Letterpress - Metal type

Today I learnt the basics of letterpress printing, which is a form of relief printmaking. We started with metal type as this has all the essentials for spacing etc. and will move onto the more creative woodblock at a later stage.
I was surprised at how complicated the process was and how much effort goes into preparing the text before printing. 

I found it interesting to see how the printing of text originated and how much spacing and correcting mistakes we take for granted when working on computers that are programmed to do it all for us.
https://thebeautyofletterpress.com/letterpress/ 

You have to work right to left, the opposite of how we read, which I found slightly difficult when setting the type. The individual letters are very small which made it hard to distinguish similar ones, such as p and q, the phrase 'mind your p's and q's' derives from the letterpress as they are easily mixed up. Also the phrase 'I'm all out of sorts' comes from printers running out of certain characters to print with. With all this in mind I did a proof (test run). 

I then corrected my mistake, using tweezers as fingers are too big to remove one letter without ruining the whole line. After that print was successful I decided to add some embellishment as well. I wanted to do this as it reminds me of old books that often have the first letter looking fancy. As my project seems to be heading that way I thought it would be a good addition to the text, giving it an older feeling without having to drastically change the text.

I liked seeing the analogue version of our modern day printing. If I use any text within my work I feel this would be a good way of going about it as it would be authentic, fitting into the past time period my narrative would be set in. 
I also enjoyed seeing how two different types of technology, printing press and computer, can achieve the same results. Both help to develop my creativity and practice.