bookbinding – Page 34 – Peachey Conservation

July 18, 2017July 18, 2017

The Czeck Edge Ruler Stop

I purchased the Czeck Edge ruler stop about two months ago and keep finding more and more uses for it. It costs around $35 and clamps onto almost any ruler easily and securely.

In addition to a ruler stop, it is accurate enough to convert a ruler into a double square. Although marketed to woodworkers, bookbinders will also find it quite useful. The non-rusting anodized aluminum is slightly more compatible with binders boards, leather, paper and cloth than a hardened steel Starrett double square.

This tool is useful in circumstances where your dividers are not large enough, for example when centering a label in the middle of a bookboard. It can be used for measuring a book without relying on quantification for boxmaking: simply set the stop for the measurement of the book, then transfer the distance with a knife to your board. It could be used for laying out tooling. I’m sure there are many more uses.

The small (3.75 x 1 x .5 inch with the knob) size is appropriate for books. This is a handy little tool at a reasonable price. Czeck it out! Sorry!

Here I am using it to position the catch plates when mounting clasps.

May 23, 2017May 23, 2017

Bookbinder’s Apron?

Someone — not me! — converted a standard WWII M-1937 Canvas Field Cooking Outfit Bag into an apron. When not used as an apron, the tools store in the appropriately labeled pockets. Although I can’t condone altering historical artifacts, this is a pretty cool idea.

Someone should make a Bookbinder’s Apron/ Tool Roll. What are the essential bookbinding tools?

Currently my most used tools are: two 1″ Princeton Brush Co. Gesso brushes, two #8 Princeton Brush Co. flat hog bristle brushes, a Delrin Hera, a large Jim Croft elk bone folder, a Green River Shop knife, a Japanese water brush, a 5″ Mundial scissors, Dumont and Sons #2a and #5 tweezers, a M2 Paring knife, a Pentel .7mm mechanical pencil, a thick steelcraft 12″ tempered ruler, an NT A-300GR snap-off knife, a Caselli Micro-spatula, a Delrin folder, and a 6″ Stevens dividers.

Add an adjustable neck, side-ties long enough to knot in front, and you have your first sale right here!

May 16, 2017May 16, 2017

Strong-backed and Neat-bound

screen-shot-2017-02-23-at-10-39-07-pm — Andrews, William Loring. *Bibliopegy in the United States and Kindred Subjects*. New York: Dodd Mead and Co., 1902, x.

It is well worth spending some time with the illustrations in Loring’s Bibliopegy. The online version gives a sense of them, but can’t capture the detail found in the book. Some are printed with two or more plates, one for the leather and one to reproduce the gold tooling. Others are photogravure. All are spectacular.

The text is sometimes of interest, especially Loring’s “explication” of the bookbinding section in Hazen’s 1837 Panaroma. He considered it the first treatise on American Bookbinding, although we now know most of it is recycled from earlier English Books of Trades. Even Nicholson’s 1856 Manual of the Art of Bookbinding, now generally considered the first American Bookbinding manual, is largely based on earlier English sources. As Sid Huttner notes in the Garland reprint introduction, “Little (one is tempted to say, if any) of Nicholson’s text came first from his own pen”.

Bibliopegy is a nineteenth century term for bookbinding. I like the way it sounds. A Guild of Bibliopegists? Or too pretentious?

Loring’s book is beautiful and neatly bound. But the paper case structure doesn’t have a joint groove and most copies I’ve seen, including mine, are tearing at the head and tail. The cover boards hit the thick spine piece, creating a levering action that tears the covering paper. Are the stakes for the binding higher when the book is about bookbinding? Can this bibliopegist admit a weakly backed book is still desirable?