Strong Arm Bindery

Giant Drop-Spine Boxes

Rich, my amazing brother, makes our boxes.  And he makes them very well.  We've had a standing contract with an institution of better learning for a number of years to build over-sized boxes for their print collection.  The whole library will move in the not-too-distant future and the orders for these behemoths have become larger as the deadline approaches.

Above, witness our technique for adhering the trays to the cover:  cloth-covered bricks...and alot of them.  The presses we have just aren't large enough.  A fence board is placed inside the tray before the bricks are laid in to prevent an impression.

Here's a little over half the present order; I think it's 28 boxes total.  We're using an English Buckram for the cover material, and laser printed labels (on Dove's Gray).  The Buckram comes from Adele Kaufman, Inc. in NY---David Kaufman is wonderful to work with, should you be in market.

So these will make it to their assigned books and portfolios tomorrow, and we'll be that much happier for the freed-up bench space.

3-Ring Chop Shop

We had a project come in last week that required building a new home for the overstuffed documents of one store-bought 3-ring binder.  The ring mechanism itself was up to the task, but the boards were too short and the spine was too narrow; the whole book had taken on the shape a flying-wedge.

The hardware was removed and prepared thusly.

Rich had the brilliant idea to use a section of a giant tube mailer to create the new spine piece.  He also had the table saw and steady hands to cut it.  The piece was cut to accommodate the thickness of the book's innards, and provide  enough room at head and tail for the page dimensions.

We wound up using epoxy and clamps to attach the cardboard and metal (working time 5 minutes; set-up complete in 15!).

The rest of it was just a matter of covering the new spine piece with cloth and building some very big boards.  These were attach on the hinges extending from the spine.

The thing weighs a ton. But now it lies flat and I think it's bullet-proof.

 

Lubritorium--Look It Up!

I was making a valiant attempt to deliver a load of repaired books to one of my favorite clients this afternoon. It was an attempt that later proved successful, but along the way--just before the Hampton tolls on I-95, my alternator bit it.  I was doing 70 southbound, and then I was not.  I almost made it to the underpass, like 20 yards out, but wound up on the curb in the baking hot sun.  I called my brother so I'd feel better, then I called triple-A and they sent along a righteous man named Merlin (we shook hands in his tow truck).  Merlin then brought me and my sorry-ass car to a peaceful, beautiful place:  Dave's Garage and Lubritorium, in and on Hampton Beach, NH.

                                                                                                                                                    These were unfortunate circumstances. I had a deadline for the work, I had an appointed delivery time, and then I had a bum engine.  But my client was sympathetic and Dave and his staff were speedy and capable. And honestly, it was more than bliss to have an unexpected hour and half to sit on a bench outside the Lubritorium, eat a sub, and think long and hard about what was right in front of me.  Which in this case was sky, asphalt, and New Hampshire's version of a beach.

Swallowfield Visits Strong Arm!

I had a very good day in the shop when Jen from Swallowfield came for a visit.  She has a wonderful way about her and it was pure pleasure showing her around the studio and talking about all things book and print.  She's posted the resulting Strong Arm interview and some very cool photos from that day on her website -- check it out.  (I think the really interesting part for me is seeing what caught her eye--a couple shots of some serious clutter that came out looking other-worldly!)  And definitely check out her beautiful collage work and drawings at the Swallowfield Etsy Shop.

Thanks for the visit, Jen, and giving me the chance to blab about the bindery.  And come back any time!

No More Tears

Ah, sweet Jesus, at long last a gilt edge without any cussing, without any fighting, without any of it.  I'm comfortable in my skin, I'm digging the egg glaire, and this, my friends, is a gilt edge.

No doubt, the next 6 books will be cursed for my hubris.

And speaking of Jesus, there's more good news.  This weekend 43rd Parallel Press  launched it's Etsy site.  Now you can go and get your own black-light, day-glo and awesome-flocked poster of the Lord.  Plus some stunning gig posters.

Paste Papers...Round One

Since the last post I've been all hot and bothered about that guy's paste papers--and thinking it's high time I got back at it myself.

I've been reading up on various recipes for paste papers...and it dawned on me that for the 15 years I've been in this racket I've never used actual wheat paste to make my paste papers; I've always used methyl cellulose.

So today's big experiment was to check the difference between methyl cellulose and wheat paste.  From the recipes I've read, there appears to be a million other things you can add to the mix (like glycerin, egg-white, etc.), but today I just wanted to see difference between those two.  The first round was made with methyl cellulose and acrylics, and gave me the usual results---which always look a little muddy when they dry.

Then I mixed up wheat paste, acrylics and water and really started liking the consistency---it's not too watery and it has some body when it goes down on the sheet (I could probably have strained it to remove a few drier bits of paste). And I found I had to work faster with wheat paste---it was drying very quickly,

But I really liked the overall effect---it's cloudier and softer, but doesn't dry muddy.  I think the colors layer more subtly---which may have something to do with the fast drying time.

I had to leave when these were still a bit wet, but I'll check them tomorrow and put up images of the dry sheets.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited to have paste papers back in my life and I'm looking forward to a few more rounds of experimentation before full-fledged production.

12 May 2008  Okay, here's a close-up of the dry paste paper made with methyl cellulose yesterday---a little muddy like I thought it would be.  The mc batch spread out and dried flat on the paper surface.

And here's a detail from one of the papers made with wheat paste---much finer details and pulled parts dried slightly raised above the surface. Go figure.

Best Book Ever!

I had the great and good fortune to be vacuuming mold out of this account book today.

It's your standard mid-19th Century sheepskin account book---nothing special.  It suffers from serious red rot, but the paper's good, the spine's strong and structurally it's still a champ.

What kept me breathing deep was the piling on of seemingly gratuitous appointments.   For example; the masked leaf motif along the sprinkled edges---and given the natural variety of each mask, I think these were made by pasting the tops of whatever was growing outside the bindery door onto the side of the book and getting on with the sprinkling.

And then there's this; a plaid end band.  What the hell.  Who was working at this shop?  Every other book in pile had the same sheepskin, the same stamped covers and board edges, the same lines and columns on the inside.  And all of them have the same nasty ticking fabric on the end bands. This one's got plaid end bands. 

And finally there's the end papers.  Classic paste papers made on the cheap in the shop for the purpose of slapping some color between the covers and the numbers.

Click on these images--they look like rocks and sticks in the shallow parts of a river.

I have no doubt whoever had the inspiration to make these end papers would also be inclined to snap the ends off a few ferns before they sprinkled their edges.  It goes without saying they'd use a beautiful wool plaid on their end bands.

While I'm Hoovering spore out of this gorgeous chimera I'm thinking about the lucky clerk who got to open this book every day, in fact multiple times a day, and put his pen to paper.  It's the same hand throughout, and the records within go on for a year and a half.  They had to notice these details, too.  And actually, the front and rear fly leaves--that includes the paste papers--are torn out.

This is absolutely what I aspire to do in my stationery work.  I want it to be very useful, very durable and to provide some delight to the one who has to use it every day.

Back at the Ranch

It's Patriots Day---which doesn't mean much to me, except my cousin ran the Boston Marathon a year ago  It also meant it was a very quiet day at the shop and I got a chance to look around, regroup and focus on what needs doing.

Nice to finally see some good hustle going on under the grow lights.

I was not so much inclined to do battle with gilt edges, so I leaned into a set of 10 clamshell boxes for the Pictorial Webster's Dictionary -- an amazing print and binding project coming out of Quercus Press.

Then I saw this:
Perched at the edge of the roof, across the alley and three stories up was Handsome Pete (not his real name) totally checking out Dirty Girl, who was sunning herself on the deck outside the shop.  I have no idea how he got there, but he stayed put for about an hour, beaming at DG, then disappeared.  It was all very Cheshire Cat.

Moving Day

Monday was moving day for our Vandercook press.  It's been about a year in the works, but finally all the stars lined up.  We drove down to Wild Carrot Press in Hadley, MA, and with the able assistance of proprietor Dan Keleher and his fork lift we managed to get all parts loaded on and strapped down.

The press (a Vandercook 223) will undergo a complete cleaning and rebuild in the coming months, and make it's Portland home at 43rd Parallel Press. For folks who want to follow all the action on that front, we'll be posting our progress on a separate blog.  More on that soon.

I think what I found most bewildering on Monday is how much truck you can rent with a regular license and a cred it card.  It's really pretty shocking.

Many thanks to Dan Keleher for his deft work with the fork lift in Hadley.  And many thanks to Rich, Reuben and Leif for their brains and brawn throughout the move.

 

Slayah!

Dirty Girl's been doing a bang-up job keeping the shop mouse-free all winter.  Now with the onset of warmer weather, she's turned her attention to ridding the alley of snakes.  Today she brought this unfortunate Garter snake upstairs and staged several dramatic re-enactments of the hunt outside the shop door for me and Rich.  Then she spent some time lying beside it, looking nonchalant.  I feel really bad for the snake, but I know this is how the Girl's wired, and it's what she was doing when I first met her.  And she's really, really good at it.