Hi GDF people! I have been a prepress operator for a long time now. I am also currently running a KM1100, Canon 750 and Xante Impressia. And I want to thank all of you great professional designers who put together files that print beautifully without any unwelcome surprises . . . like layering, transparency, bleed, color, etc. problems. This is not always the case when clients decide they can design a job themselves. I admire you guys. Was a designer myself for a couple of years. Thought I did a pretty decent job too, until I got pulled to drive the company van instead. For a few years now I’ve been lurking on GDF (even the old site), so I thought I should register and thank all of you for your expertise, some of which is useful in my prepress position, and also your fun threads which I find very entertaining.
Welcome to the forum, even though it sounds like you’ve been around for some time now. it’s good to finally meet you. 
Welcome Aboard 
I appreciate the cordial greeting and this forum in general. Don’t know if I’ll have questions or answers as I am in prepress now, but like some of you I’ve seen a lot change in 40+ years of the printing biz. Ooh, just had a time warp and am again working with artboards, x-acto knives, rubylith, non-repro blue pens, border tape and acetate. I imagine younger artists don’t have a clue to what those things are. Hint: pre-desktop.
I have a few X-acto scars 
I still have a waxer and a drawer with paste up tools. Every once and a while, they still get used if I’m working on a physical comp or mockup.
We used to typeset paper galleys of type columns, put em thru the waxer, paste em up and continue setting up for the camera room.
I still use my x-acto to cut out n-up proofs from the digital press. Nobody else wants to touch that thing. 
If I don’t have an X-Acto knife and a metal pica pole within with arms reach while I’m working, I feel like something’s missing.
All my non-repro blue pens dried up years ago, but other than that, I think I still have a full set of paste-up tools from photo croppers to a waxer to a few sheets of amberlith to a set of circle templates to some old Letraset sheets and most everything in between.
I wrote a blog post a few months ago where I needed to shoot a photo of some of those tools.
Wow! As Bob Hope used to say, “thanks for the memory!!”
i still have a 2" wide roller that was perfect to impact classified text on blueboards.
i slapped the classified pages for 6 newspapers, boy do I miss that job.
some past employees last week were chatting about who was the genius or idiot to think that hot wax is the best adherent for newspapers and artwork on boards. there had to be something else, but could not think of anything, beside Velcro.
Wax, rubber cement, spray mount . . . pick your poison.
We still use rubylith for silk screening. But we cut it with a vinyl plotter now. Still sucks to weed, though. And if the humidity is wrong, you can end up wearing it home sometimes.
Spray mount works for art to artboard. Or if you really want it to stay stuck, Print mount adhesive and a mounting/laminating press will do the job.
A thin layer of that hot, sticky wax did the job. It was repositionable and ready to stick down and burnish as soon as the type was run was run through the waxer. It worked much better than rubber cement, which had to dry first and wasn’t easily repositioned. Besides, wax had no rubber cement thinner fumes to slowly destroy one’s nervous system.
The bad thing about wax . . .letting someone take the artwork to a printer in their hot car. The softened wax did not hold and resulted in disaster.
I loved hot wax, so much easier to move things. Rubber cement was a little too permanent, especially when things were just a teensy bit off…
Exactly!