Strong Arm Bindery

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.