Before serious health matters limited Louis Colavecchio's ability to operate heavy equipment and handle heavy press parts, Lou and I (Alan Runfeldt) collaborated on designing a new bench top platen press  - one which would not only match but exceed the qualities and capabilities of the most popular of the benchtop presses - Mr. Thorp's Pilot Press - first manufactured by the Cleveland Type Foundry c. 1880, subsequently manufactured for many years by the Chandler & Price Company (until about 1964), replicated by Craftsmen Machinery in Boston and American Printing Equipment in New York...

That press is the Excelsior Pilot described on this page and it is the result of about three years of painstaking work and very close attention to detail. The result is indeed an excellent printing press.

Lou had been restoring presses for a few years already and, with a background in foundry work and precision machining, was able to make arrangements with a local foundry and a local machine shop to have unavailable spare parts cast new and machined to use on his press restorations. Unfortunately, the foundries and machine shops Lou was working with in Rhode Island were closing down due to lack of work.

On the one hand, that was good for Lou, since they could make time to do his simple one-off sand casts using patterns that Lou made himself - drawing on years of experience as a mold maker in his youth. And, machining the parts to Louis' specifications resulted in many new parts being made for presses he would buy and restore. But, the down side was that both the foundry and machine shop went on reduced schedules themselves and could not produce the parts needed to make more than one of the new Excelsior Pilots. And, at that, it was very expensive and barely practical to produce and sell for the target retail price.

That one press was made and sold to a hobby printer in Virginia, who uses it only occasionally, and has printed some nice pieces with it with no problem. She does not participate in Briar Press' online discussions, so the folks at Briar Press don't believe her press even exists and have had a fine time attacking Louis - and me as well - in Briar Press' public forum - particularly making fun of the "plastic printing press" which is actually the assembled cast resin patterns meant for photographing only.

While it is true that some of the presses that Lou (who is not a printer) restored with new parts and excellent paint jobs caused frustration for a small number of his customers, most of his customers were very pleased. Many of his buyers came to me (in New Jersey) with their presses for lessons and sometimes adjustments to their presses to "set them up" for optimal performance - things like leveling the platen, adjusting  roller height and general use of the small printing press- something Lou was not skilled in doing, and which he believed was a skill the buyer was responsible for. I agree. Everyone who owns a printing press should indeed know how to level their platen and adjust their rollers. Nonetheless, his inability to actually use the presses to print proofs before he sold them hurt his reputation and discouraged him from continuing to serve this market.

He now does other things.