Tedorigawa Bookmakers

Bookbinding I was given a lot of postcards from all over the known world to use as I saw fit for my bookbinding practice. First thing I did, I don’t know why, is put them in groups by theme: travel, artsy, by country.   I took four related postcards: travel cards from four different cities (two American and two Canadian). After printing 80 and 100 pages of lined paper and graphic paper, I folded t...

Bookbinding An A6-size, 120-page blank notebook made with more leftovers. This explains the rhinoceros on the back cover. A left over rhino. Hmm. I live near the Rhino River (Sai-gawa) in Kanazawa so maybe that explains it. All of it is leftover material. Except the thread. From the text block to the cover. The name came from me thinking of two things that don’t relate to each other much. Fierce a...

Bookbinding A few years ago, maybe five, I wrote a novel called Abacus Longing. It’s about the relationship five people have with an alien with four arms. And the FBI training to arrest her. The friends are her physicist friend, a computer program designer and her boss, and a math wiz and her manga-ka friend. Recently I gave the book to a friend and while taking transportation to his city, I leafe...

Bookbinding The Bomber & Life’s Been Good To Me So Far. In the late 60’s the James Gang had a few hits one of which was the 1970 hit: The Bomber, containing the sentence “Apple Dan is just the man to pick the fruit off your branches” which is the title of my 140-page, A6-size, blank notebook built with mostly leftovers from my To-Be-Used-in-this-century pile. Except for the thread which has ne...

Bookbinding A link-stitched, 140-page, B6-sized blank notebook has been created with a grey-blue cover, and a black spine. It also has photos of friends as it is being mailed to those friends. Left-overs used in this book include the book boards (file), black spine (purchased years ago; perhaps a decade or more), and the endpapers (envelop). Fiction The Dmitry in Dmitry the Savenger has helped man...

Bookbinding Hakui is a small town about 25 miles (40 km) north of Kanazawa. On August 27 it had a massive rainfall. It was severely flood with the water reaching up to the middle of people’s front doors, over the tops of cars, and caused a few landslides. Fortunately, nobody died. In their honor, I made a book called Hakui. It is a thin book - four signatures of four leaves each for a total of 64...

Bookbinding Hog Heaven was sewn on tapes. Probably the second time I’ve sewn on tapes in a long, long time. The signatures (7) were connected by sewing the upper signature through the threads on each station on the lower signatures.  This made for a fairly tight connection between the signatures. Hog Heaven was also sewn twice. The first time, I didn’t put the thread through the lower station thre...

Bookbinding A 112-page blank notebook titled ‘And Then….’ is our accomplishment in bookbinding this week. Plus a large mistake. The title has two emotional responses.  1. And Then… She dumped the kale pasta on his head. 2. And Then… He dumped the kale pasta on her head. First response is often: What did he do?! The second response is often: What a monster! The covers of And Then … are made up of a...

Bookbinding Why is it called Swimming in the Dessert? It’s blank, right? Yes, it is. But there’s an 18-minute short movie called Swimming in the Desert that looks interesting so, not to confuse anybody with two titles for completely different subjects, I changed it to Dessert.  It’s seven signatures of five folios each for 140 pages, A6 (pocketbook) with a red spine, blue front cover with a splash...

Bookbinding I’ll explain why there is nothing in Bookbinding in the Movie/Talkies/Video section. Fiction I’ve worked on Dmitry the Scavenger during the past week; making it stronger, I believe. I added more descriptions, deleted more confusing bits, and made the characters stand out a bit more. Dmitry was shocked to discover he wasn’t in Noto, Sicily, his dream destination, but Noto, Japan. A much...

Bookbinding Ergo is a 100-page, A6 (pocketbook)-size, blank notebook that I Coptic-bound.  Three things make this book different from other A6, 100-page, blank notebooks I’ve made in the past. One: Window for a title on the front cover. Two: Colored in the spaces between threads with random colors. Also, colored the head but not the tail. Three: measured the distance between stations so they were...

Bookbinding I bound my Marsh Mystery Series detective-noir very short novel The False Promises Case. In making this book I used leftover material except for the thread and wax.    The book boards were recycle files cut to size, kind of. When I cut the file I remember thinking I will cut this to size later; of course, I forgot I told my self that – I never listen to my self. The result is the book...

Bookbinding This is a blank notebook designed for people who want to learn another language or take notes. It is A6 in size (pocket book size for easy handling) and Coptic bound (for easy opening and using). There are four squares on each page. If you are learning another language, the first square is for your native language. The second square is for the target language. Research has shown this t...

Bookbinding Mostly in Japanese bookbinding we have four sewing stations (holes), but it is possible and popular to have more. I made a five-hole book which, in Japanese, is called 五つ目綴じ (itsutsu-me-toji). The itsutsu (五つ) means five, me (目) means hole, and toji means binding or stitching.  Two things about Japanese bookbinding: 1. The thread might go through a sewing station three times, s...

Bookbinding This week I made another coptic-bound, B6, 100-ish-page notebook. The right page has lines for writing while the left page is blank for drawings, doodles, and shading exercises.  As you can see, the cover is both purplish-grey and red book cloth with the purplish-grey the same book cloth as my June 5th notebook. The point of this notebook, like the other previous similar notebook, is t...

Bookbinding In bookbinding this week we have, for your visual pleasure, a novel. We have an A6-size, about 60-page, case bound edition of The Dead of Winter: A Novelist’s Kanazawa Afterlife. Printed, folded, sewed, and cased in fairly quickly (for me) in a day or two. Most of the time was attempting to align the title on the cover and spine. Properly. I think I succeeded in that endeavor. Case bou...

Bookbinding I made a B6-size, Coptic-bound, mostly blank, 120-page, seven-signature notebook for my visual pleasure. Meaning, I made this notebook for myself to use as a notebook, a depository for my doodles, ideas, plans, and to expand my horizons. One horizon I wish to improve on is cursive writing. People my age were taught cursive in school, maybe elementary school. This has fallen by the ways...

Bookbinding In bookbinding this week we have, an A6-sized, 45-ish page mystery novel completed for a friend who also corrected my Spanish as the mystery takes place in Madrid. This is the second time I made the same book because I totally screwed up the first one; cover was wonky, endpapers didn’t set straight, signatures were loose. I didn’t like it so I remade it.  The first version was B6 in si...

Bookbinding I made the spine different from the front and back covers. Before last week, it had been about five years or more since I did a quarter binding. For some reason, it was quite stressful.   The front cover also has the title. Adjusting the printer, book cloth, and position was an added stress, so the entire book seemed to be a stress-festival. But I accomplished it and felt good about th...

Bookbinding Kanazawa has two rivers. The Saigawa and the Asano-gawa (gawa meaning river). Next to the Saigawa near the Sakura Bridge is a restaurant serving good French-fusion food and wine, whiskey, and beer. It is called Frérot. I fashioned a book for Frérot called Frérot. It is about 120 pages, 7 signatures, and case bound. The right page is lined (faintly) while the left side on alternating pa...

Bookbinding In bookbinding this week we have, for your visual pleasure, a book One Year in the making. Solaris Libri. This is, I’m assuming, Latin for Solar Book. (If Google translate is accurate with dead languages.) It is an A6 blank notebook of five signatures of five folios each for a total of 100 pages. The only printing in the entire book is the title pages: Solaris Libri and under that Expo...

Bookbinding In bookbinding this week we have, for your visual pleasure, the second barf bag book of the month titled: Sumerian Beat Box Tunes (for those who are without sin). It is seven signatures of four folios each for a total of 112 pages. The right page is lined, the left page is blank. It is B6 in size and link stitched and cased in. However, unlike most cased in books, this one does not hav...

Bookbinding We are often urged to recycle and reuse. I did just that recently on a quick trip to Hanoi that netted me some Vietnamese paper and three barf bags from the flight over. And back.  Here’s a small tip. Red-eye flights are good when you land in the evening, not so good when you land in the morning. I made one A6, 100-page, blank notebook with one barf bag with the creative title Bee Crea...

Bookbinding This week we’re looking at a 100-page, A6-size, coptic-bound notebook with lines on the recto (right) side and nothing on the verso (left) side. The main difference between this notebook and others is that this book has a collage cover. I spent several hours combing through a pile of fliers I get in my mailbox, otherwise known as throwaways or direct mail, to find designs, colors, shap...

Bookbinding I cased in The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street novella. It’s B6 (which is B5 folded in half), nine signatures, and 125 pages. In making this book I discovered a warning I must pass on to my listeners/readers. Warning: Keep your fingertips away from sharp objects like exacto knives. Exacto knives are frequently used in bookbinding and, from experience, I realize they cut not only pap...