Tedorigawa Bookmakers

Episode 90: More 2013 Schedules

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to sit on a moving train for nine hours. Twice. I took the opportunity to sew five text blocks; two on the way up and three on the way back. Last weekend I spent a half a day in my stationary house and cased three of them in.

Three schedules/diaries/calendars with monthly calendars from January 2013 to March 2014 plus two yearly calendars for 2013 and 2014. There are nine signatures of four pages each for a total of 144 pages. 101 pages are lined for journal keeping. There are also about eleven pictures of Kanazawa included and one, the mompei blue one, has English-Japanese translations of a variety of words and phrases. They are A6 in size - 41/2 inches by 6 inches for my American friends.

The mompei-blue one has brown pages while the other two have your standard white pages. The page numbers are extraordinarily large compared with normal journals. I did this because I thought it would be fun and it would be easy to remember what page you wrote something on. If you can't remember, there is also a bookmark in the red one and the white one.

Here's the skinny on the covers. I cut the numbers out of the bookcloth. Then I glued the paper on the book board for the numbers. Then I glued the bookcloth on the book board with the numbers over the paper.

One thing I learned on both the train ride and the weekend was that doing one thing repeatedly is a good way to get better at it. I believe it's called practice. I wish I had more time to practice but while on the train I found that I could sew one nine-signature text block in about an hour. I sewed on book in 45 minutes; a personal best. I tried to time myself on casing in but I kept getting interrupted by life. However, rough estimate puts casing in - including measuring and cutting the book cloth, measuring and cutting the cutouts for the numbers, gluing the inside paper, gluing the book cloth, gluing the endpapers, and pressing - at about three hours. I definitely need more practice casing in. Fortunately, I have eight more text blocks that need to be cased in.

If you would like one of these, email:

tedorigawa.bookmakers@gmail.com

and let me know. I think I could let them go for ten bucks each. (That's about 55 cents (US)/hour on the train. Too cheap, eh?)

Audio up!

Episode 89: 2013

In Episode 87 I talked about the prototype for my 2013 Diary/Calendar. Well, here is the finished product. Green book cloth with lighter green thin paper underneath so that the year would stand out. It is a handy fit-in-your-pocket A6 (41/2" by 6+") in size, it has a bookmark and six signatures of five sheets each for 120 pages. The first 40 pages are both a yearly and monthly calendar going from January 2013 to April 2014. 2013 and 2014 yearly calendars bookend the monthly calendars. Why April 2014? The school year in Japan starts in April. The final 80-some pages are lined in green ink (to match the cover's greens) with translations in Japanese and English for your educational outlook. Many of the words are nouns:

• monkey = 猿 (saru)
• bamboo = 竹 (take)
• squirrel = 栗鼠 (risu)

some are word play:

• キュウリ (kyuuri - cucumber) = キュリー (kyurii - Marie Curie)
• 剣道 (kendo, the sport) = 県道 (kendo - prefecture road)

and some are phrases that will come in hand for the paranoid traveler:

• I broke my leg. = 足を折った。(ashi (leg) o otta.)
• I'm lost. = 道に迷いました。 (michi (road) ni mayo imashita.)
• Please call a police officer. = 警察官を呼んでください。 (keisatsukan (police officer) o yonde kudasai.)

Everything about this book is what I wanted except for the way I failed to glue down the edges of the numbers. I either didn't get enough glue on the edges or the edges refused to accept it. In either case, the edges have come unglued. And that means, if you were to put this in your pocket, the possibility of tearing the cover at a number is quite high. Starting today, I'm going to rebuild it. And cut the numbers out. I think I need both a steadier hand and a sharper knife or scissors.

Tristram's Printer: A Typographical Love Story

A lovely young woman accidentally stumbles into the world of book arts, art, and papermaking. She learns the basics of all three arts and finds herself in love with a printer twice her age. Is he in love with her or in love with the image of his dead daughter? Literary fiction with love, divorce, art, drugs, laughter, death, and creativity. The first book of the Calvado Pentalogy.

You can download this novel via smashwords.com ($2.99) or you can email me at tedorigawa.bookmakers@gmail.com and I will hand make one for you. Thanks. And yes, that's much of my face on the cover.

Episode 88: Naked Books and A New Novel

Naked Books

Last weekend I was taught, I didn't learn it yet, three-needle coptic binding. It seems to require less thread. Is that possible? And it looks complicated but it really isn't once you get started. Previously in the year I learned two-needle coptic binding which is a third easier than three-needle binding. In the last couple of days I sewed three books using either two- or three-needle coptic binding. On the left you can see the three books. From the Top we have: Blank Notebook with about 180 pages, A5 in size (pocketbook), all white pages. In the Middle we have: An Odd Assortment of papers, about 180 pages, all A5 in size. The papers are leftovers, misprints, and test prints from my 2013 Diary/Calendar book. Rather than throw them all away, I decided to upcycle them into a memo pad. On the bottom we have: a 2013 Diary A5 in size, about 140 pages, with a bookmark (more on this when it's finished.) These three books will probably be casebound either today or tomorrow, I hope. Here are the front of the three books. From the left are the 2013 Diary, the Blank Notebook, and the Odd Assortment memo pad. The logo on the Odd Assortment is a test print for the 2013 Diary's last page. The 2013 Diary has a tail, as you can see, which is actually a bookmark. All of these fit in your back pocket. Not at once. Unless you have extra deep pockets.

A New Novel

In the past few years I have written a few (5) novels, all love stories. Two are available on Smashwords.Com.

The first one is The Venetian Slime Woman: A Biological Love Story. It's about an EPA water specialist who stumbles into and feels compelled to protect a strange unearthly woman from the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security wants to capture her, experiment on her, and find out what makes her tick. Why? Because she is of a species that grows from slime mould and learns by osmosis. In theory, they can never die. If a human touches the mould before it evolves into a human-like form, they die. If Homeland Security gets her, the Venetian Slime Woman will die.

It takes place in Venice, Seattle, the American midwest, and St. Augustine, Florida.

The reason I'm talking about it here is that I have bound a couple of copies. Smashwords.com is a good place to find and buy ebooks for your Kindle, iPad, or computer. If you like one of my books you can order a real copy - casebound or coptic - from me.

Next week: Tristram's Printer: A Typographical Love Story.

Episode 87: The 2013 日記 ~ Diary

I have grabbed the habit of making prototypes of books I want to make. I use cheaper paper, I check and re-check the content for errors such as spelling, grammar, and placement on the page, and I make small and large adjustments - sometimes incredibly large adjustments - before making the actual book. One example of this approach is the 2013 Calendar/Diary which I'm  currently slowly working on. There are at least 365 places where mistakes could creep in in a calendar and it has to be checked and rechecked again and again. That was redundant, wasn't it? Yes, but it had to be said. The 2013 Calendar/Diary consists of:

• two yearly calendars (2013 and 2014),
• 16 monthly calendars (from January 2013 to April 2014),
• several sections of lined diary,
• a bookmark,
• a strap to keep it closed, and
• pictures of the local scenery.

The calendars are at the front, starting with the yearly 2013 calendar, zipping through the months, and ending with the yearly 2014 calendar. The lined notebook portion follows. The calendar section takes up two signatures of five sheets each for about 40 pages. The prototype has four signatures of lined paper for about 80 pages for a total of 120 pages. I think this is a bit thin, especially since I'll probably use 2 mm thick book boards. The final product might have five or six lined signatures. Which, if my calculations are in the ball park, will result in 140 to 160 pages. I also experimented with a cover. I cut out the numbers for the year (2013) out of the cover paper. Previously I added a thin colored paper to the book board that would eventually become the cover. Then glued the whole shebang together. I am not a paper artist, that has been determined beyond a shadow of a doubt. Why the pictures? To localize the book. Generic (cough Hello Kitty cough) diary/calendars sell a few gazillion every year but they are the same for anyone who buys it. Since I'm attempting to sell locally, I figured, hey, why not localize the content? However, I'm not taking the typical local touristy pictures. I include the tourist trap places but from a different angle. I also take pictures of well-known stores or parks that tourists usually don't end up in as they are beyond the touristy areas. The pictures in this episode, by the way, are of the prototype. The final product will be using brown paper and have, perhaps, a one-tone cover (plus the numbers in a different color.)

Episode 84: Books Inspire Discovery

This is a lined notebook with seven signatures of five sheets each for 140 pages. It is A6 in size (pocketbook) and comes with a red ribbon bookmark. It has a lively blue flower/dragon fly book cloth cover and white endpapers. The more creative side of this notebook is in the margins. Marginal art, as it were. On each page at the top and bottom are words in Japanese and English. The pairs of words have something in common.

For example, one page has "garden (庭)" on the top margin and "chicken (鶏)" on the bottom margin. The connection between the two is the partial pronunciation. "Garden" in Japanese is pronounced "niwa" and "chicken" is pronounced "niwa-tori". (Literally, a garden bird.)

On another page at the top is "ugoku (動く)" and at the bottom is "hikoshi (引越し)". What's the connection? They both mean "move". The first one means move as in a book. The second one (hikoshi) means to move house.

On yet another page has "kimono" and "arrive". Here the connection is the kanji used in both words: 着. Kimono is 着物 (kimono) while arrive is 到着 (tochaku). Easy, right?

Why did I include words on a lined notebook? In this book's first outing, the cover attracted some attention. But after the person opened it, they became engrossed in reading it. Just four words per page but they learned something (either Japanese or English). After I pointed out there's a connection between the words at the top and bottom margins, they tried to find it. Content, in this case, provoked interest and discovery. And I think books should inspire discovery, don't you?

At the bottom we have three pictures of a Work In Progress: A is for Love/Y is for Dream which includes Japanese & English again. It is an Alphabet book but with Japanese words instead of English. A is ai which is love: 愛. Y is yume which is dream: 夢. In the middle are the strips of paper that will be the backing (instead of green). Each one is 110 cm long and about 155 mm wide. Some of the words are tossed on top.

Episode 83: The What Is This? Book

Rather than name this book after its obvious origins (a beef curry package), I decided to go with What Is This? What Is This? is a B6 blank notebook with seven signatures of four sheets each for 112 pages. It is made of a recycled Beef Curry package. The cow the curry was made out of, according to the package, was raised by Miyazaki University students. Hence the name of the curry is MiyaDai Beef Curry. (Dai being short for daigaku - 大学 - which is Japanese for university.)

Gee, free Japanese lessons with your bookbinding enjoyment. It's always nice to learn another language, isn't it?

Actually, the curry name shows you three of the four written syllabary Japan uses. The MiyaDai (small, in white) is kanji; then in big English letters is Beef; following that is katakana which Japan likes to use for words borrowed from other countries. The katakana here is カレー - kare, pronounced ka ray - or, in English, curry. This might be one reason Japanese students are in school studying Japanese for twelve years, eh? I mean, they study English for at least six years (junior high and high school), plus at least one in college. And advertising uses all three or four syllabaries to an artful result. Sometimes.

There's another syllabary Japan uses called hiragana but we don't need to go into that here, do we? Nyah.

What Is This? has a red bookmark made out of a ribbon recovered from one present or another, and a yellow strap to keep the book closed during typhoon season, which is fast approaching Japan. The yellow elastic strap was 30 mm wide but I've discovered that 15 mm is a better width. I cut it in half and it slowly unravels as the book is used. This is known as Unique and Stylish. Or Planned Obsolescence. In either case, What Is This? was a quick book to make and will be fully used as a notebook by someone in the future.

What I am actually doing with these curry books is trying to perfect one or another skills. Attaching a strap or measuring the spine differently. Maybe even trying to improve my endpaper attachment technique. I haven't been working enough to improve as well as I want to so I thought more and more cheaply made books will push me up and over a plateau. Whether this is working or not isn't up to even a mild debate.

Episode 82: Miyazaki Chicken Curry

Anger and frustration are wonderful motivators. Sometimes. Bookbinding is not the place to vent your anger, though. And what is anger but frustration at yourself for not accomplishing in real life what you see in your mind and heart? Last week I had a beautiful vision in my brain of a moleskine-esque blank notebook. It had a yellow spine, black cover, and a yellow band to keep the thing closed when you're running out of a bank you just held up. Yellow and black. Black & Decker or heavy equipment operators would love it. But... Yes, there is a 'however'.

First, I mis-measured the black book cloth so the back had more than the front. The yellow spine book cloth was okay but then the big mistake. The big BIG mistake. I attached the endpaper on the back OVER the strap that keeps the book closed during your bank robbery escape. Yes. OVER the strap. Covered the strap Completely! Then the front endpaper smacked too much glue on the text block and kept it closed. Even without the strap. STRIKE THREE!

Tossed the book across the room. Kicked myself (figuratively) and kicked the garbage can (literally). Picked the book up & ripped the covers off. Ripped the spine off. Ripped the book cloth off the back. Ripped the endpapers off. All in about two seconds. Rapid ripping, after which I went and had dinner. Slowly and with a bit of humor about the chicken. Chicken jokes.

That was a good week ago or more. Last night, after a glass and a half of organic South African red wine that came with a dinner of chicken curry, I returned to the pile of material that was, at one time, a ripped up book. I carefully measured and cut black book cloth for the covers. Then I cut the cover off the curry packet and used it as the spine cover. Except, well, anyway, uh, yeah. I cut it to exactly the height of the book. Yes, the exact height. No bit to bend and glue. Oh, well. No frustration here, eh? It has eight signatures of five sheets for 160 pages and is B6 in  size (about 51/2" by 71/2"). The spine reads: Miyazaki Chicken Curry. (Miyazaki is a prefecture in southern Japan.)

The end result is a fun-looking blank notebook called Miyazaki Chicken Curry. Retained from the vision in my head: the black book cloth, the yellow strap, the off-yellow paper. Added since my blow up: the curry packet spine, yellow endpapers, pictures of Miyazaki, leftover string & a scrap of endpaper paper on the cover. Plus the exposed spine at the head and tail through my miscalculation of cutting the spine paper to the exact height of the book. But fun. Humor. Laughter this time instead of anger and frustration. They might be wonderful motivators but they inhibit the enjoyment of bookbinding that I have in my mind and heart.

Episode 79: The Idiot Runs

The Idiot Runs is my latest novel. It's about a Oregon coast man who travels back in time to Venice in the 16th century to work with Nicolas Jenson, printer, binder, and typeface creator of the Roman font.

I  wrote, edited, imposed, printed, sewed, and slapped a case binding on it. There are 160 pages of eight signatures of five sheets each. The book is bound in a tan burlapy book cloth with Japanese-esque endpapers (resembling mompei, discussed in Episode 75 when we were talking about another novel: The Priests of Hiroshima) with brown paper attached to the front.

The book is B6 in size - a handy pocket-sized book if you have slightly larger than normal pockets. And, surprisingly, it went together quite well over a period of a couple of days. Not the writing and editing. That took quite a bit longer. On the first evening, I sewed the signatures up. The next evening, after a leisurely dinner, I glued the spine, mull, and that extra strip of paper to the spine. On the third evening, I cut and pasted the endpapers; cut and pasted the cover and assembled the whole thing together. The third evening took about an hour. I wasn't rushed during the whole process and only made a couple of mistakes but nothing I need to point out here.

By the way, The Idiot Runs is the first book in my Calvado Pentalogy which contains the following books: The Idiot Runs, Calvado, The Priests of Hiroshima, The Venetian Slime Woman, and Tristram's Printer. Certain characters and situations show up in all five novels but not always blatantly obvious. If you're familiar with Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet you might recognize the structure in The Calvado Pentalogy.

Upon finishing this and putting it on my improvised book press, I looked at my work table and discovered I have seven more projects to finish up. Seven! And where might I find the time to do them all? Heaven knows, eh?

Episode 78: Yellow Clamshells

This last weekend I went to a craft fair where I ate a nice taco-flavored rice dish. I also, not at the craft fair, made a yellow clamshell box for one of my novels (a re-covered Tristram's Printer - first mentioned back in Episode 50). The novel is actually in two parts. Part one is my novel and part two is the first book of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. The first book is probably the most read part of Tristram Shandy as it is difficult to get through. Not your average Tom Clancy novel, let me tell you.

Tristram's Printer is about a young woman who learns about papermaking, printing, and bookbinding and falls in Love with a Printer who fantasizes about printing the typographically challenging Tristram Shandy. She is about 25, he is about 50. Characters in Tristram's Printer make an appearance in The Idiot Runs, a time-slipping 2010 Oregon coast to 1462 Venice, Italy bookbinding/printing novel I am currently editing.

This clamshell box (夫婦箱 - me otto bako, in Japanese. Literally: husband-wife box. 夫 is husband while 婦 is wife.) is my first. It is covered in yellow paper instead of book cloth and that was a mistake. It is already tearing at the hinge. My next clamshell box, coming up in a couple of weeks, will be covered in book cloth. The most challenging and worrisome bits are the measuring, cutting, gluing, and putting together the shell. Almost everything about it is worrisome to some extent.

Always in the back of my mind is the possibility that it won't fit together properly. In fact, the first attempt didn't because of a mis-measurement. This, while the first completed clamshell box, was renovated during construction as the first attempt had the two boxes colliding.

Clamshell boxes: they're not for the squeamish.

Episode 77: Flash!

This is another lined notebook. B7 in size - pocket-sized and handy, if I do say so myself. With this blog url, my email, name, and the name of 手取川製本 on the cover in an inset. About 112 pages but no pictures. The cover is Japanese style paper and red craft paper which I cut irregularly. Plus, it went over the inset, which isn't something I wanted. However, it is pocket-sized and handy.

What did we learn from this? Again and again, we learn that measuring and planning is important. If I had measured the red spine paper better, it wouldn't have covered the inset. If I had planned the placement of the inset, the red paper wouldn't have covered the inset, either. We live, we learn, we grow. Right?

On the bright side, for the first time since I've started binding books, a member of my family has actually  asked to use one that was already completed (vs a 'special order'.) I had planned to use a certain blank notebook to keep a list of the books I've made. Now it is being used to keep a list of books someone has read. Hey, it's related, eh?