Speedball 3471 Super Value Block Printing Starter Kit – Includes Ink, Brayer, Lino Handle and Cutters, Speedy-Carve

I have been making prints for the last year and my brayer and carving tool are holding up excellently well. Only complaint is that the blades are prone to rust, could just be the humid place I live in.The rubber blocks are amazing for beginners and easy to work with while you get a feel for the tools.

It's been a while sense I did any linocuts and this was just what I needed. It's been months and the items still hold up, everything is easy and safe to use, cleaning has been no issue, the size is great for the price and the kit has everything a beginner needs.

Great starter set. Love how easy it is to wash. Barely even need soap, just water! I bought extra pads to carve. They are thin enough you can also cut them to different sizes.

Over all this is a pretty good "starter kit" but I'd like to warn you of a few problems (or issues) I came across:* The linoleum block is HARD. Way too hard, especially for someone just starting out with linocuts. (I kept thinking that this was sad because it might scare people away from linocuts because they may think it wasn't worth the physical exertion of carving into this hard linoleum. Every cut my cutter was skipping, snagging and flying off the block. I was grunting like a crazy person lol) I'm not saying it's impossible to cut, but it is NOT smooth like other linoleums. You can hurt yourself struggling to make lines in it.Do what I did: buy the BENCH HOOK along with this kit. It helped a whole lot. I bought the Speedball bench hook on here for about $9-10. Well worth the investment. It's "dual purpose" (meaning you can also use it as the ink tray)* Came with a very cheapy styrofoam tray to roll the ink in. It's the type of styrofoam tray you might find packed meats on at the grocery store. I feel they could have added maybe a PLASTIC tray or a non-porous sheet of vinyl or some other material. You could buy a small sheet of plexiglass at some place like Lowe's which I did a few days before receiving this which would work perfectly for rolling the ink on. (I purchased it to do monoprints... but it's OK because the ink is WATER SOLUBLE... meaning you can wash it off, no problem.)* The cutters sometimes comes lose. I tightened it very tightly but if you angle some of the cutters a certain way, they essentially come undone. (I didn't mark off for this; I'm just warning people.) I think the more you use the cutters, the more you'll understand it and how to hold it, how much pressure it can take, etc.* The "directions" are pretty much worthless. Really, a waste of paper. They don't tell you how to change the cutters (not everyone will understand how... luckily I had nib pens that use almost the same method of switching nibs.) They don't tell you how to clean up or store the block. I suggest looking on youtube and doing a browser search.You only get one block, so I would also order up some extra linoleum... because you will definitely be hooked once you see your prints! (I actually ordered unmounted linoleum from Dick Blick because they had much better deals that the ones I found on Amazon & m local Micheal's no longer sells printmaking supplies.)So after drawing out my design of a lady's face and transferring the design to the block, I took about 3 hours of carving. It had some minute details that I thought I'd be able to get done neatly... but because the block was so hard, I did find my cutter snagging quite a bit. I'm surprised I didn't cut myself at all! Everyone's always saying how dangerous this can be, so I was almost expecting it.I will say I am very happy with how my prints came out. I really thought my first linocut prints would come out pretty crappy but I really do think it came out beautifully.Would I recommend this kit? Sure, just beware of what I mentioned above.

This was my first experiencing with block printing and this kit is great. I decided to make some wrapping paper for my niece's unicorn themed birthday party and I'm so pleased with how it turned out!I drew the design directly onto the block with pencil and then carved it out (the block is soft but not too soft, sort of like a rubber eraser) and I just rolled the ink directly onto a large glass dinner plate. It helps to watch a quick how-to video on YouTube just to see how you want to cut it ( i.e. do you want to cut out the negative space or leave it?) and also to see how much ink to use/how much to roll it to get the right consistency to roll it onto your finished stamp.I surely recommend this for beginners as I am one and now I can't wait to create more!

Read the details, I didn't the carving tool only comes with 3 blades and the carving block is alot smaller then I realizedVery good quality, nice reusable box. I'd buy a ink pad though the ink is a bit inconvenient for casual crafts.

This set comes with a holder, 3 gouges (small v, large v and a large u), black ink and one speedy carve block. It is the bare bones essentials to get started with block printing. Now that I have been using it for a while I am kicking myself for not getting the deluxe set instead. It includes 4 extra tubes of ink, a bench hook and a linoleum block on top of everything in this value set. A single tube of speedball ink is about 12 dollars so that’s over 70$ worth of extra materials for a few more dollars. If I could go back in time I would’ve gotten the deluxe set to begin with!

This is everything you need to get started in linocutting without committing to a huge investment. I just wanted to see if this was even a hobby I would like, and felt that for this price, it was worth trying.I was able to get 4 linocuts out of the single included sheet of lino and try a variety of techniques.That being said, this isn't going to be your "forever set" of tools. This is enough to get you confident, and start thinking about investing in more durable, comfortable tools. However, this kit did the job I bought it for; to give me a low-risk chance to try a new skill.Side note: The blades dull quickly, which is unsurprising considering their cost and the nature of the material they're cutting. To prolong the life of this starter set tool, I'd recommend getting a stropping kit to keep the blades honed.