Thank you kindly for all the sweet words and hootin’ and hollerin’. : )

Credit’s due to Mr. Retro for their phenomenal Permanent Press photoshop filter used in quickly roughing up the first sample. The effect can be even more impressive (no pun intended) with a little more elbow grease. Thalamic, on the other hand, truly went the extra mile with his fs ooki woodcut prints, so my hat’s off to him.

The Hamilton Wood Type Museum and Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection deserve a couple nods each for offering reams of inspiration, historical background and reference material. Nick Sherman’s Intercut Wood Typeface Project schooled me and still breathes life into the dream that I might someday make Stampede! into functional wood type. Great reading, fontstructors; Nick even explores the modularity of wood type design.

Until then, I’ll save up my bits for wrangling a copy of Typeface, a documentary about the HWTM and how a small, dedicated set is keeping this very analog craft alive. A dream of visiting Wisconsin seems just a bit more within reach...

In the interest of transparency, here is a complete list of changes I made. They’re minor, to be sure:

• fixed serif weight for fourth alternate A and X
• tweaked bracketing for H
• added alternate Z in lowercase
• modified tilde and added ñ

Also:

• alt A, H updated, and alt Z added to sample/s

However small the changes, I should have made them to a clone and waited patiently until after the judging/favoriting results are in. It doesn’t matter that I don’t think these tweaks will sway the competition result in my favor. I can’t even excuse myself as being bad at following rules, as there are none! Perfectionism be damned, sorry for the selfish decision.

Thanks, guys! :) I have always been quite smitten with the curved bricks and the challenge of using them at maximum scale. When all the details finally come together, often after seemingly impassable heights, it is one of those “riding off into the sunset” moments.

I decided to go for it armed only with total confidence in creating that most important juncture of the letter ‘B’. My compadres in this effort are of course the new arcs and their composite brethren. The whole parade would fall flat on its face after quickly getting bucked from the bronco without their steadying hand.

@funk_king: I really hope you enjoy those links. Many of the type specimens will be familiar based on the range of digitizations and the many older classics that were cut as wood type. Still, I think it’s pretty damn cool to see them cataloged in all their analog glory. And highly educational. So many antique/antiquated details are simply lost in their modern incarnations, and the charming texture and imperfections of real wood type prints can only be simulated so well. Regarding letterpress – and this is across the typographic board – I am not alone in recognizing it’s a train the electronic revolution never caught.

My only disappointment here is that I could not find anything really compelling to see or share on how to operate a wood type-cutting pantograph. I intend to pick up the Typeface documentary to see more – or better yet, start saving up for that road trip to Wisconsin! :)