The bench
The whole bindery is one room of about fourteen square metres, north-facing, which is the only luxury in it. Everything below has been in daily use long enough that I would replace it with the same thing.
Fixed
- Standing press
- Cast iron, no maker's mark, bought from a closing print shop. The platen is not quite true and I have learned exactly where to pack it.
- Nipping press
- Small, on the bench itself. Used forty times a day for jobs that do not deserve the standing press.
- Sewing frame
- Beech, self-made, badly. It works. The keys are dowel offcuts.
- Board shear
- The single most useful machine here and the one that took longest to justify. Nothing else gives a square edge on greyboard in one motion.
Loose
- Two Teflon folders, one square, one bevelled.
- A paring knife ground very shallow, and a lithographic stone to keep it honest.
- Brass-edged pressing boards in four sizes.
- Linen thread, 18/3 and 25/3. Nothing thinner has ever solved a problem.
- Wheat starch paste, cooked fresh, discarded after two days without exception.
Anyone setting up should buy, in this order: a nipping press, good thread, a proper knife, and a board shear when the volume of work makes cutting the bottleneck. Everything else can wait years.
What is deliberately absent
No guillotine, no backing machine, no hot foil. The work here is single volumes and repairs; each of those machines would earn its keep only at a scale I have chosen not to reach. A bindery gets slower and better or faster and louder, and I made my choice early.