomorrow I will talk about cross grain as sometimes in scores and print it becomes a crap shoot?

Alan