Dust making 101

We had another really fun week at the bindery.  Though the class was held during the day I can't resist posting this photo of the bindery taken during open studio night this week.  Pretty amazing sky, in spite of the lack of clouds.

The class was on making a half leather binding.  Working with leather is one of the most fun things to do in binding.  Whether you want to make modern fine bindings or historic models, knowing how to work with leather is an essential skill.  This class was an introduction to working with this wonderful material.

But, I was a little unsure how to do the class, frankly.  My idea was to give the students the option of making a book using either a spokeshave or a paring machine to make their book.  However, I wasn't sure at all how long it would take students to get good enough at either of them to make a successful binding.

What??

Leather comes too thick to be used on bindings.  That means that it needs to be pared down.  There are a few ways of doing that, but the most common are to use a paring machine (like a Brockman or a Scharf-fix, see picture below) or to use a spokeshave.  Neither of them is exactly a walk in the park, but not the most difficult thing you'll do in your life either.  

So, you could say the class wasn't a leather binding class, it was a leather dust creation class.

Eventually I decided to show the students both methods and see if they couldn't do two bindings in a week.  It could not have gone better.  The first day of the class they forwarded two books (sewed, rounded and backed, and sewed end bands on them).  On Tuesday we spend the day paring leather using the Brockman paring machine.  

It works really, really well and the students hit it out of the park.  We had that book done by Wednesday.  Before we had finished that book we had moved onto spokeshaving leather.  Using a spokeshave on leather can be a bit intimidating, but it is only a difficult thing to do if you spokeshave isn't extremely sharp.  First, the spokeshave needs to be modified, both the handle and the blade.  But that just takes time and a bit of knowledge.  

Then the blade needs to be sharpened.  So sharp that if you drop the blade it sinks 4 inches into concrete.  So sharp that when you run around the room with it you hear atoms splitting.  You get the idea.

I had a 4000 grit Japanese water stone wheel that fit on my Tormek grinder and it did a stunning job finishing off the edge of one student's spokeshave.  Stunning is probably an understatement.  Really, spokeshaving is as much about sharpening as paring.  

You can buy it already sharp and modified from Jeff Peachey.  Here is his:

It's fantastic that Jeff offers these ready to go, but you still have to know how to sharpen blades is you are going to use it.  Like everything else in binding, you can't avoid learning the fundamentals.  Like sharpening.

They both took to the spokeshave with surprising ease and success.  That meant that they were able to easily finish two books by Friday.  Which I wasn't at all sure was possible.  In fact, they were well on their way to their third and fourth books by the time the class ended.

As part of the class, we also blind tooled the spine and covers.  Here is Camille tooling the spine:

And Camille's third book from the class:

In the class we also pared leather to make a label for the books, using the Kwikprint to stamp a title.  Then we used our French knives to pare the edges, which is really, really fun to do. You have to pare the edges without reducing the overall size of the label.  I really enjoy it, and I hope that rubbed off on the students.  I think it did.  Sort of.

Here are the two books I made during the class.  The top one I pared with the spokeshave. (I forget to photograph the student's books, unfortunately.)

Needless to say it was an extremely gratifying and fun class and I look forward to teaching it again, probably early next year.

You know, I don't really think I'm working for you

Books have been, and are, such a constant presence in our lives.  I don't think I have known anyone who didn't have at least one book, and I have known many people who have had hundreds and hundreds of them.

As a binder, what has surprised me is that none of them have any idea how books function, or how they are made.  I suppose that's because it's not a common subject, and they didn't know they were interested in bookbinding until they met a binder or saw a bindery.

I firmly believe that people, in general, know more about how cars function than they know how books are intended to work. Consider how much more complicated cars are than books!  How many more parts make up a car!

I would also say that they have no idea of how books are repaired, or even what a good or bad repair is.

That was certainly true of myself.  I was working in an archives, mainly working in a darkroom copying and duplicating glass place negatives, when I was asked if I would fix a couple of books.  Not valuable books, of course.  They gave me a manual by Jane Greenfield, and my boss walked me through a repair.

I was left with a repair I felt was horrible, but I had no idea what a good repair was.  It actually kept me awake at night, I felt so bad for the books.  Even though the bindings had no value before the repair, and all I was doing was helping to preserve the content, I couldn't live with myself repairing books that way.

At that point I wanted to learn how to do it right, whatever that was.  After calling around I found out about the North Bennet Street school.  (How did I find them? I called the Massachusetts Department of Vocational Education!  They had one listing for bookbinding!)  I visited the school and the instructor at the time showed me a book he had fixed.  A light went off.

Almost immediately I made plans to quit that job and go to school.  I had to.

The point of this, though, is that people have brought me books to repair for about 20 years now and few of them really know what they want, or what to expect.  Will the book look new?  Will be it function again but still look it's age and show its use?  How long will the repair last?  I suspect many have these questions somewhere in their head, but lurking in their subconscious.  Few ask.

That leads them, at times, to ask for repairs which are ethical and proper to do, but not really the best thing for the book.  Explaining that to them can be difficult, and cost is very often a limiting factor.  Of course.  There are so many ways to approach a book repair.

After I graduated from NBSS and started repairing books at home, moonlighting from my job fixing books at Washington, I struggled a bit with how to proceed with these kinds of book repair. What was the right thing to do with them?

I decided my mantra would be that I would do the work the current owner's grandchildren would wish that I had done.  Whether the client is paying for that level of work or not.  (Hopefully they are.)

So the first question I ask myself when presented with a broken book is just that.  And it's been very helpful in sorting out treatment options to present to the clients.  What's great is that it answers every question.  Should I clean off this tomato stain, or coffee cup ring on the cover?  What should I do with these totally destroyed cover boards?

The answer lies in this:  would the grandchild of the client find any of that helpful in understanding either the book or their ancestors?  The wear of a cover can often say a lot about how the book was used, how often it was used, etc.  Book archeology!

The beauty of this question is that it's completely comprehensible to the clients.  It gives them a perspective from which they can make the right decisions.

Assessing  books when working for collectors or book dealers is  completely different.  The latter want their books detailed in the same way one would detail a used car for sale.  Hopefully not quite as superficially as is done with cars, but often the work is just that.  For collectors it's a completely different esthetic.

But for everyday folks with their favorite books, just imagine their grandchildren in forty or fifty years and ask them.   They'll know.

Fixor feedback

When I made the large batch of the homemade fixor a few months ago I sent some bottles out to a few friends for them to try.  Though the bottles looked cool in my fridge, it made more sense to pass them around and find out what others thought of the stuff, and whether we all could just not have to buy the weird Fixor that Talas is currently selling.

Today I heard back from Mark Esser, who has finally had a chance to try it.  His comments are:


"I wanted to let you know that I've tried your homemade shellac glair and it works beautifully!


I tooled three side-by-side lines. One was real Fixor diluted 1:3, which is what I've found works best for me (that's 1 part Fixor to 3 parts water). The second line was your glair used straight and the third was your glair diluted 1:1. I regret not trying this experiment before I began tooling my current fine binding. I had anticipated that the best possible result would be equivalence between the commercial Fixor and the homemade, but I actually prefer yours, especially when diluted 1:1. It really is better!"




Mark's "real Fixor" was the liquid, normal Fixor not the gel Fixor I received from them.

This homemade fixor works well for me, but I wanted to know how it was working for others before I was going to be completely confident in the stuff.  When you are from Seattle and see how the Mariners current players don't play anywhere near as well as they did on their previous team, and how their former players tear up the league, it creates a life outlook that is always searching for confirmation and certainty.  Now I think I have it.

Now we can discuss Chone Figgins.  Tino Martinez.  Steve Balboni.  Or not.

Once again, it is worth noting that it is because of  Peter Garrity that we know this recipe.

The recipe and the story behind this episode are in the blog postings listed below.


http://singleflexible.blogspot.com/2012/02/fixor-problem.html

http://singleflexible.blogspot.com/2012/02/fixor-finis.html