R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press Jeff Richards affixes a plate to a single-color offset printing press at Richards Printing in Escanaba.

ESCANABA — Behind the doors of 718 Ludington are machines that produce books, signs, promotional materials and other printed goods. Some are digital, but the ones Jeff Richards prefers working on are the offset printers. His father, Ray Richards, still uses letterpress, yet another method employed at Richards Printing.

The business has been in their family since Rush Richards — Ray’s father — bought the job shop that had belonged to the Daily Press. Once, it had been located above the Daily Press at 600 Ludington for printing their newspapers.

“Years ago, job shops went hand-in-hand with the newspaper. After you were done printing the paper, the guys would go upstairs and print letterheads and envelopes,” Ray explained. He said that the one at the Daily Press had fallen out of use, and when the radio station became interested in moving to that space from the site of the current Historical Society, the decision was made to sell the job shop to make room.

When the shop equipment left the Daily Press, it went to 500 Ludington — now the home of Delta Chiropractic — and there it became Richards Printing after Rush’s bid sealed the deal in the mid-1940s. Up until that point, Rush had worked at the Delta Reporter, Gladstone’s newspaper, which was run by his uncle.

Ray, now almost 90, said that his father “killed two birds with one stone” when he relocated to the other side of the street and purchased the building at 609 Ludington, because the family was able to move from Gladstone into the apartment above.

Unfortunately, fire found the place in March of 1969. 609 burned down and remains an empty lot to this day. Equipment survived, though, and Richards Printing made one more move and settled into its current home at 718.

Jeff, now the owner, came back to Escanaba to work at Richards Printing in the late 1990s after gaining experience and knowledge elsewhere — besides growing up around the equipment, he’d taken printing classes, worked construction in Wisconsin, and amassed mechanical skills over time. The keen grasp of mechanics is especially useful — Jeff works on all the machines in the shop himself.

“When Ray started, it was like this — letterpress,” Jeff gestured to the heavy wooden table; on shelves below sat chases (the frames that hold type) and rows of words formed from steel. “(Then) we went to offset.”

Three offset printers are in the shop — a one-color, a two-color, and a four-color. Each is substantially larger, with more rollers than the one before it. As if it’s second nature, Jeff fiddles with knobs on the offset printers to get the alignment and ink densities just right.

“Now, of course, we’re into digital printing,” Jeff continued. “With digital printing, we offer a lot more — we offer a lot more color.”

Most offices with digital printers lease them and have a service agreement with the supplier. But most people aren’t Jeff, who buys used machines at auctions after the leases expire, fixes them, and puts them to work.

About fifteen years ago, a subsidiary of Richards Printing was formed — a small publishing company called Poor Richard’s Castle, its name an homage to Benjamin Franklin’s almanac. The editing, communication with authors, publishing and printing happens in-house.

Today, the majority of the work done at Richards Printing is for commercial customers — who order things like magazines, flyers and signs — but the family business welcomes all jobs, no matter how small.

“The scale does slide, obviously; when you set up for one book compared to 100, you’re getting a better deal on the 100,” said Jeff. “But we try to tailor our stuff to everybody or anything. I think that’s why we started the book publishing, because it was so hard for people to get their foot in the door and get published.”

Promotional materials, much of which are produced in the basement, have become a large part of the business at Richards. Signs, window clings, giant checks, magazines, mugs, and pens all roll out the doors on a fairly regular basis.

While presses and guillotines (for paper cutting) at Richards look ancient, they don’t outdate the business. Ray believes the last item that had belonged to the Daily Press was a cutter that was sold to a gentleman in Dafter who had been acquiring old printing equipment for a museum.

“I think the cutter was 1919, that’s how old it was — still working,” said Ray.

An old operation with modern implementations, Richards Printing and its five full-time employees are still working, too. The shop is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.