手取川製本 ~ Tedorigawa Bookmakers

Episode 115: Live Recorded Voices

Something new in the way of an experiment: Live Recorded Voices™. I hooked up a microphone to my iPad and spent a few minutes trying to round the spine of a book and talk at the same time. Thoughts mostly related to bookbinding or books.
This is not the book I was rounding (this is a blank notebook with rough edges, I believe ~ this is an example of a roundback book). I was attempting to roundback my copy of Frankenstein. This follows last week's attempt at a round back Dracula. The Dracula worked out well. The Frankenstein is still in production. I hope to finish it before Halloween, of course.
If the audio sounds weird, remember I was sitting in a conference room with a text block between my knees and a microphone balanced on a sweater on a chair. But, enjoy nonetheless.

Episode 114: Revitalized in Green

About 100 years ago I made five A6 sized blank notebooks which, at the time, I thought were pretty well made. (Okay, maybe five years ago.) I gave three away and kept two of the less-than-excellent ones for myself. Recently, I looked at them and they were falling apart. The signatures were loose, they were hard to open, and the writing on the covers had faded. So I ripped one apart.

Specifically, I did the following:

removed the signatures,
re-sewed the signatures,
attached new mull,
trimmed the fore edge of the text block,
pulled the book cloth off the fore edge of the book board,
trimmed the fore edge of the book board,
re-glued the book cloth to the book board,
added new and better endpapers,
added headbands,
cased the whole shebang into the newly trimmed book boards.

The result was a better looking and better built small blank notebook. In the photo you can see the revitalized one on the left and the older ~ completely full notebook ~ on the right. I hope there's a visible difference between the two.

Now, about those three that I gave away.....

Episode 112: Covering Cloud Atlas

Many months ago I borrowed Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I even read it. Then, several months later, I decided to make a slipcase for it so that when I returned the book, the lender wouldn't realize how long I'd had it. It took me awhile to make the slipcase, of course, but here it is. The bare bones of the slipcase can be seen here, in Episode 109.

The name is printed on part of the cover and, since my printer can't handle a piece of bookcloth that big, I had to assemble the cover in two pieces. The only minor problem was making sure the piece that had printing didn't catch on the bookshelves when it was taken off or put back on the shelf. I don't think it will but the owner of the book is the one who will find out if it does or not.

The learning process of making the slipcover was eye opening. It wasn't all that difficult but it did require some thinking: how much overlap, how much inserted into the cover itself. There are, basically, two pieces of bookcloth covering the case: the spine and the rest. It was only after I finished that I realized the color of the cloth kind of fit the color of the book, too. An incidental surprise.

The two books with Cloud Atlas are A6-sized lined notebooks. More on these in a coming episode.

My novel, Tristram's Printer, is available from Smashwords.com or from me. If you order from me you will get a hand bound original version. Autographed, if you so prefer.

It is a typographical love story because an older man who works as a printer finds himself being loved by a younger woman; a woman who acts and looks like his dead daughter. And she wants to take over his daughter's papermaking studio. A feisty cast of characters (including a socially shy bookbinder and a overly flamboyant artist with a business-sharp wife) round out the tale.