After some trepidation filled thought I decided to list my moleskine style on eBay. I can’t fund the “research” without selling some of them, as much as I would like to hoard away my first dozen or so books, I have to make a go at making them work for me as much as I like to make them. I have a tendency to focus on one style and learn as much as I can about it, and in the process of my research I make a lot of books, I’m sitting next to a shelf full of prototypes I’ve made- around 50 or so, and this is after culling the ones that didn’t work because I missed a step in the pattern. That being said I also have a bunch of really ugly bindings sitting next to me, but it’s good to look at those in reference of being ugly. So in an effort to fully explore this moleskine style I’m going to sell off some of the first I’ve made. Of course I’ve given away a bunch of them as well, and I have two more that I’ve deemed unacceptable for sale- either the spine is screwed OR I screwed up the leather.

What I’ve learned thus far about the moleskine style- with heavy card or cover stock it’s easy to get the gluing right but with soft ABSORBANT leather it’s really easy to screw it up. Stiff leather is easiest, i.e. cowhide but not my favorite. I’m determined to make the sheep hide work. I know it can but I need to find way of it working consistently without a lot of trimming. I don’t want to cut the leather a full inch too large and have to trim off a half inch every time I make one. The idea behind these is that I’m able to use some of the scrap pieces I’m wasting now. Selling it on eBay for peanuts isn’t so great.

So I need to do some of the following: make a new leather template for the Moleskine size; figure out the easiest way to bind up multiple blocks; buy new clamps for the purpose OR make a gluing press/clamp; figure out if it’s worth it for me to buy a small plane for shaving my book block edges or to not cut them at all (this is an idea I’ve been stewing in my head- adapt a wood plane- smaller size for shaving down the edges of my books easily getting rid of that ratty ugly edge, I’m pretty sure it can be done but the question is how (these are the times when I REALLY miss my Father’s decked out wood shop.)

The place I’m trying to avoid is taking this to the level of the little hardbound books I used to make- the thing I loved about those is that they were tiny and hard cover but I got peanuts for them. So I stopped making them (I discovered a stack of the davey board that I had precut to size….)

Anyway, I have an early morning so I’m off to bed. I’ll blog som pictures before I goof my Moleskines.