Bindery Update March

A new machine and a new technique

We were contacted by one of our suppliers about an old bindery operation that was shutting down in Germany because the gentleman who had run it for decades was retiring. They thought, correctly, that we might have an interest in acquiring some of the machinery.

One thing that we’d been keeping an eye out for was a second foil-press, since the one we were originally sold didn’t work well enough on leather, and while we very much like the one we’ve got now, it is very old and likely to take some time to repair in the event that something goes wrong. So, after arranging for some stamp tests to be done, which were successful, we agreed to buy the machine.

It’s much smaller and doesn’t deliver the 50 tons of force that its companion features, but it works well on even the toughest leather, and now gives us, in addition to backup functionality, the ability to more rapidly stamp two different colors on the same book cover.

For example, what you can see here are stacks of black pigskin cases stamped with red foil that were stamped with our primary press, awaiting gold-foil stamping with our new secondary press. This is part of a large run for a client that is a little larger than even the largest Library or History print runs.

And this is what they look like once the smaller press has applied the gold. You can see how it’s vital for everything to line up precisely; fortunately our bookbinders are well-accustomed to work with precision and care. This leaves just one important step left, and it’s one for which we recently acquired both the dedicated machine and the necessary tools.

Now, this is not the final product and it’s not actually cased-in yet, since you’ll note the absence of any french groove along the spine. And we still need to sort out some details with regards to how well the hubs work with the new leather. But we’ll have literally hundreds of finished products ready to go next week, as we’ll be sending them off to the client as soon as they’re all finished and approved for shipping.

UPDATE: We believe we’ve resolved the hubs issue. They appear to be somewhere in between the Franklin standard and the previous Easton/Library standard. If you look closely, you can see how they are now harder and more pronounced than in the image above.