It would be nice to have a book stretcher on occasion, though. Need to turn an octavo into a quarto? No problem! But was this really a book press, or a press intended for some other purpose? The 29 inch long cheeks are very, very thin in profile, and I imagine would deflect quite a bit even with just hand tightening.
Hats off to the V&A has a very progressive large image use policy. You can download them instantly, share them widely, and even use them for publication. There are almost 750,000 searchable images on the V&A site. Let’s hope all institutions free their images.