I like to work on the Imaginary Saints late at night, after everyone is in bed. Most nights, Henry wants extra stories or Sweetie is busy watching David Tua matches on the laptop, or I fall asleep while brushing my teeth at 8PM. So my big book project has been going pretty slowly.

There is definately progress being made, however. For instance, I have six out of eight signatures all ready for printing. I have solved the A4 vs. 8.5×11 problem (did you know that those two papers are not, in fact, the same size? of course you did. I don’t know how I made it to my late twenties without realizing that, shall we blame the American educational system?) and I even produced a functional mock-up of my text block, where all the pages are right-side-up, properly registered, and in order. I am almost – almost! ready to start printing.

There are so many little optional things to decide at this point. For instance, do I want a clean edge on my text block, or is a slightly uneven one more charming? In order to learn the process of cleaning a text block, among other valuable skills, I turned to AW Lewis, author of Dover’s “Basic Bookbinding”.

My edition is copyrighted 1957, and it has seen hard use over the years. Previous owners have underlined certain paragraphs, dripped glue on the illustrations, and thumbed the corners into oblivion. I think this is because AW Lewis, bless his crafty little heart, was a very pendantic, yet simple, writer. He lectures exactly like your most boring college professor, the one who read from notes in a reedy voice and hardly ever got the visual aides in the right order, but who discussed the most basic concepts.

Also, he had very clear ideas on taste. From the foreword:

Deliberate omission has been made of any reference to cover decoration since it is felt that the addition of patterns to the covers of utilitarian books of this kind is inapproriate.

Ha ha. He would flunk my utilitarian books for sure. 

Mr. Lewis is of the school that believes that things-worth-doing-are-worth-doing-right, whereas I am more of a read-six-different-books-on-the-subject-and-draw-your-own-conclusions kind of person, so reading the book (and yes, I read the whole thing, right down to the chapter on rebinding) was a constant tug between my ideas on Art and his on Craft. He talks a lot about correct proceedure and approriate tools and how you really shouldn’t bother attempting a case-bound hardcover without a standing press. He’s right, of course; the right tools make anything easier. But where does this leave the earnest student of bookmaking who is exiled to a foreign country, fifty years in the future, where no one has ever heard of a cuttlefish bone folder?

Mr. Lewis is not an improvisor:

The following list of items suggests the basic items necessary to start bookbinding. Improvisation is possible in some cases but inevitably it can only be second best and the traditional tools are to be preferred.

 Oh, AW, if only I had my own workshop full of freshly sharpened ploughs and antique yet perfectly true presses! Until then, I will have to improvise.

So, a couple nights ago, I built my own lying press, complete with cutting mat, straight-edge, kitchen cutting board, C-clamps, and a freshly sharpened utility knife. I was so proud I even took a picture. Behold the magnificent:

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And then I spent the whole evening learning how to cut crisp, clean, glorious edges; edges that were perfectly square and radiantly straight. (the trick, in case you’re interested, is going lightly and slowly and being very careful that the knife is straight on each cut – easy breezy.)

But then, faced with a pile of razor-sharp practice blocks, one is forced to ask oneself: Is a straight edge really that attractive on a handmade book? Is an edge with a slightly fuzzy quality that bad? Is it okay to have a straight edge and a fuzzy top and bottom? What do I really want here? What will be the most beautiful solution?

AW Lewis does not have the answer, but he does have a recipe for paste that I can try while I am deciding.