Joseph Gergen Works

I had a lot of help getting “Theo and Sprout” ready for publishing. One friend helped with the editing and one helped with creating an audiobook version. Those are both a lot of work. But my friends wouldn’t let me pay them, which was extremely nice of them. But I wanted to show my appreciation because I was certainly grateful for their help.

So I had this bright idea that I should make them hand-made leather-bound copies. I thought this would be a wonderful way to say thank you. And they did very much appreciate the books.

Now there are few things more satisfying for a book lover than to hold a sturdy leather-bound book. It’s weighty and substantial. It smells good. So I decided to forge ahead.

So I set off on my journey to make these hand-bound books. And it is a journey. In fact, I think it was several journeys. The first journey was acquiring or creating the tools. I think I had to make half the tools and equipment I needed. Fortunately, I have a woodshop and have many of the tools needed to make the tools. For the leather-working part of the process, the key is to having sharp tools. And sharp tools require exacting, patient and consistent effort to make them sharp and keep them sharp. While I had some skills for sharpening tools from my woodworking background, I learned I have almost no interest in spending so much time keeping them sharp. While I knew I was not an anal and detailed person, this brought that home. While I could do it, the effort was extremely draining.

The next part of the journey was learning how to create the bound manuscript (sans the leather part). The prepping of the folios, the stitching of the folios together, the prepping of the spine, sewing the headbands, rounding the spine and much more. While many of these steps were challenging and I had to learn new skills (like knot tying), they were also methodical. Getting good at some of these was less about being exacting than about repetition. While I don’t usually like too much repetition in work I do, I learned that I found the sewing of the folios together to be a calming meditative practice, except when I poked myself with the needle.

The third part of the journey was the leather binding effort. I enjoyed working with the leather. Though the sharp tools did scare me a bit. So prepping the leather was fun. But the assembly was the proof in the pudding. Unfortunately, the wrapping of the manuscript with the leather is a bit like wrapping a present and I suck at that. The pressure came once you applied your glue and began the process. While the glue (or paste) you are using dries relatively slowly, it does dry. So the pressure sometimes got to me. Now I suspect that after enough iterations, that sense of pressure eases. But what I learned was that under pressure I tend less to panic than to forget steps. The humorous thing was that I tended to forget a different step every time. So most all of the books I did have their own unique failings.

While I struggled a great deal with the exacting and anal parts of the process, I felt very fulfilled after completing the project. I ended up with ten acceptable books. While I am not sure I would ever try that again (though now I do have all the equipment), I learned that I like to learn new things even if my personality is not suited to them. And I may have learned that it’s okay to not continue to pursue something that doesn’t suit you.