Re-built one for a part-time job right after I moved back here, after my divorce. The idiot who owned the press hadn't bothered to clear up a leaky ink fountain, and one side of the main feed chain seized from being caked in dried ink.
The other side, unfortunately, didn't stop. Not nearly soon enough anyway. The bronze paper-handling bars, twisted, in all three axes - X, Y, and Z. The chain and the bars on the still-moving side went completely around the nose or that end of the press.
You have to very slowly COLD-FORGE bronze to get it back where it came from. With a leather-faced hammer to keep from marring it. Emphasis on slowly, SMALL strokes.
If you try to just re-heat it and then quickly re-work it, it goes nearly instantly brittle, and shatters at all-but a feather touch. It has to be re-forged cold, and then SLOWLY brought to heat, then cooled at a controlled rate, to release the molecular stresses from all the bending and re-bending, and get it back to the proper hardness and ductility.
Plus I had to replace all those little spring-steel 'fingers' after re-tapping the threads, and repair the chain with all of its bits and parts. Took me two months to get that press back on line and working. So far as I know, it's still rolling out paper. (Oh, and yes, I DID fix the leaky ink fountain.)
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