Unique vinyl making (Brad)

Black Prairie had a Limited Edition lathe cut record with them on tour called Blackest Crow. It was limited to 111 copies and they were cut one at a time, by me, onto plastic picnic plates with a 1943 Presto 6n record cutter. They are beautiful little floppy red one-sided musical artifacts with a wonderful bluegrass audio tune in mid-fidelity. Each one comes in a letterpressed cover, with type that was hand-set.

Not to mention the time it took to hand-set every little piece of the cover. Look closely at the cover when you get it. The border around "Black Prairie" is made up of 80 tiny little print blocks that all have to be laid out going the right direction and then supported so that they don't fall over when you put the pressure to it. Each individual letter and image is a separate piece of lead type that has to be placed.

Making these records is RIDICULOUSLY laborious...

Here is what I do for them:

Steps:
1. Go to grocery store and buy picnic plates
2. Drill hole in the middle of plates
3. Cut the lip off the plates, 3 at a time with a boxknife
4. Set up lathe... make sure that the weight on the cutting head is just right.
5. Put plate on lathe, adjust the cutter head to be on the outside edge of plate
6. Drop cutting needle on plate, advance head manually (Lead-in groove)
7. Turn on music from cd/ipod, etc
8. Blow the plastic swarf (the stuff coming out of the groove) away from the cutting needle with canned air until song is over.
9. Disengage the carriage so that the head stops advancing for 1.8 seconds and then lift the needle off the record (locked groove).
10. Trim the rest of the plate around the cut grooves.
11. Go to computer to layout the labels to be the correct size.
12. Print the labels on sticky paper
13. Cut the labels away from each other with scissors>
14. Use 3" hole punch to punch labels out.
15. Use extended reach small hole punch to punch out middle hole.
16. Peel paper off and very carefully put label on record.
17. Drive to downtown Oly to Community Print, the co-op letterpress shop.
18. Cut 7"x14" paper sleeves on paper cutter.
19. set design using tiny little pieces of lead type. Fill in all empty space with "furniture" (small pieces of wood and steel that keep the design pieces upright). Takes about 2-3 hours.
20. Test the height of the type and pack extra paper to get desired pressure.
21. take an ink roller and ink up the type.
22. Lay paper on top of lead type.
23. Roll large cannister thing across the type to put pressure on it.
24. Pull the paper off and let dry./... re-ink and then repeat.
25. Number all of the covers.
26. insert record into sleeve
27. Insert sleeve into plastic outer sleeve.
28. Pack and send off!

One of these days I will make some youtube vids of cutting records... I did make a video of a record I made out of Pure Chocolate... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpJocEhpeA
To be fair, I got the idea from a Flemish dude... but it worked... and was delicious.

wottagunn wrote:The guy is a legend. He sells them for a ridiculously low price too.
I bought one record from him, and that came to $10.50 including shipping to Australia.