This spring has been pretty busy and keep forgetting to post an update on “Large Marge“, our new standing press. She had been in storage for a while before arriving here and needed a bit of TLC before we could start using her. We also needed some help from our colleagues in Facilities to create a modification for the base.

After vacuuming off the cobwebs and giving all the parts a quick brushing, I wanted to address the rust that had started accumulating on the base and support rods.

The rust was pretty superficial, so I was able to remove it with steel wool. I applied a thin layer of Bowling Alley Wax to all of the surfaces to prevent further oxidation.

The next thing that needed addressing was lubricating the threads of the large screw. The grease inside the threaded flange was still functional, but all of the lubricant exposed to air had completely dried out. I found the easiest way to remove it was to scrape it off the threads with a micro-chisel.

Once the screw was clean, I added some new lithium grease and then raised and lowered the platen a couple of times to spread it across the threads evenly.

The most important addition to Marge was a modification to the base. These presses were designed for edition work with many books being stacked between pressboards and loaded in at once. This means that with the platen in its lowest position, there is still about 30″ of daylight between the base and platen. Since we are only pressing one item at a time, we needed to raise that bottom surface up.

Thankfully one of the carpenters in Duke’s Facilities Management Department was able to build a box that fits exactly inside the gap. The box is reinforced to withstand the full strength of the press, even when someone is using the extended arm to tighten it. An added bonus is that all of the pressboards can be stored inside.

I’m looking forward to putting this press to use, particularly for building clamshell boxes for folio and double folio-sized books. Books of that size are often very heavy and difficult to move around, so they can benefit from the added protection of a cloth-covered enclosure.

Regular readers of Preservation Underground know that we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about tools. The variety and sometimes repetitive nature of our work requires a great many of them and we regularly experiment with new designs or materials to find implements that are more effective or ergonomic. Tool collecting can also be a little addictive.

A bone folder was probably the first bookbinding tool I ever purchased and remains one of the most used items at my bench. I’ve acquired or made many folders over the years of different shapes, sizes, and materials (like Teflon, metal, or nylon) and was amused to read that Jony Ive included a bone folder in his list of top 12 tools. It’s also the only reasonably priced tool on that list.

We have been using Delrin lifters in the lab for a few years now and Delrin folders have been growing in popularity in the bookbinding and conservation community, so I have been interested in making one. Luckily, during the pandemic, Rachel Penniman was able to attend a virtual workshop taught by Jeff Peachey on making Delrin and bamboo tools. We were able to set aside some time recently so that she could share what she learned in the workshop and we could all try making our own.

Delrin is a Dupont product that has a number of helpful properties for conservation work. It has a low coefficient of friction, but is stiffer than Teflon. It exhibits chemical and fatigue resistance and can also be very flexible when shaped to a thin tip. Peachey has written a great deal about the advantages of delrin folders and lifting tools.

The material can be purchased in a variety of sheets and bars, so there are many options for creating tools of different shapes. We started the day by looking at existing tools from our personal collections to discuss the features that we like or don’t like and how we might be able to make a better version from the Delrin stock.

Delrin is easily shaped with cutting tools or abrasives and doesn’t come with the same health risks as shaping Teflon. A facemask and proper ventilation should still be deployed to avoid inhaling the dust.

We were lucky to have good weather, so we set up an outside work space by the library loading dock. Views of the nearby Chapel were a bonus.

Shaping takes some time, so it was helpful to have clamps and wooden bench hooks on hand to support the work in progress.

After sawing, filing, scraping, and sanding for a few hours, we had produced a number of new tools. The nice thing about this material is that if you don’t like the shape you have produced, you can always shave it down some more or cut off the end and start again.

Now that I’ve gotten a feel for working with Delrin, I’m looking forward to experimenting with some larger, more rigid tools.

When paring leather for book bindings or book repair, it is essential to have a flat, smooth surface on which to work. The parts of the leather that will be turned-in, particularly around the endcaps of the book, must be made very thin and often with a long, gradual bevel. Uneven paring will visibly show after being adhered, so it takes some care and practice to get it right. Paring on the right surface allows you to feel any variation in the leather with your fingertips and take off more material as needed. You also need to work on a material that is hard enough to not be cut up by the paring knife. Many materials (such as glass, marble, or granite) are used for this work surface, but one of the more common is lithographic limestone. Limestone won’t dull a blade as quickly as other stones. It also absorbs water, so I like using it as a work surface for the whole process of covering in leather.

The lab recently acquired this small lithography stone, which was used as a printing plate for what appears to be a worksheet for practicing handwriting. The printing image on the “bottom” of the stone includes examples of short words with ascenders and descenders: land, lakes, plan, glide, plan, fling, often, etc.

The stone was pretty flat, but had a number of scrapes and scratches that could mask problems with paring work. I wanted to remove those before we began using it. Luckily there is a standard method and a lot of resources available to help me do that.

When a stone plate has been printed for the last time, it must be refinished (or “grained”) to remove the old image and prepare the surface for a new drawing. I consulted The Tamarind Book of Lithography to see what we would need to do to prepare the stone. This is a great resource that includes a lot diagrams and step-by-step instructions. Luckily Duke’s Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies had the equipment to grain a stone and they allowed me to bring the stone over to the studio.

The process was fairly simple and kind of fun to do. With the stone sitting on top of the graining sink, I poured a little water over the top of the stone to act as a lubricant and then added some course carborundum grit (silicon carbide) for the abrasive.

A heavy piece of round steel with a handle, called a levigator, is then used to spin over the stone surface to start grinding it down.

I tried taking a video of the process, but it was a little hard for me to hold the camera steady while using the levigator. You can get a much better overhead view in this video from California State University Stanislaus:

The spinning continued until I had worked up a fairly thick stone sludge.

The stone is washed clean and the process is repeated until enough of the surface has been removed. 

Printers will continue graining with increasingly fine grits to get a very fine surface for drawing – but that didn’t seem necessary for our purposes. I believe the outside edges of the stone surface are also filed by the printer to keep them from showing up as an artifact in the print, so the patina and ghost of the original print are still visible around the outside of our stone. I decided to stop at this point because some of the edges were starting to get sharp. We’ve got a sizable chip on one side that needs to be avoided anyway.

I’m pretty pleased with the results. The print image still remains on the bottom of the stone, so we can keep some evidence of what the stone was used for previously. The stone is fairly heavy (40-50 lbs by my guess), so it now lives on a wheeled cart so it can be easily moved around the lab as needed.