Bookbinding

[rhu]

So I've started to work on creating a properly bound draft of my siddur (prayer book) project. This is the one to find out what's going to go wrong. (So far, I've learned that if you have a one-bit-deep color image embedded in a PDF, Acrobat Reader 8 renders it correctly onscreen but as black and white to the printer. Ouch.)

Last night I printed and folded all the signatures (that took about two hours for a 128p codex). This morning I cut the boards and cloth for the cover and glued them together. I hope to stitch the signatures today and do the final assembly tonight, so it can dry for a day and be usable by Shabbat.

It brings back fond memories of the book-repair table in the library office at HCHS. JH was the book-repair master -- he could fix anything and I think he's the only person ever to log over 1,000 hours volunteering at the library. I never qualified to fix anything significant; mostly I did accession paperwork and worked front desk. But looking back on it, the library clique was the coolest nerd thing about high school. (I didn't realize we were a clique until just now.)

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

But when will the siddur become commercially available?

I never thought of the library group as a clique, but I guess in some ways we were. You know that JH got city-wide commendation for his volunteer work, don't you? He got to meet the mayor and everything.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

But when will the siddur become commercially available?

That depends on many factors. Making it commercially available was never one of the project goals, but enough people have expressed interest in getting a copy when I'm done that I'm starting to consider it.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Heh. I, too, was part of a library clique in high school. From 10th grade onward I volunteered in the Maimo library whenever I had a free period, and I did occasional other work during vacations. It was much fun.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Very cool - we'll look forward to seeing it someday!