List Price: $25.99
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The kit costs not much more than a brayer alone, and that brayer comes with a linoleum block, a carving tool, and ink. That is a pretty good deal. The tray is made of Styrofoam, but it works in a pinch and I have used it a couple of times with no problems. This is a starter kit, not an advanced kit and as such it is a great deal. I may actually get another one.
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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.
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