More Maple Proofs

The troublesome block that was printing the seams remained troublesome so I bit the bullet and recarved the background on a spare shina block.
The new block is now registering better than it's predecessor,
but with the multiple printings--especially large color fields on a 14" x 14" square--registration is still off enough to be discouraging.

I've underprinted with a yellow beta-block since if the later leaf and twig blocks are off just a bit it will show through and give the effect of back-lighting.
There is enough play that overlap will/should just heighten the edge contrast.
But in too-many places it still just looks off-register.

The real problem remaining is the little rectangular chop cut into 3 blocks that ended up on the far corner and isn't reliably in-register drop-after-drop.

But the funniest thing I discovered it that if you really want a deep, dark, midnight blue.....try spilling a bottle of Prussian Blue pigment dispersion on your block.
(The dark versions are all the fruits of that spill....I had been tinting the background with glazes of blue trying to tweak it toward grey-green until the big spill.)

Below are two of the better versions. The dark one is on Magnani Incisioni and the tan one on my home-sized Hosokawa washi (39g/m2).

I was pretty happy I was able to print on it. It's definitely thinner than I'm used to but it's strong and now that it's sized it took 10 impressions without any problems in the proofing stage. I used a carry sheet--a similar sized sheet of mylar to help stiffen it enough to allow me to register it into the kento and lay it down. The paper's thinness is also an unexpected boon; I can see through it well enough to be able to rub with the baren just where I want to so
printing errors are less (the heavier papers aren't see-through and I have to press harder.)
There is still lots to do though.
The prints up-close are all rejects: there are too many ink splotches, misregistered edges, some smears, etc.
The leaves looked pretty saturated until I printed the background colors and now are clearly too pale and pink instead of vibrant red and orange.
I have by now at least 20 proofs but none that are good enough to call "finished".
I'm not sure how much time, energy, or paper I want to devote to this idea.
Still, I will give it another go with a dedicated try with at least 10-15 sheets of decent paper once I clean up the blocks. I'm hoping that if I know I'm printing "For Real" and not just proofs I'll get a better ratio of unmarred copies.

"Hey, can you move over just a little bit?" --Adjusting a kento.

This is the first time I've done this so I post these photos and my comments as an invitation to any who have done this before, often or just better to comment below on improvements.

As I mentioned in my last post I was pretty precise in cutting my original kentos.
I either use a Kento-nomi ( a flat chisel used just for this purpose) or the hangi-toh being carefult to split the black line that is my guide.
But sometimes, despite being careful, or if the wood shifts or expands more on one block than another one has to adjust the kento to allow for this shift.

This is the problem.

I'll let the following photos explain things but here is a summary.
A flat chisel is used to cut a groove next to the existing kento.
Using a slender, wedge of hardwood, tap it in with a hammer. Cut it flush with the kento and get back to printing.
As this was the first time I try this. I cut a sample kento on the edge of the block to try it out.

Above is the drawn "test kento" and the registration guides I cut from them.
Below are some cherry wedges I split off from a small block with a wood chisel and then sanded into a wedge shape with a sanding block and some 220grit paper.
(Ignore the Aisuki chisel which is just there for scale).

These were tapped in with a hammer.

Next was to trim it flush without having it pop out.

Here are the finished corner and edge kentos with the trimmed plugs.

Testing the kentos:

These are a bit ragged as my cherry blocks are a little thin (1cm thick) and the groove I cut next to the existing kento with a chisel seemed a bit too shallow. Tapping in the wedges was harder than I thought and some of them split or broke and had to be resanded and replaced.
Cutting them off also was harder than it should have been. Several popped out from the leverage of cutting them.
But if imperfect these do what they are supposed to.
As you can see from the last photos, they hold the paper edge a good 1-2mm off the old edge and should fix the problem.