Bookbinding forums.

It's very amusing to see various places on the web come up with new and cute names for forums... As though the words forum itself didn't have a long and meaningful history. Everything has to be new on the net it seems - sometimes agressively so.

That being said, here are some binding forums/communities/whatever that I check on a regular basis;

• The Book and Paper Arts Forum. "Dedicated to all forms of bookbinding and book arts" - plus a section for paper arts (marbling, etc...) related to bookbinding. This is my go to source for advice and information.
  
  
• Flickr is home to the Handbound Books Pool - which has two sections, Discussion (which is fairly slow and rarely used), and the Pool (basically a photo gallery). There are some very nice works in the gallery (which has new photos fairly steadily), and of course Flickr lets registered members leave comments.
  
  
• Livejournal hosts the Bookbinding and Book Arts and the Handmade Book communities. The latter is much more active and has many creative bindings posted there.
  
  
• Artists Books 3.0 is a new forum for "artists, curators, librarians, students, and researchers interested in artist books and the book arts". Being new, it is kind of slow at the moment but shows potential as social networking/mini Live Journal site for the bookbinding and book arts communities.
  
  

With the exception of the first, I found these via Google's blog search. I have a search on "bookbinding" saved as a feed and read it regularly in Google Reader.


Updated - 10 July 2008, added Artists Books 3.0

Shipping Books

As I said earlier, I've been ordering books from Amazon and buying them on eBay. Quite a few of these have arrived over the last week and some... And I'm quite annoyed.

[Rant]
Wrapping the book in a layer of newsprint and dropping it into a manila envelope does not constitute proper packaging.

Even if the envelope is lined with cheap bubble wrap or foam.
[/Rant]

Out of five books received from amateur booksellers, three have been damaged because of poor quality packaging. One (a tall thin hardback) arrived actually creased! When I brought up the matter with the bookseller she replied, "We are not responsible for what happens to books after we ship them". Now I'll be the first to admit that she is (mostly) correct. But booksellers are responsible for packaging books to survive shipping. If you fail to package a book properly, you are just as responsible as if you personally had damaged the book.

Have you ever ordered a book from Amazon itself? Next time you do, take a close look at how it is packaged - stiffened with cardboard, padded with bubblewrap, and protected from contacting the sides of the cardboard box the books are placed in. (Though their packagers aren't always as careful to pad on all six sides as they might be.) That is the only way to properly package and ship a book.

Garage complete

After two hard days of carpentry, the garage is complete! Another step on the path to setting up the bindery behind me.

On the other hand, the storage containers won't arrive until Thurs, rather than the today as I had planned. Why is it that the estimated arrival date goes up between when you first inquire and when you show up with money? (At least, that's how it always seems to happen to me - and the reverse of what I would expect.) This puts me most of week behind in getting the bindery set up, most annoying!

Tools and materials are accumulating in the corner of the living room, and many of the books I've ordered have arrived. (And those books are the source of a rant boiling inside me... More on that in a day or two.) I've been entertaining myself going through them and making a list of the bindings and structures I want to try. (And sorting them - simply ones first, more complex later.)

Quivering with anticipation

Good news on the bookbinding front - I met with Matt, the friend who will be helping me build the shelves in the garage, and confirmed this upcoming weekend for installing them. Take two weeks from then for cleaning out the storage room and taking up the carpet and tiling it... And by the first of August I should be able to set up the bindery! On top of that, UPS tracking shows my packages from Hollander to be 'out for delivery', and my Amazon account claims a shipment of books will arrive today!

Yeah, like Brenda said over the weekend, I'm getting to be like a kid on Christmas Eve.

The new workshop space will be in what used to be a bedroom. We've decided to go ahead and take up the carpet (even though it is new) and tile it before putting in the craft stuff. It's a workshop - and paint and glue and scraps will end up on the floor. Much easier to put in a durable floor now, than to take everything out of the room and do it later. We'll keep the removed carpet and recycle it elsewhere in the house for floor mats / throw rugs etc...

So far as workshop furniture goes, basic and cheap it the watch word. I've got a couple of extra bookcases in the garage that will go in there, and I'll pick up a used table or desk from somewhere. I'd originally thought to build a dedicated bench, but I really should hold off until I have enough experience to design one.

Shopping in Seattle.

Off to Seattle today. Both physically and virtually!

The physical visit was fun, as it was a beautiful day to drive around the Sound. Brenda (my wife) and I visited Daniel Smith to finish stocking up on supplies, and then popped up a few blocks for coffee and doughnuts at the Krispy Kreme. (I grew up in Winston-Salem, the home of Krispy Kreme. Back there they are as much a part of the local culture as Starbuck's and other coffee houses are here in my adopted home.) We finished the visit with a swing by Ikea to price furniture and get ideas - but of course the 'home craft center' displays that had been there for two years were gone. In the scratch 'n dent area was a nice low and wide chest of drawers that would have been perfect for paper storage, but was a bit too pricey. Of course now that I know, I'll keep my eyes open when I hit the local the local thrifts.

The virtual visit consisted of hitting Amazon.com with a shopping list I'd gleaned from the web and the library. While its much less of pain to visit a store virtually, its also much less fun.