The second edition

It took much longer then I had anticipated, but here is the second edition! I am very pleased with them and I am looking forward to contacting the buyers that have waited for so long (sorry).

The fact of the matter is that book making is a craft and it takes a lot of practice. In particular positioning a sheet of glued paper exactly correct proved to be difficult, especially with the long book (Maandagmorgen). But now that I have done it a couple of time (and with the support of Brutus), I am pretty good at it. The next batch will be much much faster.

I will be have a stand on the Pure Markt in Frankendael on the last Sunday of May. Hopefully this edition will be sold out at the end of that day, at the latest. :-)

Meet Brutus!

For the first of the covers I made at home I used make-shift tools like a rolling pin and a bucket full of water. Although the results have been satisfactory, some covers have gotten a little blistery. So I decided I needed a bit more pressing force.

In comes Brutus! Brutus is all about force.

He was built in the twenties or so and designed for copying work. At some point he became obsolete (fortunately for Xerox) and was stored in a wet environment. Brutus wears the scars in the shapes of rust pits in his cast-iron body.

Later he was apparently considered 'decorative', a thick layer of black paint was used to cover up the rust and golden striping stickers were added for the rustic effect. Imagine the humiliation!

So a little TLC was needed. When I first tested the press it sounded like a group of pigs being driven into the slaughterhouse. So I opened up the moving parts, cleaned them from rust and dried out grease, and applied a generous amount of new grease.

And now Brutus can show off his strength yet again!

Woodwork

When you attempt to makes books yourself, it comes in handy if you have some basic tools and a bit of wood lying around.

Based on my experiences with the previous set of books, I decided to improve my rig. Firstly, I made the templates for the drilling out of MDF board again. Previously I used a piece of cardboard, but that's not really durable. It's too easy to drill a little bit next to the intended spot. Secondly, I used higher pieces of wood along the sides. In the attempt before I had a ridge of 1 cm with was barely enough to hold the paper in place. A constant struggle which I do not want to repeat.

I made the setup for the two books at once. To the left the arrow binding for 'Roltrap', to the right the larger holes for 'Maandagmorgen'.

Humble beginnings.....

......of 22 new books. Half of which are already reserved, which is a great thing. It is a lot of fun (and some hard work) making these books. And then to see that it is appreciated is really rewarding.