stated the prices of the different kinds of type. To go on with our busness in a profitabl manner, it would require about four hundred pounds of type, the average price of which would be about fifty cents pr pound. We also want about one hundred pounds of job type, and about fifty dollars worth of rules and astronomical characters for almanacs. It will require about six hundred dollars worth of rules and type to put us in a situation to do a good business. In about one year, we shall want another press. We can get along probably for this year with the two presses we have. We can manufacture many of the articles we want, in , for instance, imposing stones and Chases. We can manufacture them cheaper [p. [313]]
Rules were raised strips that were used to print lines and borders. (Rummonds, Nineteenth- Century Printing Practices, 1:249–250; 2:1032.)
Rummonds, Richard-Gabriel. Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress. 2 vols. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2004.
A chase is a “rectangular cast or wrought iron frame” into which pages of type (known as a form) are locked in preparation for printing. An imposing stone is a “perfectly flat, smooth surface, usually polished stone or cast iron, upon which the compositor imposes and corrects his forms.” (“Chase,” “Form,” and “Imposing Stone,” in Rummonds, Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices, 2:976, 990, 998.)
Rummonds, Richard-Gabriel. Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress. 2 vols. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2004.