flong

plural flongs

1. mediaA mould, especially one made from papier-mâché, used to create a stereotype.

   A few sheets of paper are soaked in water and then pasted together to form a flong. This flong is beaten into a page of type and dried, thus forming a matrix to receive the molten metal, which, when cooled, becomes an exact duplicate of the type page.

   1892, Charles Sumner Partridge, Stereotyping, the Papier Mache Process

   1 more example

   Because it was made from malleable material, a flong was a convenient intermediary for turning a flat page of type into the semi-cylindrical shape required by the huge newspaper presses of the twentieth century, whose printing surface was a spinning drum.

   2025, Dennis Duncan, “Stylus & Substance”, in Literary Review, number 547

1. obsoletepastsimple past of fling