Some tools you can make in this workshop, or design your own.
Making Delrin Tools by Hand for Bookbinders and Conservators. Register here!
This is a rare chance to take a two day Delrin toolmaking workshop. Anyone who needs small hand tools for manipulating, delaminating, spreading adhesive, etc. is welcome. Making tools is engaging, fun, and practical. Delrin is an excellent material for many bookbinding and conservation tools, such as folders, lifting tools, microspatulas, hera, and creasing tools. We will work together designing, roughing out and finishing of several tools. Working Delrin is a meditative activity, no previous experience required. Safe, low dust methods of working Delrin will be emphasized. This workshop is a great opportunity to geek out with other tool lovers. After the workshop you will have some useful new tools, and possess the know-how to alter, maintain, and make more variants. Warning: tool making is highly addictive.
North Bennett Street School, Boston Mass. October 4-5 2025. Register here!
What happens when you hybridize a bookbinder’s folding rib and a case folder? You get the Casing Rib.
The potter’s rib was adapted for bookbinding by Christine Cox, who made her version out of Teflon. It is used by many bookbinders for repetitive covering tasks, folding, creasing, etc. A Bakelite case folder is a more traditional tool for similar tasks. The case folder is first recorded being used by the Harcourt Bindery in 1972 according to Sam Ellenport; likely earlier.
On the left is an case folder from Harcourt. A worn case folder is pictured in Kim Jinsub’s 2016 Book Tools.
Not to Goldilocks it too much; but for me, the teflon rib is too small and narrow, and the case folder is too large. Teflon, though wonderfully slippery, wears rapidly. Harcourts’ case folder is made from a Bakelite phenolic laminated material which doesn’t slide very easily. Daniel Mellis made an experimental stainless steel rib, which I enjoyed using, and it prompted my own search for a better size and material.
So the casing rib was born.
Made from black Delrin, the large size is easy to grasp and apply pressure directly downwards. I use it for turning-in, general smoothing, box making, and more. Delrin is non-marking like Teflon, and more than twice as abrasion resistant.
“Jeff, this tool is the best. It feels so nice to work with. I’m doing a big edition and using it repetively has been nothing but joy. Doesn’t hurt the wrist. My old case folder would sometimes snap my fingers down if I wasn’t careful. 10/10.” – Purchased by Gabby Cooksey
The Binder’s Curse: John Bradford and Early Nineteenth Century American Bookbinding, in Suave Mechanicals 8, The Legacy Press, 2023, 387 – 457.
“Keep Dark. Can’t Tell” With these four words, 19th century NYC bookbinder John Bradford begins an extraordinary book of bookbinding related poetry and imaginative parody. Written records from craftsmen during this time are very uncommon. Writings from bookbinders are very, very uncommon.
Bradford’s well-known poem, The Binder’s Curse, contains an introduction which places it in the context of a trade dispute, which is not so well known. The full title of the book gives a hint at Bradford’s wacky worldview: The Poetical Vagaries of the Knight of the Folding-Stick of Paste-Castle andThe History of the Garrett, &c. &c., Translated from the Hieroglyphics of the Society, by a Member of the Order of the Blue String, Printed for the Author, [New York], 1815. The title is not just poetic exaggeration; part of the text consists of — supposedly — translated and untranslated hieroglyphics.
“This world’s a huge bindery…” Bradford proclaims, decades before Mallarmé’s more famous dictum, that everything in the world exists to end up as a book.1 Bradford constantly reinforces this world-as-bindery cosmology: Did this guy ever think about anything but bookbinding? Yet these poems provides primary documentation of bookbinding techniques and tools: the first mention of a squaring shears, details of which tools the binder owns (Bradford was a journeyman his entire career) and which the master provided, the use of templates, and more. There is a lot of serious bookbinding history buried in his poems.
There are also less serious aspects, like some really cringey love poetry. “Her forehead is like a paste bowl / And smooth as a fine paring stone.” Anyone want to guess what body part is “white as wheat paste”?
Bradford gives us a sense of the working life of an early nineteenth century binder, including day-to-day annoyances, and trade politics, all written with his relentlessly quirky sense of humor. The poem “Receipt for binding a book” consists of the earliest comprehensive listing of the steps in American binding, which is analyzed in depth by comparing it with extant bindings and relevant bookbinding manuals of the day. Bradford’s poems provide a insight into an imaginative bookbinder working on the cusp mechanization, especially dealing with the importance of tool ownership and use.
Thanks to editor Julia Miller and publisher Cathy Baker of the Legacy Press. And congrats to all the other authors below! I can’t wait to read the other essays. Available soon from Oak Knoll Press.
KEEP DARK
Essays in Suave Mechanicals, Vol. 8.
DO NOT attempt this curse at home! Provided for informational purposes only. The beginning of “The Binder’s Curse” from The Poetical Vagaries of the Knight of the Folding-Stick…. 1815.
Malarmé, “Les Livre, Instrument Spirituel,” Quant au livre, 1895. ↩︎
Peachey Conservation 