---Twenty years ago in 1983 I wanted to write the Great American Novel. A writer usually writes something like that after having been writing for years, if he or she ever even gets to write it at all. But I figured I had important messages to get out about the destruction of the family unit which had already been sweeping throughout the United States and other countries by that time, and I knew it was going to be getting a lot worse. I knew a lot of lives would be destroyed. Ironically, I never figured I would be one of them.
---At any rate, I thought by writing a fictionalized version in story form of what was really going on, with many of the reasons why and whatever, perhaps I could help saves families from such a plight.
---...And it was clear to me I wasn't about to put the information in the form of a dry, didactic non-fiction text, especially because the messages were of such a sensitive and personal nature. If people were to benefit from what I had to say, they would have to develop a heightened emotional awareness of what was going on, something a purely factual text could hardly do justice to. Clearly, the manner of presentation and the format would be of utmost importance, on top of which reading it would be totally delightful and enjoyable.
---So I chose the Great American novel wherein I knew I could create a cohesive storyline with a series of sub-plots which would best relate the underlying emotions and feelings of the characters involved, especially when some of the sub-plots would also include messages of awareness about health care and aging which I doubt I could have gotten across to the reader better in any other format. If the reader were therefore to 'feel' the feelings of all sides through the emotional nature of the storyline, it would go a long way to better understand the actions and motives of real people in their own lives.
---...Most problems between people are misunderstandings. Greater understanding between people can often set things right.
WRITING & TYPESETTING & THE MAKING OF PASTE-UPS
---So I spent eighteen months writing and typesetting my novel. It had become my 'baby.' In a sense it had become my life. I put in at least four to five hours a day writing it, often in the middle of the night, when it was quiet and I could think and be creative. Sometimes, when I could find the time, I'd put in an 'all-dayer,' at least eighteen hours a number of times.
---I remember, for those 18 months, it was as if I was livng with dictionaries, thesauruses, and grammatical texts all the time, which I used incessantly on putting together almost every sentence and definitely every paragraph. I took a lot of grammatical leeway. You can do that with a novel. That's just the way it is. And looking back now I can say it's probably the best literary work I ever did.
---Back then we didn't have computers to typeset the pages. So I used, for those times, what was actually a more or less antiquated typesetting machine. But it was the right price, and I wasn't in the typesetting business. I needed it for just one book. I figured it would do the job although be a little more difficult to use than otherwise.
---...It looked like a typewriter, but what made it a 'typesetting machine' was the fact that it could justify both sides of a column of type, meaning both the left and right sides of the page would be straight. Sounds like no big deal today, but back then it was a luxury.
---Like I said, it took me eighteen months. I wrote it by hand, the 'old fashioned' way. No word processing computers back then. So I had to do a whole load of drafts. I had scraps of paper all over the place. The floor was covered with them. When you write over 800 pages and try to interrelate almost every sentence and every paragraph, it can be quite a mess. I remember, I had what seemed to be an almost endless amount of pieces of paper with notes scribbled all over them, and I had to scotch tape them together along with hundreds of other pieces of scrap paper with scribbled writing. It was the only way I could bring some order to the whole thing. So by the time I got to the typesetting, it was a welcome relief!
---Actually, I knew I'd be spending hours and hours on that typesetting machine, so I used my wood-working prowess to make a make-shift wooden contraption to hold the machine and which would enable me to swivel it over an easy chair with an inclined back, or away off to the side when I wasn't typesetting. This way I could lay back somewhat comfortably, and sometimes doze off in-between what began to feel like endless hours and then days and then weeks and then months of typesetting.
---The typesetting machine was actually pretty neat. I liked the way it rang out with a 'snapping' sound with each stroke of a key and I would suddenly see the appearance of nice, dark black letters, sharply defined against the white background. The machine was equipped with a special kind of type-setting ribbon and of course, what else, it used a special kind of ink. You see, typewriters back then, they just didn't work that way. Thinking back now, I remember, sometimes I almost thought I 'loved' that machine. After all, it did the the job for me, no back talk. Besides, how else could I have done it, with a five to ten thousand dollar (for starters) typesetting machine?
---Actually, the way it worked, I was trying to get from the paste-up to the printing press, and I needed nice, well defined black letters on clean white backgrounded sheets so that each of these eight and a half by eleven inch sheets of cardboard-like paper, called 'paste-ups' in typesetting lingo, could be used to make similarly sized negatives which in turn would be used to make 'printing plates' for a printing press! So the excellent quality of the paste-ups was a necessity. Again, looking back now, just twenty years later with the current availability of computers and printers, the paste-up is no big deal. But back then, I reveled in the completion of each paste-up I worked on.
---...And I felt so proud at the way they each ended up looking, so neat and clean when they were finally finished, after my having had to subsequently--after typesetting--work on each of them to 'clean them up,' so to speak. It's difficult to explain that feeling, when you work so hard at something and it turns out good, while in the back of your mind you know ultimately, the final end of it all, is to help people...the driving force behind the whole thing. It keeps you going...at least it did so for me.
---At any rate, for each final page of the book I needed a paste-up centered on an eight and a half by eleven inch cardboard-like sheet. And I had to 'clean up' each of the paste-ups on a graphics board. Remember, the letters had to be sharply defined against a clean white background, and there were, almost always, a variety of smudges and the sort in-between the lettering or lines of lettering or scattered elsewhere on the paste-up, and these had to be 'whited out' by using an assortment of items, from simple 'white out' liquid, to white bands of tape and so on. The process was actually quite tedious, but thank goodness the typesetting machine had worked so well. I hate to think of how much more difficult it might have been had the typesetting process not gone so well, in which case ther'd likely have been a whole load more of smudges to clean up.
---At any rate, since each page of the final book needed one paste-up, I ended up having to make over 800 paste-ups! ...not an easy chore, and tedious for sure. That took another few months.
THE MAKING OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVES
---Like I said, I had to clean up the paste-ups after typesetting so they'd be in the best possible condition to make the best possible photographic negatives, the next step in this process of writing and making the Great American Novel. And the quality of the photographic negatives would only be as good as the quality of the paste-ups, although in 'cleaning up' the negatives in turn (they also had to be 'cleaned up' and made neat, with well-defined lettering) I could make amends for some of the smudges or otherwise I might have missed in cleaning up the paste-ups.
---To make the negatives I needed something called a 'vertical camera.' Now, this wasn't just any ordinary camera. I'd always thought of a camera as being one like those you held in your hand and took photos with. To think I needed one (or at least that's the one I finally ended up with) that was big and bulky and over five feet high, looking back now, I can't believe I ever learned to use this stuff!
---But I will say, again, like all the other equipment and procedures I learned to use, and do, in order to make my book, I felt an exhilaration inside. And using the vertical camera was no different. I thought it was really, really neat...'cool' actually, and I had a great time making the negatives, even though I ended up having to make over 800 of them!...you know, one for each paste-up, and that's besides throwing a couple hundred 'bad' ones away, the ones I'd messed up on.---
---...But let me tell you, after the first one hundred or so, it wasn't so much 'fun' anymore. On the other hand, tedious or not, I hadn't really minded doing it, having had to make so many negatives, because, like I said, I couldn't believe I'd come to the stage wherein I was actually putting into effect what I'd learned about and anticipated doing, and now that I was doing it, it was working so well. It's no wonder, tedium or not, the completion of each and every negative I put my final 'stamp of approval' on, left me with a smile and a wonderful sense of accomplishment. I remember the feeling well, and the sense of excitement and exhilaration that went along with it, because I've always lived with these feelings, and still live with them, even now, as I'm doing this web site, and they have never left me, not even for an instant, for all my energies have always been directed toward the same thing...the same purpose of it all, to save life.
---...Besides which, before going through this whole process I've been describing to make my book, I'd done enough reading beforehand to have given me idea enough as to how the whole process was going to work, so when it came to actually doing it, the different procedures, I anticipated and looked forward to each and every step with child-like enthusiasm. In a way, I guess I was like a little boy with a new toy, at least that's the way I felt.
---Looking back, I now know these were life-promoting feelings I was feeling, and ironically, just as you should be learning throughout this web site, they were keeping me young...although looking at me at the time, so overweight and out of shape, you'd never known it. Actually, nobody seened to understand let alone appreciate how I felt. Sometimes I'd show off a negative to a family member or whatever in such manner as if I'd just become the proud owner of a brand new sports car, but it never really discouraged me that they hardly ever understood let alone shared in my exhuberance. After all, they weren't bent on saving life!
---At any rate, having realized I could 'do the job' without having to get a more expensive 'fancy' vertical camera that could do just about anything other than make your breakfast, as you might have guessed, I settled for a vertical camera that was old and antiquated...and cheap. A professional might have thrown it away for lack of being able to use it in business to make a buck. But remember, it was to my advantage, their inability to use it. That's what made it cheap...and practical for one big job. So, having settled for 'big and bulky' in order to get 'cheap,' I also realized that once I bought it, I'd have had to rent a truck to hual it back home myself, which I did.
---The way it worked, the top of the camera had a lid which I could open to give me access to the negative holder wherein I could place the undeveloped negatives, in a darkroom of course. So I also had to set up a make-shift darkroom in one of the bathrooms of my house. Fortunately there was a bathroom with no windows which made the job that much more 'doable.' I remember how I could hardly see though, because I was only able to use a faint red darkroom light. It was a tight squeeze too, too tight, but I managed. I had to set up three developing trays on a bathroom countertop, each tray large enough, of course, to contain enough developing fluid for the negatives, which, like I said, were letter size...eight and a half inches long by eleven inches wide.
---To expose the negatives to thepaste-ups, the paste-ups had to be mounted on an adjustable flat board at the underside of the camera just a few inches up from the floor. The adjustable board could be adjusted in height for best focusing and exposure, etc. The lens was located in the lens holder, which in turn was located at the bottom of a large adjustable accordion-like bellows apparatus (adjustable from one to three feet long), and wherein at the top of which was located the negative holder I already spoke about.
---...In adjusting the bellows up or down, the lens could thereby be adjusted up or down, further away from the negative holder above and closer to the paste-up below, or vice versa. As antiquated as this vertical camera might have been, it also had adjustments at the level of the lens holder itself, all in all more than enough adjustments for me to learn how to make so as to accurately expose the negatives above to the paste-ups below. Fact is, after some practice and a whole lot of wasted negatives, I got the procedure down pat. Sure enough, this old and antiquated vertical camera became my 'baby.' It served its purpose and did the job well, quite well actually, much better than I'd expected.
---I had timers too, of course, and, as I said, I'd had to experiment over and over again to get the right exposure, but once I got it, it was the same for all 800 and more negatives! And thank goodness I was using only black and white. Novels need only be black and white. With color, I couldn't have done the job.
---...Of course, I figured all this stuff out before buying this and other 'old time' relatively antiquated equipment, so I'd have a good idea before making my book whether it would work (especially with my having never done any of this before in my entire life).
---You see, again, the idea was that I had one kind of job to do, and I had to learn to do it one way, over and over again for each page. New equipment would be expensive, but that's because new equipment could do a whole host of things, things I didn't need doing for my one job. And new equipment was more difficult to learn to use because it could do so many things, again, things I didn't need to do, while older equipment was simpler to use.
---So although most everybody else would consider older equipment useless throwaways, to me it was like gold, and once I learned my stuff--how I needed to use each piece of equipment and what each piece of equipment could do--the older equipment was mine for the taking.
---Each time after I exposed a negative and removed it from the negative holder and developed it by placing it from one tray into another--the developer, the fixer, the wash--I'd wait with bated breath as I watched in the dim glow of the darkroom light for the gradual appearance of the 'light exposed' sharply defined lettering against the unexposed blackness of the rest of the negative. As I developed them, I'd hold each negative up to the black light, check it out, and then, thinking back even now, as I saw the clarity of the lettering revealing itself, I'd smile and sometimes even yelp out a sharp sound of happiness, "Yeah!" I was so proud that it would so often come out right. But, like I said, I threw quite a lot of negatives into the garbage. Quite a lot.
---Of course I had to construct a make-shift a clothesline type apparatus with clothespins to hang the negatives up to dry. Once they had been develped, I can't tell you, the negatives were hanging in quite a number of rooms throughout the house, most though in the garage. I developed a load of them every day, again usually in the middle of the night because I worked in my profession as a medical doctor during the day. I was busy, no doubt, between my job and family and this book of mine, it consumed just about all my time.
---...But I was excited and loved every minute of it because this book was my 'baby.' Not only had I become so proud of having written the Great American Novel, but I was most excited about the messages I would eventually be bringing to people through it, helping them in their own lives. I had a sense of purpose egging me on, and I was filled with excitement doing it. It would have been nice if I thought I could have made some money at it (it would still be nice), but then again that had not been my purpose i writing it, and it's probably why I wrote it so well and 'hand-made' the actual first copies of the book with such exhuberance. I felt it and I believed in it.
---Actually, I never really ever thought it would sell big. I never really ever thought that a major book publisher would take it on to publish, but then again that's likely because I wasn't about to approch a publisher to do so. After all, 800 pages of novel from an unkown author, forget it! I was not naive about these things. Had I approached them and had they taken it on, it's likely any such publisher might never have put any effort or money into it, and it would have been out of my control and out of my hands to do anything about it.
---...But I knew that if I did control it by doing it myself, at least I could get some copies out. The main thing, I was doing it because I loved doing it, largely because the creative aspect and all was wonderful, true, but mostly because way in the back of my mind I thought of how it would help whoever would read it! That had always been my main goal and still is, even today. Why not only had I ensured that it presented messages about a variety of interpersonal relationships, the family unit, and marital discord, but the sub-plots were devised to handle other issues, such as are related to medicine, and things about medicine and disease.
---...I call it, disease, 'the great-equalizer.' It sort of sets people straight, no matter who they are or how omnipotent of self-centered they might be...it sets them straight about the importance of things in this world deserving to really be concerned about.--
---So many people are so busy doing things all day to the exclusion of anything or caring for anybody else, and desperate to acquire this or that material possession or make this or that amount of money, that they lose sight of what really matters...their loved ones and friends, their own health and ironically, their aging and its effects, a large part of which are really nothing more than an unnecessary deterioration and maiming of their own bodies, but they've been so caught up in everything else, they forgot about their most important possession of all, themselves!
---For some reason they forget, or somehow don't sense or feel enough to act on that aspect of themselves...themselves...without which the integrity of their bodies, they have just about nothing! You've heard the old saying, "You can't take it with you."
---Once I had the almost 850 'good' negatives I needed to make the book, I had to clean them up. They were 'almost good' coming out of the camera after having developed them, but far from good enough.
---So I worked on them one at a time using a square light box. That piece of equipment--approximately two by two feet across each way with a clouded glass top and flourescent lighting inside--was a deal, simple yet invaluable for what I could do with it.
---...I remember I used to place it on my graphics board, sit on a stool, place the negatives one at a time on top of the glass, and I'd be able to see the clear, translucent lettering shining through from the flourescent lighting below. And boy, did the imperfections show up then! Many of what should have been translucent letters had gone undeveloped and were filled up with black, while much of the black background that should have been completely pitch black was mottled with hundreds of translucent dots of all sizes.
---I guess my camera work wasn't that great after all, but it would suffice so long as I did a good job of correcting the negatives and clearing them up, removing the black from the letters wherein the black should not have been, and using special black ink to fill in the translucent dots or other translucent areas which shouldn't have been (translucent).
---So I spent another few months for hours on end each day, and for the most part in the middle of the night again, using small fine art tools and xacto knives to clear up and scrape out the black from the letters. You can imagine the tedious nature of this endeavor, and of course I had to use magnifying lamps to enable me to do so, the work was so fine and detailed. Filling in the transclucent dots and other areas with special ink and art pens was easier, but much more extensive.
---Needless to say, I ended up with just short of about 850 perfect looking negatives. I was satisfied.
EXPOSING THE NEGATIVES AND MAKING PRINTING PLATES
---So what was next? Well, next was to use a 'special kind of intense light' to expose...actually, the word is to 'burn' thin metal sheets with the impression of the black and white negatives which would be placed flat up against them. The metal sheets were actually 'printing press plates,' to be used on a printing press wherein I'd finally be able to run off the finished pages of my book. I was getting closer, but there was still a long way to go.
---At any rate, I had to set up something called 'goldenrod' to properly hold two negatives at a time in place against the printing plates while the plates were being exposed to this 'special intense light' in another special piece of equipment I bought, in this case 'a special light exposure unit,' which I might otherwise refer to as a 'plate burner.' Effectively then, the intense expose to light within the plate burner would serve to permanently burn the lettered impressions of the negatives into the metal out of which the plates were made.
---Actually, goldenrod is a golden colored paper with guiding lines on it. People in the printing press business know what I'm talking about. I had to make cut-outs in the goldenrod to hold the negatives which were taped in place. I used one goldenrod sheet to hold the two negatives. The goldenrod sheet with its two negatives in place is therefore what was used, or placed up against the metal printing plates in the plate burner which, of all the pieces of equipment I bought, is the only one relatively new, although I got it used. They didn't have this kind of process, burning plates this way, in antiquity, if you know what I mean.
---...Truth is, this more moderized method for making printing plates is a large part of what made it possible for me to make the printing plates in the first place and then to run them off myself on my own printing press. Otherwise I doubt I could have made the book! And you guessed it. I checked into all this before I bought any of this stuff. I did my homework.
---After burning two negatives into one side of one of the printing plates, because I used two-sided plates, I would then use another goldenrod sheet with another set of two negatives and burn them into the other side of the metal plate.
---So the way it was, to make two pages of the book I used one goldenrod sheet, with two negatives taped and mounted in place, and then burned an impression of the two negatives into one side of a printing plate. Then, to make another two pages of the book I used another goldenrod sheet with two other negatives taped and mounted in place, and burned an impression of those two negatives into the other side of the printing plate.
---So, one printing plate represented or could be used to print four pages of the book. Do the mathematics. With over 800 pages in the book, closer to 850 pages, I needed at least 210 good quality printing plates!
---One thing about these printing plates though. They had to be made 'good' the first time around. There was no touching up that could be done like for the paste-ups and the negatives. That's the bad news. The good news was that once the plates were burned they could be viewed in regular light, and the clarity of the lettering up against the shiny metal background was quite well delineated. In other words, I could tell rather easily by simply looking at the finished plates if they were good, which meant they were ready to go to press. If they weren't good, I had to make another two-sided plate. As you might already have guessed, I also threw many, many printing plates into the garbage!
---One more thing about these printing plates, the part I really didn't like. Although I found it 'neat' as to how the lettering which had been on the negatives seemed to gradually and magically come into view more and more clearly as I was wiping the printing plate developing solution onto the exposed plates (a wonderful sight to see, I assure you, especially after you've come so far to get to this point), at the same time I was breathing in the solution's terrible, and I would even go so far as to say horrendous fumes! For anyone not to realize that breathing in such chemicals can in the long run eventually be 'death promoting' by way of cancer or some other sort of lung disease or whatever, would be ridiculous. That's the part I hadn't read about beforehand in books.
---So, it's no wonder I wore a mask. Actually I tried everything from surgical masks to nasal and oral filtering masks made for this sort of thing, but nothing ever turned out to be satisfactory. Holding my breath while wearing the masks had become a routine. I'd wipe the developing solution onto the plate and waste no time about it, then once I'd made sure the plate I was working on was okay, I'd dart briskly right out the door, even outside, and revel in the sudden sense of relief as I sucked in a deep breath of fresh air!
---Actually, with me, I think it was more so knowing about the carcinogenic potential of such fumes as opposed to the actual smell itself that bothered me so much. The short of it, I got those plates made, all 210 or so of them, including the rejects, in record time, and for me that was within about two weeks. All I can say, there must be another way and thank goodness I'm not doing this for a living!
---Nevertheless, whenever I'd come back and look the finished plates over without the fumes devouring my nostrils, I'd revel in what looked to me better than a Rembrandt. In those plates I felt as if I'd made some kind of masterpieces, and just looking at them I knew they'd print out real well. And what's more, I felt so proud. I'd actually come this far without ever having done this sort of thing before, and self taught to boot. I wrote it. I edited it. I proofed it. I made paste-ups and then photographic negatives for it. And now I'd made printing plates. They shined and I glowed. Next step, the printing press to run them off.
---Okay. This is the part I really enjoyed. I delighed in the thought that I was actually going to teach myself how to use and run a printing press, and I'd use it to print up my Great American Novel. And furthermore, the ironic beauty of it all, I'd not have to depend upon anyone else to do it. It was up to me, myself, and I...and I wasn't about to turn me down, especially when I knew I'd created a really entertaining novel with some really important messages to get through...save a few families, perhaps a few lives, who knows what else. I was on a roll I liked being on, and it felt good.
---I remember in those days, every once in awhile there'd be a printing press convention at one of the convention centers in South Florida. Well, guess who would be there picking everybody's brain?
---You know, it's funny. I'd always thought there was something romantic about a printing press. In a way, learning to run it and print up my own novel, written and formatted as a family oriented social valued 'romance novel,' I sort of felt like I was taking part in one of those old tyme movies, and I couldn't wait to learn to run it so I could say to me..to myself..."Stop the presses!"
---...Actually, I was more interested in rolling the presses. It's just that the 'romance' part of it all must have come in part from some of those old tyme movies wherein they'd say, "Stop the presses!" To be part of that sort of thing, and know how to run the actual machine...now that's what I'd call 'romantic'!
---So, I must freely admit, right from the beginning I felt some kind of romantic attachment to the idea of being able to run off the written word on a machine of such uncanny beauty. You see, the printing press, especially the old tyme ones I bought and learned to use--I eventually got more than one...they have all sorts of cogs and wheels and suction tubes and turning cylinders and moving chains open to clear view. To observe all these thousands of moving parts with all sorts of clinking and clanking noises running in sync all together, it's like the running printing press is playing a tune.
---...A true sight to behold all those thousands of parts running together as one totally interrelated unit designed to suck in and spit out the printed page. Well I'll tell you, that man actually made this machine is a credit to his amazing ingenuity and perseverence. Now if only man could also bring the emotional aspect of his being to that same level of achievement, this world would no longer be in trouble.
---Now I will will admit that a computer (as to which I have been a loyal front seat fan for years now) might be more advanced than a printing press, but fact is, the open old tyme printing press I'm talking about with all sorts of parts moving this way and that, up and down, and round and round, and with its corresponding assortment of all sorts of unusual sounds, it's the last of its kind to be sure.
---You see, computers, amazing as they are...they just sit there. Nothing really exciting to see. They've been so well developed we can leave them on all the time. They never seem to get tired. Their almost infinite array of internal electronic circuitry are atomic in level and hidden from view. Hardly a match as is the printing press just to sit there...and view in amazement.
---And as for the smoother actions and toned down sounds of the encased and newer, more expensive printing presses, hardly stirs the same kind of curiosity as the old tyme presses I've been so privileged to learn to use.
---I think when I saw my first press, one of those old tymers I'm talking about, a 728 pound Multilith, I fell in love with the way it moved and with what it could do. And this is not to think anything less of my second press, a Chief, which I bought years later to make and publish my health care magazine, the Medical Health Care Gazette. It was over 55 years old, weighed in at about six thousand pounds, and I had to stand high up on a platform just to feed it its food...ink of course!
---Ironically, I don't think my love for those presses would have been so great had I needed to run them for a living, but for my Great American Novel and to help fulfill my lofty purposes in life of helping other people, dirtied hands and fumes and frustrations getting the presses to work just right--those machines had personalities of their own, you know--well I'll tell you, learning to run a printing press on my own and by myself, that's just one of the many wonderful things in life I've learned and taught myself to do.
---At any rate, when it came to choosing the right printing press for the job, "The Crack In The Redwood Fence," of course I read about the machines beforehand, and the differences between color presses and black and white. Right off the bat color was out. First, novels didn't have to be in color. They are usually black and white, while learning to run a color press is a real art, can take years, not to mention hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars besides a whole staff of people just to run them.
---But for my Great American Novel, my little 728 pound Multilith old tymer would do quite nicely. Once again, as with the vertical camera, I found myself having had to rent a truck to haul it back home. I got some help from relatives in transporting it. But sometimes I had to move it on my own and had to rig up a series of rounded metal rods I'd placed underneath in order to do so. Wasn't easy. But sometimes, alone or not, it had to be moved. "Can't stop the presses you know!"
---My Multilith was first quartered in a former baby bedroom. Then it graduated into the garage, and after I finally finished my novel and felt I knew enough to begin publishing my medical magazine, the Medical Health Care Gazette, I rented a warehouse, a small one at first wherein subsequently I was soon to graduate to a much larger one, but the my Multi, as always, went with me.
---Ah, but here I am getting ahead of myself to my magazine, and I haven't even finished telling about how I learned to use my Multilith machine to print up my novel. Fact is, I made a number of practice runs and almost within no time flat, I had learned to run the machine. I will admit, though, it wasn't easy, and adjustments always had to be made, almost constantly. It was a very temperamental machine. And I even had to learn to make minor repairs, sometimes even major, for there was always something going wrong.
---I can't tell you how many times I had so many of the parts of that machine scattered on the floor. Sometimes I wondered if I'd gone too far, if I could "put it back together again." Thank goodness it wasn't "Humpty Dumpty" and I wasn't "one of the Kings Men!"
---At any rate, with a good supply of black ink, a good stack of paper, and a half hour or so to make printing press adjustments, I'd more often than not get it running smoothly. [Sometimes it would take a few minutes to do so, other times the whole night and I'd get nothing from it, no printed pages, just no sleep!]
---But then, once I'd gotten it to run smoothly, which was essential to get it to do the job right, I'd just let it go. sometimes I'd think, "Okay baby...keep rolling!"
---...But I could never really sit back with my feet up, although sometimes I did and just listened to how the running press sounded, but more often than not I sat upright in a chair at that part of the press wherein I could see the finished pages being stacked up, and I was almost always checking them for clarity and quality and whatnot.
---...Sometimes I could look away when I saw, from the quality of the pages, that the machine had been running smoothly and doing a good job time enough for me to even 'safely' walk away for a few minutes, but always I had to listen to its sounds. I might have walked away, but an improper sound would bring me right back. You see, after awhile I could tell just by the way the press sounded whether or not it was running well.
---Fact is though, once running smoothly, in almost no time flat it almost always seemed to need another adjustment or two. Like I said, many times I could tell just from the nature of the sounds if something was going wrong. And there were so many sounds to listen for. Like a chorus of voices or a symphony of instruments harmonizing together. If you listen carefully you can pick out certain particular voices or certain instruments.
---...Well, with the printing press, after awhile I could delineate the sounds of its different parts [which I got to know real well because many of them I'd had to take apart and put back together again] and I could thereby almost immediately know which part needed adjusting. And I will tell you, this was important to know, fast, because the press had to keep running or else...or else I'd find myself starting all over again, which happened too many times to my liking or to my nerves!
---So, I'd listen intently even though I might have been leaning back with my feet up, and as soon as a certain sound stood out or sounded different, I'd almost immediately pop off my chair (and if I'd been leaning back, in my rush it would sometimes lose its footing and fall to the floor) and I'd direct my attention to that part of the press wherein that 'different' sound was coming from, and I'd make the proper adjustment. If I didn't get to it fast enough or not been able to make the adjustment in time, the printed sheets would get all messed up.
---Those are times when you feel like tearing your hair out because at such times the press has got to stop, a stack of printed sheets has got to be thrown into the garbage, and many times another half-hour or more of adjustments has got to be made, or perhaps I'd have had to clean up the press and re-ink it, or as oftentimes happened, the remainder of the day or night would be shot...and I just needed to get away from it all and take a rest. When I think back now, I'm glad those days are over!
---At any rate, after hours of running the press and listening to its sounds I got really good at knowing exactly where to look and what to do, and I'd make an adjustment or two while it was running until all the "voices" sounded like they were in harmony again, at which time the pages continued to be sucked up and the written word spit out without the press having to stop what it was supposed to be doing.
---Remembering back, I'm not sure exactly, but I think I ran off about 200 sheets of paper for every page of the final book. For me that was a lot of printing. It took me quite a few months. And again, as always, loads of messed up papers went into the garbage. [In the ensuing years, when it came to my medical magazine and a larger printing press, I got to the point wherein I learned to run off tens of thousands of pages!]
---You see, the way it worked with this book of mine, I ended up with the final printed sheets each containing four pages of the final book, two pages of the book to each side of the printed sheet. That's four in all.
---By the way, this brings to mind something else worthy of tearing my tear out, and that is, learning how to run off for a second time sheets that had already been printed on one side. To be able to get that 'down pat' was like learning a whole new science, at least for 'novice me' it was a whole new science.
---...To be sure, first off, I eventually realized, of course, that the ink from the previous printing had to be dry. Otherwise whole bunches of 'not sufficiently dried' paper would be stuck together like glue, and there'd be a 'real mess' if I'd tried to run them off without having waited long enough for them to properly dry...and let me tell you, 'properly dry' is a tall order, for it doesn't work all the time and there are different ways of doing it.
---...So I can also tell you that on this score, I ended up having a lot of 'real messes' and a lot of garbage pails filled with stacks of messed up papers. And along with that it became routine--until I learned better...it became routine for me to somehow become covered with ink...all over, everywhere...sometimes even, I am embarrassed to say, even in my hair. Well, then I'd have good reason to tear my hair out!
---But I will tell you that even after having learned my lesson on that score...the hard way (as to the improper drying of previously one-sided printed sheets of paper), there were still so many other things which I continued to find out the hard way that could go wrong, that they did just that, time and again, and again, and again...to my grief and chagrin.
---Oh, can I tell you how many times I found myself just sitting there on the floor, ink all over the place including me, ink everywhere except where it needed to be--neatly printed on the sheets of paper...and I'd be shaking my head, eyes closed in pity for myself, while at the same time scolding myself for my self-inflicted misery...and I'd ask myself, why did I do this to me? Is my Great American Novel worth it?
---...Had I not been so determined, it's times like this that might have made me cry. But I kept thinking, reveling in my subsequent day dreaming that one day this book of mine would help so many people out of their own self-inflicted miseries, and help to relieve them from the pain of broken families, and from the suffering that can come from being so blinded as to the true nature of their own frailty and disease, and as to which my book would show them, and I would tell them, "...These are things you need not hide from, for these are also things as to which you can do something about."
---...So I'd just take a deep breath...and cough, even choke a little bit from the poignancy of the fumes which would have the effect to shock me right out of my self-pitying daydreaming...because I'd might have forgotten where I was amidst an offensive array of photographic developing solutions and printing press chemicals.
---...And I'd force myself right back up, sigh, and try to take a better deep breath...and then, with a renewed and determined vigor, get right back to where I left off. "Just keep on trying," I'd say to myself. "Eventually you'll get it right."---
---So I learned to 'fan' with my fingers through the edges of a stack of previously printed sheets to help aerate and separate them, one from the other. Perhaps then they wouldn't stick together so much...and they didn't. But you don't just fan a stack with hundreds of sheets of paper, and the stack of paper being fed into my press could hold hundreds of sheets of paper. With all the sheets I'd have to go through, I'd be fanning them forever!
---Actually, 'the right way' to do it is to have another piece of equipment called a "jogger." With a jogger you take a whole stack of paper, the size of the stack dependent upon the holding capacity of the particular jogger being used, let's say a stack of five hundred or so sheets of paper. Then you flip an electric switch and the jogger "jogs"...it vibrates. This causes the pages to align very smoothly while at the same time the vibrating effect helps to aerate, jog loose, and separate the pages one from the other, even and especially when they've been previously printed on one side.
---Why, even blank sheets of paper which hadn't yet gone through the press, they too had to be jogged loose from one another. The way it worked, adjustments had to be made as to the sensitivity of the press in being able to pick up one sheet at a time, and rather rapidly at that--for my press let's say 50 to 100 sheets a minute, 'excellent' for an old tyme press while at the same time remaining accurate.
---...Well, making those adjustments was an art in itself. So the jogger always came in handy to help make things better. Better to aerate and jog the sheets of paper loose from one another before placing them onto the 'feeding rack' [or 'stack,' however you want to call it] of the press. That way, the adjustments as to the feeding mechanism of the press would be that much easier to make.
---...In other words, I found out the hard, and very 'messy' way, that before placing sheets of paper onto the feeding rack of the press in order to be printed, you've got to properly prepare the sheets of paper first.
---Only one problem though, there were so many joggers out on the market, and all new and expensive, I figured perhaps I could rig something up, and therein find out exactly what this sort of equipment could do for you. ['For me,' actually, as I found out, it could do a lot!] You see, before I used it, I had no idea as to how important it was to do the job. I knew I needed a jogger, but I was bent on finding out exactly what it was all about before I went to buy one. Otherwise, I might get the wrong one, or whatever.
---So, I got out my woodworking tools, measured and cut out some thin sheets of plywood board which, when fit and glued together, would form a rectangular box. I would use this wooden box to hold the stack of papers to be jogged. Since I was making it myself, I figured why not make a large rectangular box which could hold much more paper, just like some of the larger joggers which went for thousands of dollars.
---I then rigged up and mounted an electric hand-held drill to one end of a pulley system which I geared so as to allow for variations in the the rotational speed of the drill. The other end of the pulley system I rigged up to a wooden platform upon which I mounted the rectangular box, and all of which (rectangular box and wooden platform) I, in turn, fastened atop a spring mechanism so as to give the whole thing the potential for some 'vibrational play.' The electric drill obviously provided for the rotational power to run the rig. An accentric cam, in turn, rigged to the entire apparatus allowed for a vibrational effect upon the wooden ractangular box and wooden platform. For stability, I then mounted the entire apparatus to the top of a wooden table which I also built out of plywood boards and two by fours.
---...And wouldn't you believe it, after a few alterations in the way I set this thing up, it jogged stacks of paper into my good graces, and so well I might add, that I had no need to buy a professionally made jogger! After all, I wasn't in the printing business, and I had one job to do, at least that's what I thought until such time as my medical magazine came along with a whole bunch of issues to be printed up. And wouldn't you know it, my 'make-shift' jogger was good for that too!
HOW THE PRINTED PAGES WERE TURNED INTO
"THE CRACK IN THE REDWOOD FENCE"!
---When you want to print the pages of a book you usually do so by using a printing press that can run off large sheets of paper, large enough to incorporate many pages of the final book. For example, the large press I eventually bought for the magazine, the Chief, ran off large enough sheets of paper to print eight pages of the final magazine per side. That's sixteen pages of magazine per one printed sheet, printed on both sides of course.
---The point here. Whatever the size of these larger printed sheets, when it comes to printing in order to construct a book, the printed sheets, once dried, must then be folded--usually with a folding machine--into what are called 'signatures.' They look like little sixteen page booklets, but that's of course not what they are. With printed sheets that are 'eight up' or eight pages to a side, as in the case of my Chief, the final signatures would then be called "sixteen page signatures."
---...The signatures are then bound together by various and different means to make the final book.
---So, there's no question as to the importance of how the printing plates are set up in the first place, for example, as to which pages of the final book, in what order, and how many pages would need be burned into each printing plate. This in turn would clearly affect a similar scenario in terms of size and number of pages per side of each sheet which would need to be run through the printing press...which, in turn, would affect the nature of the signatures the printed sheets would need to be folded into, how many kinds of signatures, and in what order would the signatures then need to be combined or bound together to create the final book. Sounds somewhat complicated, but it's really not. You just have to actually go through the different procedures yourself to really know how to do it.
---The main point here is, all this figuring out has to be done so beforehand, or you will have done everything for naught!
---Well, fact is, I did get a hold of a folding machine in those days almost twenty years ago, another 'old tymer' from the year 'one' (well over fifty years old as of twenty years ago!), and I was going to try using it for my magazine. I say try because I didn't know if it would work until I got it, and I had alternatives, of course...and thank goodness.
---...But, fact is, for me that folding machine was hard to turn down. I practically got the thing for free in a warehouse somewhere in Miami. The guy seemed nice enough to just let me haul it off. How I hauled it off, I don't know. It was thousands of pounds. That was the discouraging part. The good part, it came apart, in sections. So I took it apart, got a truck and a forklift and a relative, hauled it off into a warehouse, and then put it back together again. A two or three day affair all told.
---...Then, when it came to using it for my magazine, it wouldn't work. I don't think it 'could' work. I guess I was taken. The guy who I got it from evidently just wanted to get rid of it. He probably didn't have a garbage bin big enough to dump it in, so he dumped it my way. They say a sucker is born every minute. With me, my eagerness and I guess my boyish excitement and especially 'the author' in me, caused me to lose sensibility and good reason. No wonder when he first saw me his face lit up. And here, I thought he was such a nice guy and just liked me!
---Oh, the foodhardiness and pity of it all...what lengths an author bent on idealism might go to, to get his or her works published.
---...Sometimes it scares me. If I couldn't look into the mirror now and see within my youthfulness that the fruits of my labors have proved true...by this time I'd have been petrified. Instead, thank goodness, I'm more excited than ever now that others might benefit in their own lives, as I have done mine, by sharing in the knowledge of my truths!
---What I'm getting at here, there's no one way of doing things when it comes to publishing and the sort, even when it comes to making a book or a magazine, or for that matter, almost anything. I improvised, the way I have always had to do so, no different from when I transformed my body...no different from when I gained back my strength and youthfulness after having come out of cardiac surgery wherein my heart had been stopped for many, many hours that horrific yet wonderful day (notwithstanding my having previously been 'medically abandoned' and in a sense medically 'left for dead')...and no different from even now as I am having to improvise in the ongoing construction of this web site just so that I might continue to disseminate 'life-saving' and 'life-promoting' information to others less fortunate in their knowledge on these matters than I.
---...'Improvising'"...'progressively adapting to one's environment.' It's simply the 'life-giving ability' to make change...and without which...life cannot be maintained.
---...And it's exactly what I did with my book, to construct it...from the printed pages which came out of the printing press into its final format, the way its even in a manner being presented on this web site today. I constructed it in a way few people would know to do, nor even care do to. But I was determined to get my book out, however much effort I had to put into it to make it happen.
---I might gladly tell you, however, that when it came to having to 'improvise' to make my book happen, it was a pleasure. As I mentioned earlier, I comIeted the printing part of the project by my having run off at least 200 each of the the more than 210 different two-sided final printed sheets of paper [..."four up" - two pages of the final book on each side of the printed sheet], enough to construct at least 200 copies of my novel, "The Crack In The Redwood Fence." They weren't all perfect, but for a novel which was supposed to have that classic, older, nostalgic look of yesteryear, it would work fine...and it did. Just fine. Actually, better.
---So all I now had left to do was take all the pages and the covers, and bind them together. And actually, I'd already also printed enough book covers on cardboard-like sheets of what might otherwise be called 'heavy cardstock,' the printing of which, by the way, was a lot easier to do than I'd gotten used to since they only had to be printed on one side, although the smooth texture of their surface did present some other problems...which I had no problem overcoming.
---By the time all the pages and covers of the book had been printed and I was ready to put them altogether, I had already moved the project into a warehouse wherein a sizeable portion of the work I have been talking about was yet to be done. And it's a good thing too. I had stacks of sheets of printed papers that had to be organized and gathered and I needed room enough to construct more plywood board and two by four tables.
---...And I needed to constuct a 'make-shift' book-binding apparatus to do what I'd envisioned I'd do, thanks in part to my having already read and studied bookbinding procedures in general. Why, I had even visited some real bookbinding 'old timers,' a couple of gents who truly looked like they had come out of the last century. To them bookbinding was an art, and I agree it was...a respected trade lost to a bygone era. These two fellas represented some of that which had been left over, and as you might have guessed, I picked their brains with questions to as to get a piece of them (a piece of those 'leftovers')!
SPECIFICS ON THE 'WHYS' AND 'WHEREFORES' OF "THE CRACK IN THE REDWOOD FENCE'S" ACTUAL CONSTRUCTION
---Putting everything together, I would now detail both 'the nature of how the first original copies of "The Crack In The Redwood Fence" are physically constructed' and 'how I actually went about constucting them.'
- ---First, the books are 835 pages long.
- ---Second, they are a full 2 inches thick, 8 1/2 inches high, and 5 1/2 inches wide.
- ---Most novels are much smaller, perhaps 400 to 500 pages in length. The longer ones, let's say 800 to 900 pages, are usually not that thick because the pages are very thin and flimsy. Perhaps they might be 1 inch thick at the maximum.
---...So, it's clear, I put much more substance into the book physically. The actual pages are far from flimsy, with a good solid feel.
---...I wanted the pages to be just thick enough so that the printing on the other side of the pages would not show through. When the pages are read normally, one page against the other, that's exactly what happens...nothing shows through. If a page is held up to a light, there might only be a faint impression of the printing from the other side of the page, but this is an abnormal situation. You don't read pages of a book isolated and held up to a light!
- ---When the book is opened flat on a table, one of the signs of a well made book is that it opens completely, and flat, with all aspects of the printing clearly seen. With "The Crack In The Redwood Fence" it can be opened flat to pretty much any page, and all the type is clearly seen upon the two flat pages, that to the right and that to the left.
- ---Being that the pages have been made larger than normal, there are large clear margins on all sides of the type, which makes for much easier reading than otherwise.
- The length of all the lines across the all the pages is just the right length, not too short and not too long, making the reading of a line across and down to the next line that much easier than otherwise. The book was purposely designed this way.
- ---With regard again to the quality of the paper used to make the book, I could have used the typical 'letter size' sheets, 8 1/2 " by 11", and which are routinely sold in bulk, and therefore cheap, but I did not use them. I used specially ordered, larger paper of a very good quality. Why did I do this. Well one, of a number of obvious reasons, is that I wanted to give the book a nostalgic look of quality, and I needed this specially ordered paper in order to be able to do so.
- ---Had I used the cheaper and much more commonly obtained 'letter size' (8 1/2" by 11") bulk paper, the book would have been a lot smaller than it is because the process of book-making often involves the trimming off the edges of the paper being used.
---Now that might not have been so bad. After all, most novels are very small, small enough to carry around and to fit into a pocket book. True. But they are hardly books of substance. The larger, hard covered books are more of a substantial nature, but being so hard and big prevents them from being easily carried around, let alone in a purse.
- ---So I chose to construct a book larger than the usual soft cover novels, which are small, but only so that with regard to size it would have more of a substanial look, and yet still be small enough to easily carry around (although not as easy as a much smaller book, granted).
- ---I will admit that the book is long, 835 pages long. And with paper the thickness and substance and quality as that of the paper I used, of course it would end up being a much thicker, and even heavier book than otherwise.
- ---Ironically, some book publishers try to make a thin and otherwise shorter book look more substantial--so as to justify charging a higher price--by fluffing the book up with thicker, and not necessarily better quality pages. My book is already long and on that score worth its money, while its thickness is one of quality!
- ---In short, I purposely sacrificed having a small book that can very easily be carried around for a book of substance and quality which was still small enough, and soft covered, so as to maintain the ease with which it can still be carried around!
- ---A book of quality internally, in terms of what its says, its writing, and its content should also be a book of quality in its physical appearance and in the way it was constructed. My book fits in quite well on this score.
- ---I chose quality over cheapness in economy!
- ---To ensure that the quality and nature of the paper I used would best fit my purposes of quality and so on, I personally picked it out not only by viewing it up to a light (to check for opaqueness, lack of ability to see through it, opacity to light, etc), but I especially chose a particular paper because of the softness yet firmness and quality of its feel.
- ---As you'll see below, I did things in the construction of the book taking advantage of the nature, and feel, and strength of the paper I used and, as you'll also see, I even enhanced its softness at the edges...and I did all this in a way that can be done for few, if any, of the books in mass production, unless it's been hand-made such as this book was.
---The binding of "The Crack In The Redwood Fence" has been another of my most serious considerations. I studied different 'bookbinding' techniques from what is called 'stitching,' to the making of 'signatures' as I mentioned above, to the typical bookbinding method--called 'perfect binding'--which is routinely used for most soft covered paperback novels.
---...Why it's called perfect binding I don't know. Perhaps it's thought by some to be 'perfect.' Most aren't though, and they are often found to fall apart. The pages often come out especially when you bend the typical, cheaply made perfect bound book back!
---So what did I do? I knew for multiple reasons that when it came to soft covered books, perfect binding was the way to go, but how could I get around the problems attendant to perfect binding...and could I? And why did these problems occur in the first place?
---So, I did my homework. I looked into the matter by reading books on bookbinding, and I visited bookbinding places, such bookbinders and bookbinding factories and whatnot. Perhaps then I could figure out what to do with my books, how to go about binding them.
---...Atter all, I wasn't a bookbinding manufacturer, and I didn't have bookbinding manufacturing machines, and if I did, would I want to use them anyway? After all, many of those mass produced soft covered books are falling apart!
---So I thought it reasonable to look into the nature of the glue which was used for perfect binding. You'll find--or at least I observed first hand, having visited bookbinding factories where book manufacturers sent books to be bound, and as I said, via my reading--I found that hot glue is often used in perfect binding. Perhaps I might have used hot glue, but, for me, I'm not so sure how that would have worked, and I don't think my books would have come out as good as they did for a number of reasons.
---...So, I ended up using a perfect binding glue that did not have to be applied hot. But I took a lot of extra steps in an attempt not only to compensate for my having not used hot glue, but the way it actually turned out, I believe I might have actually improved the perfect binding process itself...for the fact is, to my surprise even, my 'hand-crafted' perfect binding process worked rather well...and my books I thought came out looking great!
---...Who knows, but if the bookbinding factory people took wind of my process, as I am now about to describe, they might incorporate one or the other of my techniques, to be used with or without their hot glues, and thereby better their own bookbinding process. I'm sure they could always conjure up an alteration in one of their machines that would do the job!
---Before getting into the details of my process, I believe it would be important to point out that all the pages I printed up first had to be folded down the center before anything else could be done in terms of bookbinding. You'll remember from my description above that the printed sheets had been printed on both sides, "two up," meaning two pages of the final book were printed on each side of the printed sheet.
---...Obviously, this meant that the folded sheets had three 'free' or 'open' edges, one free edge to the top, the other to the bottom, and the third to the side (let's say the right side when looking down at the folded sheet from above). The remaining or fourth edge (to the left) would be the one which had been folded, and therefore it would not be a 'free' or 'open' edge. With this in mind realize that the folded edge--or all the folded edges of all the folded sheets of paper--would be those edges that would be bound together, or in the book business we would say they would go to make up the 'spine' of the book (the 'edge' of the books on bookshelves wherein the title of the books are located, besides on the front cover).
---Perhaps you're thinking, that's a lot of folding to do. If you have about 210 pages to be folded per book, and about 200 books to make...do the math. 210 times 200 = 42,000 sheets of paper to be folded!
---Now, there are folding machines, true, but as you might have guessed I wasn't about to go out and buy one of those, at least not just yet. After all, I hadn't yet gone through and completed the process of making the books. I'd like to have gone through it at least one time--and not just in my mind--to see that it actually worked...which it did, of course, thank goodness. Once I saw it worked, then I could always get a folder.
---So, again as you might once again have guessed, I took out my woodworking and other tools and rigged up a 'make-shift' folder. It wasn't as good as a professional one, granted, but it did the job--actually, I did the job--in pretty record time, believe it or not.
---...Having folded, therefore, well over 42,000 printed sheets of paper, I felt like I was on my way to the finish line!
--- I would note, however, that with regard to these folded sheets of paper and the folded or creased edges, when you will have seen how I actually binded the pages together, you might have thought that since the folds of the folded edges could have been removed or cut off, why had I bothered folding the sheets of paper in the first place? Why do an extra step? Why couldn't I merely have used a paper cutter--which I did have--to cut the sheets in half, let's say 500 sheets at a time, cut right down the center?
---...This way I'd have ended up with two sheets of the final book, each with one page of the final book on each side. Or, another way of putting it, I'd have ended up with four pages of the final book on two half-sheets of the original printed paper! The point is, I would not have needed to do any folding.
---Well, looking back, I guess I could have gone that route, but at the time I hadn't known to do it. You see, in the creative process, when improvising, or when undergoing any sort of change--which is what 'creating' is, change--there's a certain element of trial and error. You have a general idea of which way you're heading, an idea in your mind of the final result, but the pathway to get there is not one hundred percent just one way only. There are often different routes to get there.
---I remember thinking at the time, perhaps I could save time and work by not folding and instead simply cut the sheets of paper in half. But I wasn't sure if my ensuing methods, which I hadn't yet tried out, would work. So, I took what I thought to be a safe route wherein I thought it would be less likely for me to mess myself up, and I went through the tedious task of folding 42,000 sheets of printed paper with my 'make-shift' folder!
---At any rate, I would note that with perfect bound books to get the perfect smoothness of the three edges, at the top and bottom and right sides of the books, these three edges are cut off with a cutter, but only after the books have already been made. Mass produced perfect bound bookbinders don't cut individual sheets of paper before they are bound together, another reason I thought it safe to do the folding, as I mentioned above.
---...At any rate, machines do this kind of book edge cutting which, for mass produced machine made books, this was no problem, and they'd end up with very smooth book edges.
---...But, from my point of view, those smooth 'manufactured' edges would hardly have the nostalgic look of quality that I was wanting for my books. I wanted the two inch thickness at the top and bottom and right sides of the books not only to be perfectly smooth, but I wanted somebody to be able to run his or her fingers along all those three edges wherein it would reveal a soft and decidedly velvety feel, almost feathered.
---Remember, since I knew the content of the book was quality, I also wanted the physical make-up of the book to match, so I would go out of my way to do so.
---Originally, I looked into book paper that was made that way, feathered at the edges. First off, the velvety feel of such paper could not match the kind of velvety feel I was looking for which, via my own methods, I ended up getting. And second, as I also mentioned, in order to get a perfect bound book with smooth edges, the edges are usually cut off, or trimmed, this ironically being the very procedure that would also remove the velvety edges I wanted for my book.
---...Clearly, their methods were good for them, not for me.
---So what was I to do? But then again, I did have an advantage. I was making each book by hand, although on the other hand, I might eventually be making a lot of them. So even though I originally printed up enough pages to make some two hundred of them, I realized I had to prepare for the eventuality of making more, which I actually never got around to doing...and which would therefore make the original books I did make, none other than 'limited in edition'...perhaps a collectors item?
---So once again, to do the job right, I rigged up another one of my contraptions, this one I would call a bookbinding device. And actually, to do it, I did have to buy a heavy duty vice, like the ones woodworkers use to hold wood. But the heavy duty ones I saw had relatively thin metal jaws, the parts of the vice that clasp together tohold something , like a piece of wood, in-between.
---But I needed something more. I pictured a vice with large, broad and heavy wooden jaws within which I could firmly, tightly and strongly hold the entirety of my book, all 5 1/2" by 8 1/2" of it.
---So I cut out thick solid wooden boards and molded them with my woodworking tools to fit, and be able to be held in place by, the iron jaws that came with the particular vice I bought. This way I could gather all 210 or so folded pages that would go to make up the book, and place them side by side between the wooden jaws which would then be clamped tightly aginst them, against the stack of papers, holding them rigidly and firmly in place.
---I would leave the folded edges, on any given side of the book I was working on, just sticking out beyond the metal lined edges of wooden jaws, perhaps a quarter of an inch or so. I'd decided to add metal edging to the edges of the wooden vice jaws I made so as to protect them from the woodworking tools I'd be using on the book to prepare it for glueing, and to feather its edges!
---I took a hand held rotating sander (the kind that's used to sand wood) and a hand held electric wood plane (the kind used to smooth and shave off the edges and surfaces of wood).
---And then I began sanding the spine of the book where all 210 folded edges were barely sticking out past the top edge of the wooden vice grips, and I sanded them down (the folded edges). Remember, when you hold a solid batch of papers tightly together in the jaws of a vice, the quarter inch edge sticking out is still hard like a solid piece of wood, and it can be sanded.
---...Sometimes I threw in the hand held plane to make short and plane off a resistant part of the edge, after which I would always get back to the sanding , because the sanding had the decided effect to 'feather' the edges. And the nature and amoutn of the feathering was directly related to both the coarseness of the sandpaper I used, and which I varied, and the expertise I developed.
---Considering that the spine of the book is hidden from view since the cardboard-like cover is eventually folded around and glued to it, one might ask why there ws need for me to sand down the edge and feather it?
---Fact is, the answer, I would think is simple enough. My idea was that when I next applied the glue after blowing off and cleaning up the dust from all the edges, the glue would be absorbed, or in a sense soaked, into the edges of the paper, and this therfore would make a much better contact than if the glue were simply aplied to a nice, clean cut surface, which, as I noted above, is what occurs with mass manufactured books wherein the edges are cut off with paper cutters. Ironically, that might probably be why they use hot glue, to get around the poor ability of glue to attach to and bond with shiny cut edge.
---You might now better understand my use of various textures and grades related to the coarseness and otherwise of the sandpapers I used. I had to experiment to get the right feathering effect on the spine so as to allow for the best glue absorption and on the other three edges of the book for the quality and nature of their softness, their velvety feeling, and their feathered appearance.
---I actually ended up using a very coarse sandpaper to sand down the spine, so much so that the edge came to look more than feathered, actually ragged. And I didn't then suddenly apply the glue, and then the cover.
---...First and foremost I wanted the glue to be well absorbed into the spinal edge of the book to hold the pages of the book together. That was my main concern. Attaching the flat surface of the cover would be no problem, and I thought, once the glueing of the pages was secure...and dry...the covers could be attached later.
---So before glueing, and after sanding down the spine, I went one step further. To ensure that the spine was porous enough to effectively absorb the glue, and to make sure that the glue settled down far enough into the spine for a secure bonding of the flue, I took coarse edged metal files and filed groves into the already feathered edge. Actually, I filed loads of grooves, deep down into the edge and criss-crossed even, so that if the feathering effect did not allow enough for adequate glue absorption, the grooves filed and criss-crossed deeply into the spine would, and in turn so too would the glue seep down into these grooves for a firm hold.
---So I'd wait a day or two for the glue to dry. Once it was tried, a day or two later, then more glue could be applied glue on and attach the cover, but that stick wasn't crucial.
---Basically, "The Crack In The Redwood Fence" has been glued and feathered (as opposed to tarred and feathered!)
---I will tell you that I applied the glue with a brush. Not just once, but several times. And I'd apply the glue with a firm bristled brush. This way I could better 'pressure' the glue down into the porousity and cross-hatched grooves of the spine so it would be better and more effected absorbed into the paper.
---...And then, the next day, once the glue was dried, I'd apply another coat just to make sure it was thick enough! After that coat had dried, a day or two later the covers would be applied.
---The covers having been applied, and dried, I wopuld then have to contend with the top and bottom and right sided edges of the book, which at this time were irregular. And again, rather than do the conventional thing and trim the edges off with a cutter to smooth them out, as above, but for different reasons (than glueing) of beauty, and touch, and texture, I chose to 'feather.'
---''I would place each book top edge and bottom edge and side edge into the wooden claws of my vice, and patiently and creatively feather the edges, varying the texture of the sandpaper for differring effects.
---The end result. Two inch thicks sides, all three of them feeling like a cross between velvet and feathers.
---I've never seen these effects in any book whatever, and I'mone to have seen and felt tens of thousands of books over the course of a many, many decades.
---I would say that my sanding techniqes had become an art. You don't just 'sand.' For example, the book was thick enough so that when it came to the edge of the covers, I had to angle the sander differently and use finer saandpaper. Otherwise I would have ripped the edge of the covers to shreds!
---The way it turned out, the finished books were and still remain the way I made them twenty years ago...beautful. If I don't mind saying so myself...works orf art! And I had made at least two hundred of them.
---I'd actually consider them to be 'collectors' copies, and if my name ever comes to be renowned or otherwise 'known'--just take you guess from the nature of this web site--these books might one day be worth a lot of money, much more so than the price tag I might have placed on them, and I don't have many to sell. I've already sold most of them, and I want to keep some for myself.
---I would point out one thing though. In making these books I had the idea that when they would be opened, such as flat on table or whatever, the pages would remain intact. I have succeeded in spades on that score. I tested the books in a number of different ways after they were made, and the pages always remained intact.
---However, it's now twenty years later, and I cannot therefore honestly say what might happen in this regard because the glue has now been dried and 'aged' to twenty years later! The books look fine to me. I would say that it's not likely the pages will fall out, but they could. And I'm just guessing. I havent' yet seen that happen yet.
---I say all this simply to suggest to you that these books should be treated as if they were among the treasured items of collectors...and might indeed be collectors items. The point is, I wouldn't be folding back the pages to see if the pages can come out. I'd read the book of course, but I'd treat it with respect. Ater all, it's supposed to last. Hopefully thees original copies will last because they are most definitely one of a kind and a 'limited edition.'
---No more copies can be made, at least not like these. To do so one would have to rig everything up the way I did, get the same papers, the same inks, the same glue, and whatever. You could never fake these originals, unless you can go back twenty years, meet me in my warehouse twenty years ago, and ask me to make you a few more copies.
---...But then again, who knows...when it comes to time and that sort of thing, and as you can tell from the rest of this web site...I'm already working on it!
