{"id":15523,"date":"2010-05-16T02:03:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-16T06:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2010\/05\/16\/speed-the-plough\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:17","slug":"speed-the-plough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2010\/05\/16\/speed-the-plough\/","title":{"rendered":"Speed the Plough!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just before I moved house, I posted my guillotine for sale on Gumtree — for a paltry price, too, just hoping to get some pocket money for the move. A man came and bought it, aiming to use it in producing a sports-related newsletter. I think it’ll work well for his job, but for books it was a half-angel, half-demon device.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Yes, it quickly sliced through a thick novel like the proverbial hot butter-knife. But no matter how carefully I lined up the book or how tightly I cranked down the bar that held the book in place, the blade would inevitably chop through the paper at an angle — usually not-quite-right, sometimes very wrong.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Picture a novel opened to a page, its right-justified text acting as a black, lettery ruler pointing out that the blank right margin gets closer and closer to the text as it goes down the page. I was never happy with that, and several times, in trying to fix it with additional cuts on the guillotine, I would ruin the almost-finished book. It was a very frustrating waste. I know people like the little imperfections that remind them a book is hand-bound, but this funny-angle business was a flaw I was comfortable with.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I sold the guillotine knowing another solution was on its way to me. Of course, I’d just given away my existing solution, so this new one had<\/em> to work — my ability to make books and run my own press depended on it. So off went the heavy metal guillotine, and, just at the last minute arrived a book-binding lying press, wooden tub, and plough<\/a>. I didn’t even have a chance to take them out of their boxes before the movers had to take them away.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Now that we’re all moved in, with everything unpacked and in its place, with the boxes all stored up in the attic, I finally had a chance to test out my equipment — which, even though it’s new, looks antique in its design. The parts are all big, heavy blocks of birchwood, and its threading screws are all hand-tooled.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a>I sewed together a couple of book blocks while watching TV with the fella the other night, then yesterday got to work with the plough. I was nervous, because my whole process depended on this working. And it did.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The plough proved to be worlds better than working with the guillotine, because I can set the book exactly where I want it in the press, then trim the edge with absolute precision. The result is so smooth — it feels wonderful on the fingertips. It takes much longer to go back and forth, back and forth with the plough, but it’s worth it to produce a predictable result and not ruin a whole book. And there’s something rewarding about doing something the way it was done for hundreds of years.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A friend gave me an old wallpaper sample book, so I decided to indulge myself and use some of its wonderful screenprinted pages for cover paper and end-papers. Here’s the result, which I present, for once, without any apology or excuses:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I can’t wait to try it on a novel. I may even decide to reduce the outside margins on my books, which will mean they’re thinner and use less paper. I had to leave a wide margin before to reduce the visible discrepancy between the angle of the type and the angle of the book’s edge.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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p>
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\"\"<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just before I moved house, I posted my guillotine for sale on Gumtree — for a paltry price, too, just hoping to get some pocket money for the move. A man came and bought it, aiming to use it in producing a sports-related newsletter. I think it’ll work well for his job, but for books […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}