hellbox

"Go on back to your Hellbox, little boy."

A hellbox is a receptacle where cast metal sorts are thrown after printing.

It was a hellbox of remarkable contradictions.

The job of sorting the type from the hellbox and putting it back into the job case was given to the apprentice, known as a printer's devil.

Hellbox, Forge Books, (2012)

He picked up the mixed-up type, a mess printers call pied type, and threw it in the "hellbox," where type goes to be melted down.

The Paradise Project (Thee Hellbox Press, 2012)

Delanty is the son of a printer, and his fourth collection, The Hellbox, is based on the printing idiom he learnt from his father.

One likely source stems from the fact that worn and broken lead type is thrown into a hellbox, which the printer's devil must take to the furnace for melting and recasting.

Fass created his first YMCA printing projects using the imprint name Hell-Box Press, named for a print shop hellbox, in which printers threw used metal type for recasting.

Later, when continuous casting or hot-metal typesetting machines such as the Linotype machine and Monotype became popular, the hellbox was used for storing discarded or broken type that were melted down and recast.