About six months ago, we were very confident that we would be soon producing books in three locations. Unfortunately, our attempt to produce books in England using the company who was producing our book blocks went very badly awry, as the first books they produced were not only unacceptable, but so completely and obviously unacceptable that we realized there was no chance we could utilize them for anything more than book blocks.

The problem was that after finally getting our first casemaker customized for production runs after the failure of the two old casemakers that we’d bought and paid the manufacturer to repair, we ran into a problem with the glue and then with the glue machine. Fortunately, a few tests of different glues solved the former problem and the latter problem turned out to be a simple one of temperature.

We also managed to use the time to perfect our stamping, which is vital to properly display all of the small details on the covers we design; one of the reasons we use the MEDITATIONS stamp for this purpose is due to the fine details in the Roman pattern strip as well as the two heads. And finally, we have managed to get both the casemaking and the stamping working properly, even with our most problematic cowhide, as the picture below demonstrates.

Once the casemaking problems were solved, we then had to be certain that the casing-in machines were operating correctly, which, for once in this arduous four-year process, actually turned out to be the case. Which you can see in the next picture, which shows 19 completed copies of MEDITATIONS, which will be available in our coming post-Easter sale.

We still have to get the hubbing incorporated into our process, but the molds for DRACULA and the two BYZANTINE HISTORY books will be arriving next week, and then we should be rolling.