I built this press in 2003 out of pine salvaged from bed frames that were being thrown out by University House at the ANU. I’ve barely used it since, and the time has come to admit that I’m never going to be the small-time bookbinder fellow that I perhaps at some point thought I might be.

So, hopefully, this will end up being of some use to the WA Craft Bookbinders Guild.

Ripping timber like this is fun. That’s why I’m doing it. I don’t really need a drawer bottom made in this way — my dad gave me a perfectly suitable panel of ply just three days ago, that he didn’t want and that I’ve not other use for — so it must be for fun. Why else would I have eschewed the much faster (and yes, certainly more structurally stable, and probably stronger) route of plywood-and-glue and have the drawer slid into its home and gone from my todo list by now?

Because this isn’t about making a drawer, it would seem. (And oh! what other new-age cliches are to come next?!)

It’s about standing at my bench, making sawdust, hearing the tools in the wood, breathing with the strokes of the saw… feeling non-analytical for once! Just doing, very slowly, and not thinking anything of the future, or how all this is meant to work. It’s time to let the programmer’s brain sleep for a while…

(Oh, and “non-analytical”?! Yes, quite; but I didn’t say “non-ironic” did I? Hmm…)

That the crafted item be

1. produced by anonymous crafts people;
2. made by hand, and in quantity;
3. inexpensive;
4. used by the masses;
5. functional in daily life;
6. representative of the region in which it was produced.

I guess this project’s going to take a few more weekends.

That’s what I called the thing when I first started it (when I was at art school in Canberra in 2003) and the phrase was meant to represent something about how I work wood by hand (I mean, using only hand tools), and that the processes involved are only perfected through learning them “off by heart” — in that one’s body must learn how to do these things, one’s heart and soul.

And that’s what I want to get back to doing, and to writing about. I’ve got my nice little workshop up and running now (and have turned out a few little pieces, mainly for Christmas presents and so I can’t yet post anything about them here, lest some recipient reads this; not that they are likely to), and I just need to get back into the swing of working the wood and having the time to stop — mid mallet-swing if need be — and write about what I’m doing.

It’s not all about hacking away at bits of wood and trying to make them fit together, you see. It’s actually far more about one’s attitude and the feel of calm beauty that decends (from the heavens?) when the sweet saw is sawing smoothly and swiftly. As it were. More of that later, from the dust of the bench.

There are now a myriad projects that need my attention, and I just need to sort out in what order I’ll tackle them: I need shelves, that’s pretty high on the list; before I get get going on them, however, I need (well, maybe don’t need, but it’d be nice) somewhere to sharpen my tools, a bench that can get wet; I’d get going with that, then, but I’d like first to have just a couple of simple saw horses to have nearby to dock longer lengths of timber and whatnot. So that’s where I’m going to start:

And yes, to figure out the angles I had to resort to PHP — I really aught to get myself a calculator that can do trig stuff…

* * *

On the IT front: I am as intent as ever to get working on some sort of wiki-like collaborative archiving software; I’m just not sure what it’s about yet. So I’m focusing on the email archiving thing I’ve got going: it’s aim is to produce printable (nicely-typeset, i.e. LaTeX) archives of email correspondence. The difference between this and just printing emails is that it stores the structure of the email — date, body (without old replies; they’re stored as other emails in the system), and relational IDs for sender and receiver — rather than just flat text, and so the printed output can be much more readable and use less paper. If that makes any sense; I’m working on a better explanation….

It might be time for another beer.  That’s something that I’d touch on before, though: drinking.  It’s a thing that releases me from all this hideous worry about What To Do, whether programming is The Thing for me, and I like getting pissed for that reason.  I like it because when I’m a bit drunmk, out of myself somewhat, I feel oh so fucking drawn to making, to walking and being with the world and nature.  I want to hug the wood, hug the night and the day and shout and sing and in any whay I can be an idle singer of an empty day!…  That’d be the thing.  Being here, Canberra, being at uni, these things don’t do it really.  Not really I thinmk…

I rode my slow bike to school today as a way of reminding me of the importance of the small and the simple; the low-tech and the old; anything that points me to an intimacy with my personal environment… This bike (that I would have a few good shots of if these blasted computers were operating as they should) doesn’t work very well – slow, clunky, hard to start (and stop!) – but as an aid to reflection upon what is important in transport (and indeed all of life, but I don’t want to make this too big a picture) it is supurb. It is okay, and even desirable, to slow down and do things in a (slightly) uncomfortable way, and in doing so I am forced to ponder why people do not like to do things so. I think I want to get closer to the gritty real bits of life, the bits that at all costs we must avoid (and pass on to others less ‘fortunate’ than ourselves); it is really only in doing so that I can be stimulated to think about these things.

Hmmm, I seem to be faltering in this stream of appreciation of the overlooked; I shall turn to the overlooked to seek appreciation of these thoughts.

The things around us need be noticed in order for us to appreciate them, this is obvious; what I want to get at is that everything around us is capable of being appreciated. I look past this computer today to the wall and the conduit saddle that is holding the power cable to the wall, and I think: Why is this insignificant little thing there? Where was it made, by what and who installed it? The screw is a countersunk one, but sits proud in the hole designed for a cup-head; this is ugly and unnecessary, and (to skip the leaps and jumps that gets me there) draws my mind to News From Nowhere. Shall every thing we do be an act of love for our environment, society and self? But why not?

What makes work unpleasant? Surely endless repetition, mindless drudgery with no hope for escape – things brought about through greed and the exploitation of others. Think, though, about the materials that one uses and how they make or mar pleasant work; if I strive towards an intimacy with my media, and that same intimacy is going to give me cancer, what then shall I do? Why on Earth would I cover my walls with a substance that I know I find toxic (as evidenced by my emotive wish not to ingest said substance), if I also know that one day those walls should be pulled down and that substance be spread about the land?!

I’m hungry now, and tiring of this: I wanted to write about bookbinding as one point at which the intangible and the tangible meet; I love to hold a book, and I love too to read it. For the former I might easily take a stick up from the ground; for the latter, the ubiquitious A4 photocopied page would sufice – where we can unite the two, there lies my inquiry.