A Review of the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit
I had tried lino printing once before as part of my Art degree at university and I was keen to take it up again. Enough time had passed since then, so I considered myself as a lino print beginner, and I didn’t have any of my own tools or equipment. I really was starting from scratch !!
I researched a number of lino printing kits, and after a lot of thought, I decided to try the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit as it provides everything you need to get started.
Within this article, I have reviewed my experiences with the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit. I hope that by sharing my experiences, I can help anyone else planning to try lino printing and to decide if this kit is the right one for them.
Table of Contents
The Cost of the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit
What is included in the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit?
The Benefits of Using the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit
The Cost of the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit
The RRP of the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit is £31.99, but it is normally sold at just under £25 (as of August 2021). At this price, it is a mid-range lino printing kit. Considering you get absolutely everything you need to try lino printing, other than paper, this feels like a very reasonable price and low cost to entry to lino printing. If you were to buy all the pieces individually it would cost a lot more.
What is included in the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit?
5 x Lino Cutters, Styles 1 to 5
1 x Safety Lino Cutter, Style A
2 x Traditional Lino Blocks 7” x 5” / 178 x 127mm
2 x Softcut Blocks 6” x 4” / 150 x 100mm
1 x Practice Piece
1 x Ink Roller 4” / 100mm
1 x Ink Tray 9.4” x 7.87” / 240 x 200mm
1 x Safety Hand Guard
1 x Baren
1 x 100ml / 3.3 US fl oz Tube of water based ink
2 x 45mm diameter Printing Stamps
Instructions
Lino Cutters
The Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit comes with a single handle and 5 different precision ground high carbon steel lino cutters. These cutters each slot into the handle and are used to carve into the lino block. As there are 5 different cutters, it means you have the opportunity to try a variety of cutting shapes and styles.
I found that I quickly got to grips with cutting. I kept returning to the number 2 cutter time and time again, but having the other shaped cutters available was a bonus when carving the finer detail of a design (e.g. number 3 is good for carving circles).
The lino cutters are kept in the baren. The baren is the hand-press that comes with the kit and used to transfer the ink from the printing block to the paper without the need for a printing press. I think this is a great feature as it keeps all the cutting tools together and stored in a convenient place.
The use of a single handle with 5 different precision tools is a great way to efficiently store the tools, if lino printing is being carried fairly infrequently or just learning the craft. If you are lino printing regularly and you have gained more experience, you may find that changing the cutter each time to be a bit of a nuisance. That will be the time to upgrade to more specialised cutters.
I read a few negative reviews suggesting the cutters had not been included in the kit. It may well be that Esdee had not made it clear they were stored in the baren. However, there is now a picture on the box that clearly shows that the cutters can be found inside the baren!
Lino Blocks
The Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit comes with 2x traditional lino blocks, 2x Essdee Softcut lino blocks, a smaller practice block and 2x small circular blocks.
Many people remember trying lino cutting at school with traditional lino blocks, but are unaware (as I was) that there are now Softcut lino blocks available that are, as the name suggests, softer and in many ways, easier to carve than the traditional blocks.
I should mention at this point that Softcut usually comes in a creamy colour. You will notice in my photos that the Softcut in my kit was blue. Essdee included a handy note explaining the reason why my Softcut is blue (delivery delays due to the Coronavirus pandemic), which was helpful to avoid any confusion.
It is great to have both the traditional lino blocks and Softcut lino blocks included within the same kit. This allows the user to experiment with both types of lino blocks and help inform their decision with which one to move forward with as they progress their lino printing.
The Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit also contains a practice block and 2x smaller circular printing blocks that can be used to create stamps. These are really useful tools that will give the user further options to help develop their lino printing skills.
Ink Tray and Roller
The Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit comes with an ink tray and roller (often referred to as a brayer) that is used for rolling out block printing inks. The ink tray and ink roller are standard tools and will be useful long term as they can be used again and again should you decide to continue with lino printing in the future.
It is a great tray for starting lino printing and when printing in one colour. I found that I needed an additional tray once I started printing with more than one colour in the same print.
I have found that the tray is also quite versatile and can be used for other projects, for example, with paint and PVA glue.
The roller is functionable, I have continued to use the roller with other projects, and whilst I have gone on to upgrade other parts of the kit, I have not had a need to upgrade the roller.
Ink
The kit comes with a 100ml tube of black ink. While this is perfectly functionable for an initial lino print, I found that I soon wanted to experiment with different colours. It’s possible to buy Essdee ink sets or individual tubes, so you can add new colours to the kit as needed. It’s also possible to use the rest of the kit with a different brand of ink if you want to; you are not restricted to using Essdee inks with this kit.
Safety Features
The inclusion of the safety cutter and safety hand guard, means the kit is truly suitable for beginners and children, with the recommended age being 12+.
Lino cutting tools can be very sharp, so with the addition of the hand guard, as a parent you can have peace of mind when letting your 12 or 13-year-old use this kit as an introduction to lino printing.
Lino Printing Results
With a bit of practice using the cutting tools and a straight-forward design, it’s certainly possible to get some good quality finished prints and stamps. As this is a hand-printing set, it would be difficult to print on thicker, higher quality paper (where a printing press would be required) and your ink is limited to black, so this kit isn’t suitable for experienced or professional printers, but there is definitely enough equipment to get some decent results and decide if you would like to explore your printing practice further.
The Benefits of Using the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit
Good starter kit for complete beginners and children (12+)
The inclusion of both traditional lino, Softcut blocks and stamps mean you can easily experiment with different surfaces
The kit includes everything you need, with the simple addition of paper
The way the cutters are stored inside the baren mean the kit is compact and neat for future storage
By simply adding more lino blocks in future, most of the kit can be used time and time again
The Negatives of Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit
Only black ink
No paper
Conclusion
Overall, I think this is a fantastic starter kit. Other than paper, it includes absolutely everything you need to try lino printing. Even now that I’ve been printing for a while there are parts of this kit that I still use, such as the ink tray and ink roller.
This kit would be perfect for someone just starting lino printing and wondering if lino printing is right for them. It is also a great kit for someone doing lino printing at school or college.
The fact that the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit contains both traditional lino blocks and softcut blocks means you have the opportunity to try different surfaces.
Should you decide to continue with lino printing, it is easy to add more ink colours or different tools as you require, but still make use of the equipment in the kit!
If you are new to lino printing, you will find my beginners guide to lino printing post [link] useful. It provides a step by step guide that is perfect to follow when using the Essdee Lino Cutting & Printing Kit.
