How to make a manual printing press from a vintage cast-iron mangle
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In June 2026 we finally completed a 10-month project to convert a cast-iron mangle (which was maybe 130 yrs old) into a printing press. We waved farewell on 18th June when it was taken away to the Shire by its new owner. The printing press emerged very nicely from all the work that went into making it, being a fusion of a heritage machine with a new function and some new materials, in particular the stainless steel rollers. It looked the part and also worked well. |
Here is the story of how we gave an old mangle a new life.
The mangle was donated in May 2025 after spending decades outside as a garden ornament. It looked quite rough at first: the wooden rollers rotted away a long time ago, the iron handwheel was seized onto the steel roller shaft, the spring hand-screw was seized and the steel spring leaves were corroded to the point of failure. The iron frames, however, had survived functionally okay with some of the original red and green paint remaining.
We thought that freeing the mechanisms might improve the machine’s appeal to potential buyers. We managed to free the spring hand-screw but were unsuccessful with the main handwheel. It looked like oxy-acetylene would be required, so Chairman Jim called in a favour from Stewart at SS Walker Vehicle Recovery. With heat and a large chisel it eventually yielded. Many thanks to Stewart.
When the mangle was advertised for sale, the only serious enquiry was from someone who wanted it making into a printing press to re-use a heritage item for this new purpose. This caused a lot of head-scratching, mainly about how to make stainless steel rollers because we only have basic metal-working facilities. With blind ambition exceeding anything of a plan, we threw caution to the wind and accepted the challenge.
The first design considerations were how to make the rollers, which needed a stainless steel surface, and what diameter they should be. Other mangle conversions seen online had used thin-wall st/stl sleeves pushed over original wooden rollers. But our mangle had lost its wooden rollers and we were also doubtful of getting a thin sleeve to fit satisfactorily along any replacement 24″ long wooden roller. Furthermore, a suitable size and type of wood would not be easy to obtain. So we thought best to use thicker-wall stainless steel pipe mounted onto the shaft with wooden hubs of sufficient length to take the likely loads.
Roller diameter required some thought: as a mangle, the wooden rollers ran against each other and the spur gears (which drive the top shaft from the bottom shaft) would allow material up to maybe 1″ thick to pass between the rollers before the gear teeth would become disengaged. As a printing press, rollers would have to accommodate a bed board always passing through and also the additional variable thicknesses of the workpieces on top of it. Workpieces would typically be just a few millimetres thick, but could range up to about 25mm for some items. To deal with this we decided to use a smaller roller diameter with the proviso that an additional or thinner bed board might be needed for the thinnest and thickest workpieces. This would leave a gap between the rollers when no workpiece or bed board was in place, so we’d have to make supports for the upper shaft.
We wanted to use ASTM grade 316L stainless steel pipe for the rollers and, of the sizes available, the 4″ nominal bore size was the most suitable. For schedule 10 pipe, actual o/d is 114.3 mm and actual i/d is 108.2 mm, mindful of manufacturing tolerances and ovality.
We think that the shafts had been made by forging round bar into a square and then turning the ends. We found that the centre of the square section was offset from the turning centres, the square section was only a rough square (bulging sides) and it wasn’t axially straight in comparison with a straight-edge. Consequently the shafts required a lot of grinding, filing and cursing to make them true enough to take the 150mm long sleeves, fabricated from 30 × 30 angle, which carry the load bearing beech hubs.
The wooden support hubs were turned to a diameter of 108.2 mm, as near as we could get, to make them a tight fit into the pipe. Fortunately we had a donated wood lathe long enough to accept each shaft. With the shaft mounted in the original centre drillings it enabled the supporting beech discs to be turned in-situ to make them concentric to a fine tolerance. To ensure rigidity of the rollers, we also inserted wooden discs in between (and before fitting) the load bearing hubs, glueing them together as they were inserted with help of a 10 lb hammer.
Another wee problem was that the badly corroded long leaves of the spring were not suitable for use, one of them broke when pressure was applied. Aberdeen Sheet Metal, who kindly supplied all the required metal stock for the project, were able to use their press brake to bend new 45 × 6mm steel strips into the approximately right shapes. We applied final tweaks with a 10lb hammer using the edge of the skip as an anvil.
The completed rollers had a satisfyingly solid feel to them and seemed more than adequate to deal with the forces which could be exerted on them. It was possible to slide each completed roller onto it’s shaft from one end which allowed locational adjustment whilst being tight enough to remain in place.
Supports for the top roller were made from hardwood and the iron frame was filed to create flat ‘landings’ for them. We found that the upper bearing blocks had been cast with the bearing half-tunnel about 2mm off-centre.
The bed support extensions were made from 50 × 50 × 4 steel angle. These needed welded ‘keys’ to engage with the channel sections of the original cast-iron frame to ensure they could not move when bolted in place. Fettling these keys to make everything level and aligned consumed a disproportionate amount of time, but tea, biscuits and cursing helped enormously. A new handle for the handwheel was made from the ash wood of an old pair of lawn edge shears.
The bed board was cut from a piece of 20mm thick veneered chipboard which we’d had in store for a while. This thickness of board left a small gap beneath the top roller.
And the result? When fully assembled it took on its new form as an old-fashioned printing press very well. It very much looked like an authentic working piece of heritage with the remaining original green and red paint, bare cast iron, new timber and shiny stainless steel rollers. Most importantly it seemed to work well and the minimal eccentricity of the rollers was noticeable only by rotating them against a fixed straight-edge. The top roller was able to rise up and accommodate thin workpieces and might have needed another thin board for the thinnest work. For thicker work pieces the roller would need help from pairs of gently tapered wooden ramps to accommodate thicker work which presents too much of a step to the smooth roller surface.
The heritage aspect is echoed by the original maker being local. D. McHardy and Son had premises at 108 & 110 North West Street in Aberdeen, and the business was described as Ironmongers, Engineering and Manufacturing. They were known also for supplying cast-iron kitchen ranges.
A lot of these old mangles probably get melted down, so we were pleased to be able to re-build it as a printing press and for a new owner who is very interested in heritage and conservation and will hopefully derive much pleasure from using it. It might also help with laundry during a power cut!