Unless something goes awry, Brian Stuparyk at Steam Whistle Letterpress plans to start printing the pages for “Roman Workbenches” this week. The plates are in. The paper is in. Now it’s just a matter of putting the two together on his Vandercook press.
Once the pages are printed, we’ll truck the results to Massachusetts so the bindery can fold the signatures, sew them and bind them. It’s too soon to tell exactly when the book will be finished and then ship – I’m hoping the process takes another five weeks.
Today I stopped by the Steam Whistle shop in neighboring Newport, Ky., to take some photos of the plates and paper to assure you that we haven’t taken your money and run off to Kansas (that’s really about as far as we could get on that sum).
Brian is a newly minted father and seems still as excited about the job as I am – and I don’t think he’s slept since Monday.
When the press starts rolling, I’ll post some photos and video of the process. It won’t be long now.
The Ringling Bros. final dates in Cincinnati just happen to be during that weekend. The circus is closing up shop and so this might be your last chance to see it. The performances are at the U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati – right across the river from Covington. Details here.
The Cincinnati Museum Center has an exhibit of Viking artifacts (which I really need to get over to see). Lots of swords, a recreation of a Viking ship and additional programming that young Vikings would dig (Viking games). The Cincinnati Children’s Museum is also in the facility, and we spent many long Saturdays there when our kids were young.
If your kids dig fish, penguins and sea life, the Newport Aquarium is a great day trip. The aquarium is at Newport on the Levee, an entertainment district that’s five minutes from the hand tool event. There’s a movie theater, restaurants and other fun stuff for kids there. Also, oddly, Mitchell’s Fish Market is exactly next door to the aquarium. I always wondered….
The Cincinnati Zoo is an outstanding zoo. I can say that because I’ve been dragged to zoos (legal and sketchy) all over the Western world. In addition to seeing all the animals that would like to eat you, there are animals you can pet. The children’s section of the zoo kept our kids occupied for hours so we could fall half-asleep on a bench.
If you have a child who is obsessed with trucks, you can soothe the little savage with a trip to the Cincinnati Fire Museum. It’s downtown – a short hop from Covington.
The Cincinnati Art Museum (free admission!) is another great day trip. For the younger kids, there’s the Rosenthal Education Center, with hands-on stuff to keep little hands occupied between filling diapers. The rest of the museum is great, too, if they happen to take a nap in the stroller.
If you like to warp your children’s minds (like we did), go to the Contemporary Art Center in downtown Cincinnati. You start at the top of the amazing building and work your way down. Our kids were always shocked and amazed and surprisingly curious when we went to the CAC. (There’s a section for kids at the top of the museum, too.) It’s not too freaky – promise. Also, stop by the 21c Museum Hotel next door. It has two floors of art exhibits that are always fun and interesting (our kids still ask to go). There’s lots to eat all around the CAC, but I’ll save that for another post.
My daughter Maddy reports that she has fewer than 50 sets of stickers left from the second batch of designs we made. So if you want the beehive logo and “Divided We Stand” logo stickers, you might want to act now.
Or, for customers in the United States, you can send a $5 bill and a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) to Maddy at:
Stick it to the Man
P.O. Box 3284
Columbus, OH 43210
I’ve begun designing the third set of stickers. So no matter what happens, if you order, you will get stickers.
You might be wondering what the heck Maddy is holding in her left hand. It’s a cookie from a local bakery featuring the photo of a prematurely born hippo at the Cincinnati Zoo named Fiona.
Maddy and my wife, Lucy, are obsessed with the hippo. Lucy, a reporter at WCPO-TV, has taken it upon herself to discuss the hippo every week on the station’s podcast. And we are spending money on hippo cookies like we don’t need to eat protein.
You can see the latest on Fiona here (thank you Lucy for this link).
So I have no idea why I’m writing about a premature hippo, but there you have it. Buy stickers. Like hippos. Something something.
Lie-Nielsen Toolworks is hosting a Hand Tool Event at Braxton Brewing in Covington, Ky., on March 10-11 (details from Lie-Nielsen are here).
We will have a booth at the brewery both days and will have our storefront open on Saturday only (not Friday; nor Thursday) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Our storefront is a seven-minute walk from the brewery.
On Saturday night we are organizing an outing to Rhinegeist brewing in Cincinnati where we shall play Hammerschlager – a competitive nail-driving game. The winner of the evening (likely the one person left standing) will receive a letterpress hammer poster (long sold out and coveted). We’ll bring the stump, the hammer and the nails.
The event at Rhinegeist will start about 8 p.m. We recommend you go to Eli’s barbecue at Findlay Market to get your dinner beforehand and walk it a block north to Rhinegeist to eat it. (That’s what we’re going to do.) Note that Eli’s closes at 9 p.m. Tarry not.
I hope that we will have some other special stuff to show or sell, but that all depends on trucking and production schedules. More details, soon.
Last year’s show was fantastic. Braxton has excellent beer. Covington has a lot of great places to eat and drink (more on those later on). And yeah, Cincinnati is awesome, too.
John and I are quite particular about how our books are made and spend a lot of time and money on details that most readers don’t notice. We want our books to be able to survive floods, attacks by babies and dogs and – most of all – time.
There are an enormous number of manufacturing steps our books have to go through, especially compared to digital, print-on-demand (POD) publishing. While POD is good for some things, such as bind-ups of classroom material, it has a long way to go to compete with traditional printing and binding.
And so we stick with the time- and labor-intensive methods for our books.
In late September, John and I visited one of the plants where our color books are printed on sheet-fed presses. Our black-and-white books, in contrast, are printed on web press. The difference between the two is somewhat akin to the difference between paper being fed into a photocopier (sheet-fed) or printing out your book on an enormous roll of butcher’s paper or paper towels (web press).
The above is a short peek at the process a typical book goes through. Note that I’ve left a lot of steps out and simplified things (so if you are in the printing industry, forgive me). It took two full days to tour the plant, so 5 minutes of video is going to leave out some details.
Thanks to Jostens of Clarksville, Tenn., for opening their doors to us and allowing us to photograph anything we please. And thanks to Phil Nanzetta of Signature Book who purchases most of our printing for us and helped arrange the visit.
