Gosh. That was a long hiatus.

I'd apologize, but I've been having a very productive time. Lots of writing, some printing, a few books made. A whole crap-ton of work on my primary blog, but that's not a good excuse at all: let's just stick to the being-busy excuse.

So let's talk about making books - that's why I started this little blog, after all. I think the posts about binding get lost in the sea of printing and stitching elsewhere, and I want to give my books some due consideration. It helps, for some reason, to write about the process, and I definitely need to improve my bookbinding practice.

I haven't gotten back to the Byzantine binding, mostly because I haven't had a good block of time for it (the press is awfully distracting). I have, however, made some fascinating ledger-style books. One of these days I'm going to make a few of them correctly. I have this excellent book on Japanese bookbinding, and I keep sort of glancing at the pictures and faking my way to a finished product that at least looks like a book.


These books (I made three, in various sizes) are also an excellent example of one of my favorite bookbinding phenomena: paste-paper that is incredibly ugly (no, seriously, this stuff was hideous) in the sheet, but which looks pretty good on a book. It's something about how one can crop the page.

They're better paper than the last couple of batches I've made - it's a nice heavy drawing paper, and I think they'll be useful for me. I've decided that it's ridiculous for a book-binder to use commercial blank books, so I'm trying to come up with something that fills (most) of my notebook needs. It's harder than you'd think. I'll let you know how it goes.

What was it I said about not knitting?

For some reason, every time I manage to convince myself that I'm having a knitting hiatus, I decide that I want to make something ridiculous. In this case, a shawl. It's a very nice shawl, but I did spend quite a bit of time making it instead of sewing up bookblocks or gluing cases.

Too bad.

On the other hand, man, I am so looking forward to experimenting with medieval binding structures. It does mean that I have to find someone with quarter sawn boards and a router ...

Photographic Evidence of the Ugliest Makeready:

I had to think quite hard about whether or not I wanted there to be evidence of something so ... egregious. Maybe this will encourage me to be more careful.

What have I been doing?

Discovering that sometimes h looks just like b.

Also, that I still lack whatever skillset it is that allows people to clean ink rollers without simply transferring the ink to themselves.

Doing the worst makeready ever.

Printing a linoleum block on my very own press. (Soon to be business cards, as soon as I decide what text and what font to use.)

(Failing completely to make books.)

On making small notebooks ...

Well, I've tried a couple recently, and they haven't met my (admittedly high) standards. I think what's going on is that I'm not organized enough, so I'm going to try to write down all the steps and where I'm trying to make alterations.

First: tear the paper down to size, or cut it. (I can cut paper now! Maybe I exaggerate a little. Blade still needs sharpening, and I have to strip a bunch of paint before the various cutting guides work properly, but whatever.) That part's pretty easy.

Second: make sure the signatures are folded properly. Which, if I had one, would involve sticking the mess of them into a nipping press. I've been using books and clamps and occasionally random marble tiles. Works pretty well, as long as I can be patient about it.

Third: sewing stations. Which means making punching guides - and I'm pretty lazy about those, most of the time, but since measuring with folded bits of paper is nicely intuitive, I've gotten better. The only time punching holes is a problem is when I don't have my fancypants wooden jig, but that's a simple solution: make a cardboard one for portability's sake.

Fourth: Remembering to put in the right kind of endsheets. As long as I'm awake when I sew the books, this doesn't come up. It's just that I have a couple of textblocks I've sewn recently where clearly I was asleep, because they are missing some weird shit. C'est la vie.

Fifth: sewing. I can do sewing. Mostly. It's very important to remember even tension. This is key. Beeswax helps. Loads. Using the right weight of thread is vital to my future happiness: if I don't, I get all crabby about how much the spine swells.

Sixth: Gluing up the spine. Well, this is where I really fell down on the most recent book: I forgot to put in a hinge under the paper spine lining. Next time I will remember, and there will be two layers, and it will be much more sturdy. (I will also use better endsheet papers.) This is where I need to remember to put in a ribbon bookmark if I'm going to be doing that. Also, it's probably time to stop using PVA and start using paste, because it turns out that non-reversible gluing is actually really frustrating.

Seventh: prepping the case, for case binding. Or whatever I'm doing with boards. My mistake on the last batch was to cut the boards the same size as the signatures. I don't know what I was thinking. I mean, not having squares makes sense given what I'm trying to go for, but not having enough space in the spine ... no good at all.

Which brings us to actually making the case: bristol or some other spine stiffener, and cloth. So I'm actually perfectly content with what I did with the bristol spine stiffener - it works really well, and I got the size right, even. On the other hand, I might want to try something more flexible, just to see what happens. I've still got enough bog standard book cloth to do a bunch more experiments, but I'm going to have to work out how to make my own soon - among other things, I have this awesome green fabric that really begs to be put on a book. Or in a quilt. Or both, preferably. I tried leaving just one board thickness between the spine stiffener and the board, which I think would work if the board was thinner, but I don't like it as it stands. Eh. The next one will be better.

There are a couple of aesthetic choices I need to make, but they're not a big deal. As long as I can make some interesting little books that don't cost too much, it's a success. (Well, once I've sold them, anyway.) If I can't do it with cloth covers, I can get back into making paste paper ... which I should do anyway, because as really freaking entertaining things go ... that's a good one.

In between all of these things, I need to refresh my memory on fancy bindings. I got some purple leather, and it cries out for something wonderful. Or I could just get some wooden boards and make Byzantine-inspired books. Which also seems like a good idea. Give me a couple of weeks to think about that.

One last note on the Byzantine:

Also, I tried to do some tooling on the Byzantine, and it just didn't work. I think it's probably because I used a non-standard leather. I'm all right with that, though. It's a nice simple book as it is, and I'm going to try to convince myself that it's ok to use it as a primary notebook for a while so I can find out how it holds up to abuse.

After all, I still have two more sets of covers to use, and now I have a paper cutter. (I might need a nipping press, too.)

I was telling you about books ...

And here I am, weeks later. I didn't mean to neglect you, but sometimes things come up.

In this case, two things.

The first was a classified ad for a 5 x 8 Kelsey. It was less than an hour away, so I inquired. There was some dithering. I failed completely to negotiate (well, in my defense, the seller did say that the rollers were from NA Graphics, so I based my idea of a reasonable price on that). I now own a very small press, which has functional rollers - though I am quite certain they aren't from NA Graphics, which is too bad. It doesn't really matter, though, because it's still a functional press, and definitely worth having. Besides, if the rollers do crap out, it's an excuse to learn how to cast gummi bear rollers.

Of course, it's still two weeks until I can make it out to Printer Nerdvana, Letterpress Things.

Before I'd even recovered from committing to buy the Kelsey, someone else put up an ad for a 14" paper cutter. For a reasonable price. Even more locally. So I contacted that seller, set up a time, and went to get that too. It's a project - I have to take all the paint off before I can even get the pieces off and check for rust, it needs to be sharpened (although it does still cut better than anything I've ever owned, so I'm not complaining), and I need different tools to get at the bolts that are holding the blade on. I can't pick this one up - it's a lot bigger, and that's a whole hell of a lot of cast iron, let me tell you. At least it's not as heavy as the one I drove three hours to pick up with a friend of mine. (She got a better deal, though: three blades, newly sharpened. It cuts really well.)

So I've been sort of roaming around saying things like "I need to stop collecting cast iron," "We don't really need a kitchen, right," and "Oh my god, what have I done." Of course, I know what I've done, and I fully intend to buy a font of Greek. (Sadly, the classicist I work with is a Latinist.) We'll see what I do with it. (I still want one of the wee Albions or a Washington, so if you know someone who wants to sacrifice theirs to a very good cause, I can give it a loving home. I'm sure no-one will mind if I replace the dining room table with a press or two.)