When my folks were here, Dad bought me a hacksaw.
It’s a corollary of that rule that you never mention liking something when you’re visiting your parents, or they’ll end up giving it to you; when they visit, they buy you things they think you need.
At the time I thought, “What the heck would I need a hacksaw for?” Now I know, and I’m grateful I had it, because over the past two days I’ve been able to make my own perfect-binding press.
I’ve owned two other presses, both of which were good in their own right, but each had little quirks that made me have to work differently to the way I wanted to.
The other morning, while the fella and I were at a youth hostel in Tongue (yeah, it’s a place called “Tongue” — Tonga in Gaelic, if that’s less silly), I woke up with the plans for a press in my mind. It hadn’t ever occurred to me before to make my own, but in that moment it made absolute sense that everything about my process should be DIY.
The other thought was that I could offer these to “DIY Book” listeners, and it would be considerably cheaper than the other two presses in both price and shipping charges. Figuring out this one and cutting all the bits with the hacksaw and a Dremel tool was a lot of work, so I’m not sure if that’s a viable plan. Maybe I can get better and faster at doing it, or maybe I should outsource it to someone who’s a good woodworker.
At any rate, I’m really pleased with the end result. It’s a little bit cute, it’s a little bit ugly, and it’s exactly what I want!
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