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.)

Best laid plans and all.

Well. Look at that. Where does the time go? I've gotten myself into some serious business of late - I minded a printshop a couple of weeks ago, which was only barely work, in exchange for time with the guillotine; I drove to VT with a friend of mine to pick up a guillotine for her; I decided that, dammit, I am going to get a press. You know. Eventually.

Until then, I am practicing printing from linoleum blocks by hand. Which, surprisingly, is a huge pain. Especially on awful paper - I'm using some that I made from glossy magazines, and oh boy does it not want to take the ink. It's also far too thick, and far too hard, to work well. On the other hand, I've observed some interesting things, and I think if I switch to decent paper, I can make some of it work.

As for the rest of the awful paper, I'm going to laminate it into bookboards. Should be pretty easy, and practical, and if it works I have a solution for the problem of getting boards.

I still haven't decided whether or not I'm going to do blind tooling on the Byzantine mini. In fact, I haven't decided on clasps, either. My next book project is to finish a fine binding in an uncharacteristically large size. The book is about 12" x 14", half-leather (spine and corners), with endpapers of this ridiculously awesome red cotton paper that friends of mine made. This book has been languishing for longer than I want to think about, so the inside corners of the boards were a little warped. Sadly, even putting leather on didn't fix the problem, but it's definitely still in usable shape, and I wasn't planning on selling it anyway. The remaining steps are getting fills in on at least the front of the boards, putting on paper, and gluing down the endsheets. I'm putting it off mostly because I don't want to make methyl cellulose paste and have it go to waste - and I don't think I can do a book this big quickly enough to use straight PVA.

All of which is ridiculous procrastination, and I'll get over it. I have a pile of book blocks ready to prep for an everyday notebook experiment, and I need to finish the leather binding before I get started on those.

... books do grow up quickly.

Now we're at the final step - so far - covering. I used leather, because ... well, it's traditional. And leather is about the only material tough enough to tolerate how much abuse my notebooks take.

I actually did find my tiny supply of bookbinding leather, but I have another project in mind for that, so I used scraps from an old leather coat. There were only a couple big enough for the book, but that was enough.

One of the things I love about this binding is that it's not necessary to pare the leather down very much. I took off some thickness at the edges, so that the adhesive would hold better, and that was about it. As I recall, we didn't pare the whole thing in the class, either. The coat wasn't exactly a pristine piece of leather, either, so there are some scars and scuffs on the book. I think that's all right, as long as it can handle living at the bottom of my everyday bag for a couple of months.

I started by trimming the leather to size, with pieces that are intended to fold over the headband cores and the boards. The first piece I cut was all kinds of the wrong size. For some reason, I completely neglected to add in the board thickness, which is about a quarter of an inch. Kind of significant. Also a silly mistake, but easy to gloss right over by finding the second piece of leather that was a useful size ...

And then I realized I'd forgotten how to make wheat starch paste. Yup, that's how long it's been. Fortunately, the internet coughed up that information and I managed to make it without burning anything. I think I might need to get a dedicated saucepan for book making, though. There are some other things I want to experiment with that aren't food grade.

I did let the paste cool overnight, and got to finishing the thing the next afternoon. It took a while, even though I felt like I was rushing the entire time ... now, let me tell you, there's a good reason for that. I forgot another key aspect of working with leather. I didn't do much of it, but still, you'd think I would have paid some attention. I neglected to dampen the leather adequately, so the paste dried a whole lot faster than it should have. I figured out the problem quickly enough that nothing had to be completely redone, and next time I'll probably remember to get the leather good and wet.

Now that the book is covered, I have to decide if I want to try blind tooling it. On one hand, I absolutely do - an undecorated Byzantine binding looks a bit naked and weird. On the other hand, the only tool I have to work with is a bone folder, which limits my design options. On the third hand, I want this book to be done, and I'm not sure that garment leather is going to be cooperative about tooling. Ah, well, I should be able to just use it anyway, and decide if I want to embellish it later. Of course, I also have to decide whether or not I'm going to make clasps. Byzantine bindings all have some kind of closure, and I've made the slit-braided style once before. My notes on those really are non-existent, though, so it's going to be a nasty bit of trial and error. I suspect that what's going to happen is I'm going to use the book for a while, decide that I hate it without clasps, and see what I can make. I know I'm going to want them on the bigger book, because I want that one to be perfect. Or at least really freaking awesome.

I heart headbands.

Absolutely. I have an unfortunate tendency to fall down on finishing, especially with books. After all, once the basic structure is done, nothing else really matters, right? Well, no. But you know that already. When I was learning how to make case bindings, we used paper headbands and glued-in bookcloth headbands. Boring. When I tried a sewn silk headband, though, that was a different matter entirely. A headband makes the spine of a book feel more solid, and a good headband really can make the difference between a merely acceptable book and an excellent one.

It's one of those details a lot of people don't really notice if it's there, but certainly notice the lack if it's not.


The Byzantine style of headband is, at least on the surface, a complex piece of sewing. Oh, it is a pretty complex piece of sewing. But I've been handsewing for a long time, and I've got a high tolerance for detail work.

This particular book is pretty small -- the boards are a mere 4" x 6", which helped keep the headbands manageable. It's a good thing, too: not only did I do some of the sewing outside, in a stiff breeze, but I didn't have any linen thread coarser than what I used. When I get to the larger book, I'm going to have to invest in another thread.


I didn't think quite as hard about the spine lining as I probably should have, but it seems to have worked out all right. Next time, I need to find a material that isn't so prone to fraying, but muslin was what I had readily available.

In any case, after the first few wraps, it's pretty straightforward. I had a couple of what I consider major problems, but I imagine the casual viewer won't notice. I'll try to make the cores more even next time, either by using more glue or by getting a better quality of cord. Given that the coverage on the second headband is much better than the first, I think I've already worked out the issues with wrap tension. These are not the most flattering pictures I've ever taken - I can see all of the flaws in the sewing far too clearly. On the other hand, it's quite the motivation to do better next time, and I've learned a valuable lesson: there's a reason these are traditionally done with an unbleached linen thread.


Here's where the first massive flaw in my plan reared its ugly head: I decided not to bother rounding the outside spine edges of the boards. It didn't seem like a huge deal, and I didn't think it was structurally significant. Turns out it's remarkably difficult to get the headbands to turn a corner at the spine, though (you can see the bare corners clearly in the second image). Having a curve on the board there means that the whole object flows much better when it's finished. On the other hand, it's not like I don't have another set of these boards to work on. (The question will be whether or not I can afford to get more.)

But we carry on. After all, once the headbands are on, the book is practically finished.

Byzantine Binding: Fun Bit, Part One

I do believe I promised some process explication on the Byzantine binding experiment, didn't I? Today was immensely productive, although not on that front. I made paper for the first time in several years, and had a surprising amount of fun despite remembering halfway through that in fact, papermaking is not a solitary activity. Especially if you're doing it outdoors. The post on that is going to have to wait a bit, because it's going to be a few weeks before I can call the paper finished.

Back to the book: I had two boards, with all the holes drilled. Which is a good thing - the holes for the headband attachment need to be drilled at an angle so they come out at the top of the board. I think you'll see what I mean when it comes to pictures. (Actually, it looks like I failed completely to take those pictures, so I'll make sure to get some from another set of boards.)




The first step that I'd neglected to take notes on was the board attachments. This, as you can imagine, was disastrous. Fortunately, I looked around online, and it turns out that it's not important to attach the board to the first signature as it gets sewn on. It's more important to follow the structure of the holes - for strength - and get the thread worked around the board so that there's somewhere to attach the signatures.

Then it's a simple link stitch until half the book is sewn together. Now we get to the weird part of Byzantine bindings: they're made in two halves, and then tied together with this crazy figure-8 looping knot. It turns out that I actually took notes on that part, and link stitch is pretty hard to forget once you've learned it.

But from loose signatures to book is the easy part. Next up: headbands.

Byzantine Binding, Backstory

Long ago, in a different country - the South - I made a Byzantine-style book for a class. It was amazing. I gave the book away, which I only sort of regret. Well, no, let me rephrase. I gave it to someone who totally deserved it, and who is as likely as anyone to have used it (not that I'm going to ask), but it was my only one. I meant to make another, which is why I bought a spare set of boards. It's not having made the second book that I regret.

There I am, in the mists of the past, with three sets of cedar boards. I prepped text blocks for two of them, and then for three years they languished under piles of other projects. Languished, I tell you! It was awful. It still is, for the one with no text block. (If I am going to keep playing at being a book-binder, I am going to need a damn board shear. Or something.) A few weeks ago (it's amazing how fast these things can come together, isn't it?) I was poking around the internet and found pictures of Byzantine-style bindings that revealed some parts of the structure I'd failed to take notes on.

I am a terrible note-taker, especially when I'm making something. And by the time I took that class, I think some part of me had already decided that I was done with the formal process of institutionalized education. Or maybe I'm making excuses for slacking off - either way, the results are the same.

But the internet provides, and a little searching turned up two titles with some potentially useful information. Which meant I had to get a library card. And then, because one of the books I wanted was only available for in-library use, a second library card. At least it got me out of the bookstore. (I did, I admit, do a little investigation on what it would cost to buy the books, but they're both out of print and prohibitively expensive.) Well, I went to the library, where I had a delightful interaction with a charming, crabby, bored gentleman who gave me a soothing blue library card. And then I requested the books, but it turned out that they were in an annex somewhere.

So I waited a week, and went back. They'd only found one of them, and it was the one I'd actually used for some other research. I took copious notes anyway, because one never knows when one is going to want to work a double-beaded French silk endband. (The book is Headbands and How to Work Them, and if you're a binder interested in finicky sewing and fancy finishing, it is invaluable. I recommend seeking it out at a library and bringing a sharp pencil. I ended up copying all the diagrams by hand because the library's rebinding was so brutally tight. Like they thought the pages might try to escape if they didn't lace them up in a cloth and board corset.)

The next step is, I think, to try yet another library: this one an academic library, which claims to have a copy of the more scholarly of my two titles. (A work called The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding, by J A Szirmai, which I don't think I've ever seen. The book my binding instructor used for diagrams and photos of how Byzantine codices were made was in French, and I (of course) didn't write down the title or author or in fact any useful identifying information at all.)

The point is sort of moot, though. I've reconstructed enough of the process from my previous experience that I've managed to make a fairly good practice binding. It's not perfect, of course, but it it at least functional enough to work as a book. I need to recover some of my proficiency with sewn headbands, and I need to work on my sewing tension in general. I've also got to look more closely at how the corners are supposed to work. It's been a long time since I did any work in leather, and I wasn't all that good at it to begin with. Leatherwork requires a great deal of practice, and a careful hand. I'll get it eventually, if I keep at it, and learn to keep my blades properly sharpened.

I'm taking a break between bindings, though, to try for some paper. I recently got a mold & deckle, and it's high time I use up some of my stash of pulp balls. If it works, I can always make more. There are definitely people around who have beaters.

Next up: I'll show off some pictures of the practice Byzantine, and talk about process. Which is always entertaining.

Manifesto?

So I live in a town that has a long, varied, and generally blue-collar history. I walk past a house at least a couple of times a week that has a genuinely epic collection of plaster ducks. There's a sign on a stake that says Duck Village, and I always got a kick out of seeing what new things they'd done with the ducks on my way home.

A couple of months ago, though, they put up another sign: Duck Speakeasy. It turns out that the neighborhood got its name because it's a crazy warren of one-way streets, and bootleggers used to lose the cops in it during Prohibition.

I dunno, it seemed like something that was a perfectly reasonable starting point for ... something. And I've been thinking about re-starting a process blog, anyway, and I even have a project I recently finished the first iteration of that needs a home.

So: Duck Village arts is about the process of getting back into making books after a three-year hiatus, and incorporating as many media in doing so as I feel like on a given day. There you go.