Alpha-Blox Wood Type Production
American Type Founders made a creative set of printer’s type in lead, whick they called Alpha=Blox. It’s predominant characteristice being that is can be arranged in endless variations to create solid ink, or winding pathways, or actual letterforms etc with the designs they made.
I always wanted to make more wood type, and this set presented a way that I could make smth ‘standardized’ and non-letterform-based, as an experiment. This helped me because there wasn’t a need to do an entire alphabet (with each character carved in multiple) to have a finished set.
Cut on a router
Using a Pantograph
A pantograph is a useful tool that will ‘trace’ and object, while a pen or router is moving in a 1:2 or 1:6 or 1:16 ratio, smaller or larger! This allow for a pattern in any design to be traced by hand, and the router is safely removing wood-material in the exact same design over and over.
