The shop had a huge guillotine paper cutter about 8 feet wide, 7 feet high, and 7 feet deep crouched in front of the back wall, next to the flatbed press. On its right hand side was a massive cast-iron flywheel over 3 inches wide and 3 feet in diameter; the metal of the rim was about 6 inches thick; you can think of it as a half-foot thick, cast iron tire mounted on a 2-foot rim of six S-curved, cast iron spokes about an inch and a half wide. The flywheel alone probably weighed over 300 pounds. One of its spokes had a wider portion, bored to accept a handle, about a foot out from the hub. This handle was the attachment for the sole power supply, an energetic human, who operated the entire machine. To the left of this flywheel, an opposing toothed clutch applied the wheel's force via a heavy chain to a heavier lever below. To operate the cutter, you set your paper where you wanted it and clamped the stack down with a flat clamping blade immediately behind the 4-foot cutting blade; then you began turning the flywheel, storing your own energy by revving the wheel up as fast as you could get it to go. When you reached that point, you jerked the clutch home and cranked as hard as you could while the great blade did its work.

The machine could cut a stack of paper 3 inches thick and 3 feet wide (but you had better have worked up a good head of steam on the flywheel before engaging that clutch!), and its machined-flat, cast iron table accepted at least 3 feet of paper behind the blade and 16 inches in front; the solid guillotine frame reached nearly to the ceiling. The machine was entirely made of cast and wrought iron, steel blade and brass oil cups with one length of wood set in a slot in the table to provide a soft bed for the blade. The whole thing must have weighed a couple of tons. I have identified it as a Sanborn & Sons "Star," with a patent date of about 1887, if memory serves; it was a superb example of 19th century mechanical design that did a single job reliably and well, maximizing the force of a single person to do it. Apart from sending the cutting blade out to a machine shop for sharpening every year or so, the device never needed repairs: I doubt that it was possible to wear it out or break it by hand--it was just too large and solid for human force alone to damage. In the past half century, though, it probably has been melted down for scrap.

It was impressive to watch in operation. The whole thing had something of the effect of Chaplin's Modern Times, dwarfing the human supposedly operating it. The main operating portion, the flywheel, was centered about 3 feet off the floor, so its top was above eye level, and it was so massive that it was difficult to get started, even though well oiled. Once going well, it exuded the force of a locomotive, and when the clutch was closed with a loud clank, it brought that force to bear on a ponderous lever arm underneath, lifting its right end at about twice the rate of the descent of the cutting blade, sliding to the left and making a shuddering groan as it bit the paper stack. At the end of the cut cycle, the clutch was kicked out with another clank, and blade and lever snapped back to their original positions, pulled by the sheer weight of the lever.

I was a sturdy lad. Long before I started at the print shop, I had been keeping the family supplied with firewood, cutting trees down, dragging the logs home, cutting them into stove lengths, and splitting them with an ax. This is good for building upper body strength, the very thing that the flywheel required.

One of the customers of the Silverdale Breeze was the student newspaper of Bainbridge High School; they would send in their copy and layouts, Roland would set the type, and I would proof it and set the pages (4). When these were ready, the Advisor and four of her students came down to make a final scrutiny of the edition and to watch it being printed off on our small flatbed press. And to watch the newsprint being cut.

The Advisor was probably in her 30s, old to my teenage eyes, but attractive enough and single. She was fascinated by the printing process, as befits a journalism major, but she was particularly drawn by our paper cutter. Since the Bainbridge High Times (or whatever) was tabloid size, paper always had to be cut for the job, and as soon as I had brought a stack out of the back room and laid it on the cutting table she was in position directly behind me, calling her charges over to "come and see this!" They all lined up obediently with her to watch me position the paper, clamp it down, and start the flywheel in its first slow revolutions. I was aware of some murmurations as I got up speed and of a sharp intake of breath when I slammed the clutch lever home, after which the murmurations became more intense. The completion of the cut and rebound of blade were greeted with a shuddering sigh. When I turned around, the Advisor looked flushed and her students looked bored.

I am not sure, but that may have been my very first sexual interaction with an Older Woman.