It's time to revisit the time warp

To see this post on the blog go to https://life2wheels.com

In this ephemeral moment the timeline flows like this...

1689 - The battle of the Lake of Two Mountains;

1925 - the monument is built;

1948 - Atmo Zakes is 9 years old, finding joy in Berlin during the Russian blockade, against all odds;

1974 - I set out on my Vélo Solex to explore Montreal's western shore;

1995 - Hilary Hedges and Atmo Zakes publish The Senneville Time Warp;

2011 - I stumble on the book while taking a spin in Senneville on my red Vespa. I share an exchange of emails between myself and Atmo Zakes;

2015 - I donate The Senneville Time Warp to the Beaconsfield Public Library before moving to Toronto;

2025 - Atmo Zakes reaches out and offers to send me The Senneville Time Warp once more. I accept her kind offer.

I am recording this because it inspires me when moments from the past reach out to me in the present. The moments are like threads that are woven by our actions and those of others who touch us, and become the fabric of our lives.

The moment when it happens feels very special to me.

This most recent moment, as I lay in bed, taking a last look at my emails before going to sleep, and seeing a message from Atmo, felt like a light that glowed. It's difficult to describe and to convey. In the moment I am unexpectedly touched, pleased, surprised, and grateful. Grateful for the things that I and others have done that coalesce in this special way. I feel the need to save the moment here, and to share it with you.

What makes these particular moments in time special, is the history, beginning with a horrific massacre in the distant past, whose memory sparked a series of events where people, touched by the history, find ways to deal with the horror. It often happens that artistry is woven into the fabric, in this case by Hilary Hedges and Atmo Zakes who create a book that imagines an indigenous child, Little Feather, and two white children, Christabel and Mark, who stumble into a time warp and become compassionate allies and friends, contributing to saving Little Feather from the massacre, thus adding a very human and caring narrative that lives, thanks to Jim Katz, in the precise place where the horror occurred. It is Jim who leaves The Senneville Time Warp at the foot of the monument where I, and others have found it. The pain of the horror likely motivates indigenous descendants of the victims of 1689, time after time, to remove the monument's bronze plaque that speaks of the horror. The book is a gesture that lives at the monument, a small compassionate step in a healing process.

Atmo shared similar feelings with me in an email after I first posted this story.

Here is what Atmo told me:

Hello David

I just read your blog and enjoyed it a lot.

I call these moments magical and love them just as much as you do.

It is great fun to be a little part of yours now!

When they happen they make me feel very alive, part of a greater WHOLE in which I have a place and am an acting member.

Just now I am having a collection of these magical moments, that I wrote down over the years, edited by a friend and am thinking of posting them online. For that I need to learn how to make a website… which I find a huge challenge to do.

But just because I can, let me include here, one of these magical stories, to illustrate what I mean.

For clarity let me tell you that I was born in 1939 in Berlin Germany!

I also created a series of 21 paintings of my childhood in Berlin, that has been exhibited here in Québec and in Germany as well. You can see the paintings here in a video of an interview I gave to Denise Palisaitis: 

This is one of my paintings (The Candy Bomber): 

 

During the Russian blockade of 1948, the city was provided with food and supplies by the Berlin Airlift. Chocolate was not high on the list of goods for anyone… but us kids. We would wait for hours near the local landing strip for a piece of chocolate that might be dropped by a pilot from the open window of his cockpit. Many pilots dropped chocolates attached to tiny handkerchief parachutes. The children of Berlin were most thankful for these sweet, delightful moments of joy.

The magical story about the Candy Bomber Gail Halvorsen.

While I was painting the picture with the candy bomber I did a ”memory check”, to find out who it was, that created this kind tradition during the blockade of Berlin in 1948-49. It was the American colonel Gail Seymour Halvorsen who started this, when he was one of the many pilots that flew frequently to Berlin to provide the city with essential supplies. Children were always watching the planes landing. So he tied candies to a handkerchief parachute and dropped them out of his cabin window while landing at the Tempelhof airport, which was situated right in the middle of downtown Berlin. When they discovered he was dropping candy for them, they arrived in droves from all over town. He got permission from his superiors to continue to do this and to have other pilots participate too. It became a whole industry to make the parachutes with candy at home in the US and then fly them into Berlin.

This is how I also found out, that he was still alive! I was very happy, because it gave me a chance to thank him for his kindness and actions during the blockade. I wrote him an online note and was thrilled when I even got an answer! It was not from Mr. Halvorsen himself, but it was an acknowledgement from one of his many friends that he had gotten my message and was happy about it. He was not able to answer me personally, because he had Covid at the time. This again was pure magic, because not very long after that he passed away at the age of 101. What a rich life he had… a real inspiration."

Kilometrestones - Chapter 2

My 2021 Brompton H6R: 4,000 kilometres To see this post on the blog go to https://life2wheels.com

I've been riding my Brompton for close to four-and-a-half years now.

Four-and-a-half years and 4,000 kilometres.

In reality it's been even more distance than that on the Brompton because I picked up the bike on March 12, 2021, but I didn't start logging the distance cycled until November of that year with hundreds of kilometres already pedalled. Some of that wandering happened as far afield as Vancouver, Montreal, and Ogunquit.

The four thousand kilometres I am celebrating here, with you, is the portion of that distance both travelled and recorded meticulously, thanks to an Excel spreadsheet that tracks my activities, and my trusty CatEye Quick odometer.

I’ll be the first to say that Bromptons are strange cycles.

The odd aspects begin most obviously with the small wheels, but on closer inspection, every other aspect of the bicycle is even stranger. The frame is odd, all low-to-the-ground and gracefully curved. The seat post stands out because it’s so darn long. The handle bars are shaped with their own weird curves, or not, depending on your choice. Then there’s the gearing. Six gears split between a rear derailleur and a rear hub transmission, and there are other gearing options as well. Oh, and I should wrap it up here, but wait… what two-wheel bicycle has six wheels???? My Brompton does.

But the best strange feature, by far, very, very far, is that the Brompton folds, and it folds in mere seconds!

All those weird aspects I mentioned, without exception, are carefully engineered to allow the Brompton to fold very efficiently.

Folded, Bromptons fit in an airplane’s overhead storage compartment; two Bromptons fit in the trunk of a Smart car; they fit in suitcases; under restaurant tables; in crowded subway trains and buses; two fit in a hallway closet without interfering with coats and jackets; Bromptons live happily in the trunk of any car or taxi…

The list goes on, but I’ll happily stop there.

The appropriate focus for the appreciation of any two-wheeler is, and ought to be, not its appearance, but how it rides.

As odd as the Brompton is in all elements of its being, almost none of all that strangeness translates into the ride.

The only exception worth mentioning is that it takes a couple of kilometres to adjust to what we’ll call its “twitchyness”. I got used to that very quickly, most likely because I had been riding a Vespa motor scooter for over ten years, and Vespas also have small wheels.

The very first time I rode a Brompton was at the dealer when I gave it a test ride. I didn’t really know what to expect. What a surprise that was!

All the Brompton’s strangeness completely disappears once you’re in the saddle because your experience is not what you can see, it’s what you feel. And what you feel is a bicycle. A perfectly normal bicycle.

I can’t blame you for doubting my assessment since you may think I’m biased.

If I have sparked a little curiosity, consider the Brompton cyclists who take their bikes on the road for incredible long-range expeditions, from England to Sweden; from London to Paris; from Amsterdam to Belgium, France, and Spain; through the Himalayas; throughout northern Japan; from Toronto to Montreal; from England to Poland; to South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, and the list goes on, and on. The adventures are abundant, and well-documented on YouTube.

Search on Youtube for Susanna Thornton; the Brompton Traveler; la petite réinventerie; Lady Brompton; Rizal Sapi; and 2bikes4adventure. And that’s not all. There are many others for you to discover on your own.

All to say that 4,000 kilometres on a Brompton, seen here in that moment, is... really nothing.

Nothing... but the joy and true pleasure of life on two wheels.

Bookbinding challenges - End papers

To see this post on the site, go to https://life2wheels.com.

I suppose it's fitting that the last purchase of needed supplies I finally made, after glue, sewing thread, beeswax, an awl, clamps, pressing boards, a homemade book press, brushes, a curved sewing needle, a skiving knife, book board, cover leather, book cloth, colour printed signatures, a sharpening stone, headbands, and bookmark ribbon, was end paper. 

Trust me it wasn't deliberate for it to come last towards the end of the project. It's just semi-co-incidental, that's all.

End papers are important mostly because they are the key ingredient that attaches the book to its cover. If the cover were to fall off and get lost, how else would you judge the book?

If you have a hard cover book handy (any one will do) open the cover but turn no pages. What you see is the book's end paper. Typically it's quite a bit heavier than the pages of the book, and in the vast majority of bindings, it is content-free. By that I mean there is nothing written on the end paper (if there is something there, it's likely on the back end paper, and courtesy of a librarian). The only aesthetic aspect is usually its colour.

I was planning for something more interesting. The book and the title are printed in red ink, and there is a myriad of red hearts... in the title, and towards the bottom on every love note page. So of course I thought red or white end papers covered in contrasting red or white hearts... that would be nice, no? Ideally in Japanese paper?

Well both my wife and the Japanese took issue with those suggestions. Impossible for me to find genuine Japanese paper featuring hearts (cranes and flowers yes, hearts no), and my darling who is the inspiration for this book (and my life) suggested cream or ivory, not red.

Last Friday we finally paid a visit to the leading arts supply store in Toronto, Above Ground Art Supplies, appropriately located on McCaul Street south of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and in the imposing shadow of OCAD U, Canada's oldest, largest and leading art and design university, located in downtown Toronto since 1876. 

I was leaning towards sturdy cream-coloured Canson 100 GSM paper from France, but Susan chose ivory Mingei Chiri Japanese paper instead:

A great choice. Japanese paper is among the very best in the world. Not only is it beautiful in appearance, it is also very robust, because it's made of strong Kozo fibre. That's the good news that makes it well suited to being end paper. The challenge I expected was the translucence of the paper.

I was confident that I could make it work, but I would have to run some tests.

[time passed]

I ran some tests and I feel that these end papers will work. I am hedging against possible failure by lining the cover with the same cream-coloured book cloth I used for the cover art.

The journey continues.

Kilometrestones - Chapter 1

First up: Brooks B17 Special saddle after 900 kilometres. To see this post on the Blog go to https://life2wheels.com.

I bought this saddle in early September 2023. I love the way it looks on my bike, and that it matches the leather ergonomic handgrips. I had no illusions that comfort might be imminent when I installed the saddle.

Comfort is not the most important thing in the near term, but it is in the long term. There are perhaps hundreds of YouTube videos on the Brooks B17. The topic of comfort along with estimates of the time it takes to break in the saddle to reach that comfort zone, are constants in virtually all those posts.

I have to be honest, the discomfort of breaking in the B17 has been substantial. I started tracking the kilometres ridden on the saddle right from the start. There were a number of times that I considered going back to the Brompton stock saddle. The Brompton saddle was comfortable from day one. The Brooks was definitely not.

At this point, 722 days in from September 2nd, 2023, the first day I rode on the Brooks, I can't really perceive much, if any, change in the appearance of the saddle.

There is no doubt however that now that my butt has inflicted precisely 900 kilometres of punishment on the Brooks (as of August 23, 2025 at precisely 15h21 - I stopped when the odometer registered the 900th kilometre), I have progressed to a degree of comfort.

And what degree is that, you might ask?

Well, we're not talking the kind of eye-rolling, grin-inducing, deep-sighing comfort of plopping yourself down on a plush, soft, leather-upholstered, down-filled couch. After all, we're talking bicycle riding, not watching a sitcom.

I measure the comfort of my Brooks after 900 kilometres according to four scientific metrics:

1. Can I ride on old wrinkled pavement without lifting weight from the saddle?
   Yes, now I can
   
2. Can I ride on a sidewalk and not wince at every joint in the concrete?
   Yes, now I can
   
3. Can I do a 6 to 9 kilometre ride without lifting weight from the saddle periodically?
   Yes, now I can
   
4. Can I do a 6-9 kilometre ride without thinking about my butt?
   Yes, now I can

So there you have it. I am finally pleased with my Brooks B17 Special saddle, and no longer yearn for the Brompton stock saddle.

Now that I recorded this Brooks-ish kilometrestone, I felt entitled to take a break and admire the urban horizon within just a handful of feet from where I took a break in 2018 to take some moments of tranquility after my last Ontario Bar exam. This time I sat on the bench, mere steps from the where the Brompton hit the 900 saddle kilometres, and enjoyed a few sips of water. If you look carefully you can see my red water bottle between the bench slats.

Next up: My 2021 Brompton H6R: 4,000 kilometres 

Bookbinding challenges - Folding

Am I folding?

What a question! Have I ever folded?

I have never played poker, so there's that. I do help my better half fold sheets, so there's that. I don't think I have ever given up though. I admit I came close once or twice. But this, thank the powers that be, whoever they may be, is not about giving up.

For those who don't know, bookbinding involves a lot of folding!

The printer I am using offered not only to print the 24 signatures, but possibly to fold the signatures as well. To be honest I am a little conflicted. I want this ultimate version of the book to be as close to perfect as possible, and getting a nice almost perfect series of folds would be a step in the right direction. I also wanted to be 100% behind every step. Hence the conflict in my mind.

As I pondered, I decided.

I will not fold... well... what I mean is, I am persisting, not giving up... I will do the folding and you are joining me on this journey of twenty-four folds. All you need to do is read on.

The key to this journey is first to get your hands on the first signature. In this case it will be four sheets of letter-size paper (8 1/2" X 11").

As mentioned in the post on imposition, the page sequence is critically important. The first signature of the final version of my book looks like this in Excel:

The thick horizontal line represents the sheet of paper. The information above the thick horizontal line is what is printed on the top of the sheet of paper, and the information below the thick horizontal line is what is printed on the reverse of the sheet of paper. The numbers are simply the page numbers.

Make sure that the sheets are in the exact sequence shown above in the Excel plan. Carefully and gently fold the 4 sheets together and inward but without creating a crease. Then take a look at what sequence the pages will be in when you proceed to the final fold that will have the crease. If the sheets are in the correct sequence, with their tops up and facing you, you will see that the booklet is correct.

Now to complete the fold, bring the edges of the sheets together and make sure that they are perfectly aligned. I plan to use a square ruler to guide the pages. Once you feel that the alignment is as good as can be, run an index finger down the middle of the sheets to create the beginning of the crease. Once the crease begins, run your finger to the left and right to complete the crease.

Now use your bone folder to press down on the crease to make it as sharp as possible.

You will notice that the page edges are not perfectly aligned. Close maybe, but not perfect.

The good news is that while it is important to aim for perfection, there are later steps in the book binding process that allow perfect edges to emerge (see the post entitled Bookbinding challenges - Ploughing and sewing), and even shine (that is not a joke, I will show you shining page edges as part of the gilding process).

That's it for now. The next step in the process of building the book, once all the signatures are folded, is to pierce holes in the signatures and sew them all together. Lucky for you I already published a post on that, so if you don't already have a migraine you can continue the journey here: Bookbinding challenges - Building a piercing cradle.

There will be no more talk of folding in the face of challenges.

Bookbinding challenges - Imposition

I have no intention of imposing anything on you, truly I don't. To see this post on the site, go to https://life2wheels.com.

If any challenge in the process of creating a really nice leather-bound book can be said to be imposing on the binder, imposition is likely to win the prize.

As I have mentioned in earlier bookbinding posts, the pages of every hard cover book are arranged in what Canadian binders often call signatures. Signatures are groups of four to perhaps seven sheets of paper, more properly called sections, and in ancient times, going back to the medieval era, were called quires, or later gatherings. "Gatherings". I rather prefer that, it sounds calm, kind, respectful, and quite appealing, at least to me, not something that should ever be imposed.

Most often, these gatherings have four sheets of paper. For the book I am binding, all the signatures in the final and hopefully best version will have four sheets of letter-sized 8 1/2" by 11" paper. Version two of the book had one five sheet signature that I placed in the centre. I did that to minimize blank sheets in the first and last signatures. That turned out to be one of my many mistakes, not to be repeated.

It starts out simple, but as you will see a little further along, in no time I had to resort to Excel to solve the puzzle.

The signature is formed by folding the four sheets of paper in half to form a booklet that is 8 1/2" tall and 5 1/2" wide. The result is that the booklet has sixteen pages. Each page is a quarter of each sheet, because two pages are printed on each side of a sheet of paper (4 X 4 = 16).

If you fold four sheets to make a booklet, then number the pages in large numbers in the middle of each page, the last page of the booklet will be 16. Now, separate the sheets and unfold them; examine the position and sequence of the page numbers on each sheet. You will be struck by how odd the sequence of pages is on the sheets.

Arranging all the pages of a book and printing them on both sides of sheets of paper in that precise sequence is what imposition is. It took my brain a while to wrap itself around the process.

If your bookbinding project involves pages without content, such as a lined journal, or sketch book, imposition is not really an issue. It's only necessary where there is actual content, such as a novel, or poems in a desired sequence. If your pages are numbered, that fact alone, as trivial as it seems, requires imposition in order to get the page sequence right.

Here is the good news, if you follow the following recommendations, imposition is actually a snap. Think of it as four pretty simple steps to success!

Step One

Take four sheets of the paper you are going to use, and fold them in half. Now what you have is the first signature and as mentioned earlier it has 16 pages. Grab a pencil or a pen, and get ready to number the pages. Let's assume you are binding a novel. Don't start with page one of the novel on the first page of the first signature. Here is a good sequence:

1. Blank page
2. Blank page
3. Copyright information
4. Blank page
5. Title page
6. Blank page
7. Page 1 of the novel
8. Page 2
9. Page 3
10. Page 4
11. Page 5
12. Page 6
13. Page 7
14. Page 8
15. Page 9
16. Page 10

I found out the hard way (experience is what you get when you are expecting something else) that those two first blank pages are important. They become very important when you add the heavy end pages in preparation for attaching the cover to the book. The end pages are typically coloured, sometimes marbled. Those end pages aren't part of the first and last signatures, they are glued to the first and last pages of the first and last signatures with a thin band of glue. That makes for a stiff relationship that makes turning the first page of the book block awkward. If the first and last pages are blank, it's of no consequence. So make sure the first and last pages of your book are blank.

Step Two

Once you're done with the first fake signature, fold another four pages and number the next sixteen pages. The second signature will start at page 11 (since page 10 was the last page of the first signature) and the last page of the second signature will be 26.

You now have that second signature of 16 pages. It turns out that all the remaining signatures (except the last one) will have exactly the same sequence of pages, and each page in the sequence of every signature will be exactly 16 pages ahead of the equivalent page in the previous signature. So the page in the third signature that is in the same sequence in the signature as page number 15 in the second signature, will be page 31 (15 + 16 = 31). That obviously lends itself to a simple  Excel formula (= A1+16).

Step Three

So now you see the vital role that Excel plays in solving the imposition for your novel. It's as simple as this:

OK, just kidding. But actually it is simple, and it helps to see it in more detail.

Each numbered vertical bar represents a signature. Each sheet of paper is represented by a horizontal line. The numbers or other information above each horizontal line are pages on the front of the sheet, and the numbers or other information below each horizontal line are pages to print on the back or reverse of each sheet. All the page numbers in signatures 3, 4 and beyond are Excel formulas. For instance, the cell in the spreadsheet that shows page 28 in the third signature contains the following formula: =F92+16.

Step Four

This is the easiest thing of all. Copy the Excel cells that make up the fourth signature and simply paste them over and over again until you have all the pages you need for your novel. In the last signature, replace the formulas for the extra pages that won't have any content with "BLANK".

And there you have it, that's all that you need to know about one of the most challenging aspects of crafting your very own novel, book of poetry, or, in my case, 365 pages of love notes to my better half: the imposition.

Where do things stand now in my amazing project?

I am glad you asked.

Test version two of my book is finished.

It may look pretty good, but it has many flaws. The spine is too wide; the book is misaligned in the cover; the content is all black and white printed on cheap recycled printer paper; The pages where there were typos are marked up with corrections; the sewn binding could stand improvement; the end pages are just construction paper, not good enough; there aren't enough blank pages in the first and last signatures; the cover art needs to be mounted better, the final version will not have any gaps; the spine hubs are too thick...

The good news is that the pages are all in the correct sequence thanks to proper imposition, and there are some pages without flaws.

These days I am working on the final version. I am hoping that what I have learned in the first two trials will yield a nearly perfect gift for my darling. Today I hope to finish 5 or 6 fresh signatures in PDF format. I have already gotten to the 8th signature. I am so close to having 24 signatures ready to take to the printer.

Ed.: This afternoon, July 23, 2025, I walked the thumb drives with all 24 V3 signatures to The Printing House and discussed the printing with Corey Corbett the manager. We think that the print may be complete by the end of next week. It's tricky because usually the printer manages the imposition but in this case, as we have seen, the files I dropped off have the imposition done. We'll have a chat early next week to make sure everything makes sense. I can't wait to see the colour version on nice 80 lb paper. They call it "silk".

Bookbinding challenges - Taking stock of the first test

What you are seeing here from left to right are...

a) a book cover theory laid out on paper;

b) the first complete test of 10 or eleven test signatures, folded, sewn, glued, and trimmed, with a first complete test leather cover, and with the book block cased into the cover; and

c) the complete test book block of 23 signatures with all the book's pages in the correct order, each signature folded, all signatures sewn, and a first coat of glue applied to the binding.

It's far from perfect, and it's even far from good.

What you can't really see is how much I have learned up to this point.

There are things I already knew before the first test, like how important precise measurements are, the importance of having the right materials, and the key role that skills play in achieving something that meets the objective of producing a really nice and valued leather-bound book.

Here is what I have learned so far, thanks to the first complete test, in no particular order:

•  The idea of having the book title printed on book cloth in a window on the front cover works nicely. The problem that you can see is that the front cover window is a sandwich of two cover boards and a sheet of book cloth. It's way too thick. Like twice too thick. I think I can reduce it to a single thickness, but that is going to require a separate test.
• I suspected the test leather was too thick. It's just random leather from scraps I got at the local crafts shop. The leather I need to find is a nice red leather to match the ultimate design. I'll see if that will be available in a thinner lighter weight. If not, I think this thickness of leather will actually work. We'll see in the second test when the complete book is bound. 
• The end papers I used are just plain sheets of paper. I am kind of shocked at how well they did their job. What I learned is the role they play can't really be understood until you actually use them to secure the cover. It's the most important role that paper ends up playing in a properly bound leather covered book. To play that role properly, the paper needs to be thicker and stronger than the paper used to print the book. Ideally what may be best is a Japanese paper with a heart motif, in red. We'll see if that even exists. 

Bookbinding challenges - Ploughing and sewing

Hi there!

Bookbinding is actually very far removed from farming, even if the title of this post sounds like it might be about farming.

So why sewing?

To make a book you need many signatures, and no, I'm not talking about anything to do with petitions. I'll do a separate post on signatures since they have their own very exquisite complexities and can result in a lot of head-scratching. Suffice to say that a signature is a basically a booklet. In the case of my book, we're talking about four sheets of letter-size paper, 8 1/2" by 11", with two pages of the book printed on each side of each sheet, so four book pages on each sheet, resulting in each signature containing 16 pages of the eventual book. In the case of my book there are 22 four-sheet 16 page signatures, and one five-sheet 20 page signature.

To make each signature, once the four sheets are printed, they are folded in half, all together, so that they are nested. If the signature plan is right, and they were printed correctly, when you turn the pages of the first signature you will find pages 1 to 16 in the correct order. Once I did all the printing and folding (there will be a separate post just on the art of folding, amazing no?) I had the 23 signatures.

This is where the sewing comes in. Oh... right, did you punch holes in the signatures? Check out my post on hole punching if that's something you plan on doing.

A special kind of waxed thread is used to sew the signatures together. Depending on the technique you  choose (there are many) you will need a weird curved needle, the waxed thread, a template and a piercing cradle to make sure that the holes all line up (see that post), and, in my case, I used a combination of French stitches and kettle stitches. I learned it all from this amazing YouTube post by Chanel of Bitter Melon Bindery.

Here's what I have. It's made up of my 23 signatures, printed on cheap paper with my Hewlett Packard black and white laser printer. I printed them to make sure they were right, and for proof-reading. As you can see, they have been sewed, and a layer of glue has been applied.

What you are seeing is kettle stitches at each end, and French stitches in the middle. It looks pretty good, but looks can be deceiving.

So why ploughing?

It's all about uneven edges.

With 23 signatures, even if the folding was meticulous, and the sewing was really, really good (this is only my second attempt, so no, it's not), inevitably the edges of the signatures don't line up as you see with even the cheapest paperback, or a commercial pamphlet.

The solution is simple.

Well, no it's not, at best it's simple-ish. Professional artisanal bookbinders use massive wooden ploughs with a kind of a special matched tool like a hand-held wood plane that runs back and forth across the edge of the book and trims the edges. Industrial outfits use massive hydraulic gillotines to do the job. So what the heck am I doing?

The key turns out to be a skiving knife

Since I'm only going to produce, at most, one or two books, it doesn't make sense to invest in a plough. An alternative approach is to use a sharp knife to trim the page edges. First you need a setup using a book press and some scrap book board. The trick is press the book once it has been sewn leaving the edge to be trimmed aligned with the edge of the press set up.

As with every aspect of this project, I am deeply aware that trial and error will be the key to eventual success. Another key ingredient is making do with homemade tools to the extent possible. The trick is to know where to draw the line. It is possible to be too cheap.

To figure out the do-it-yourself book press trimming method, I am learning from a master bookbinder's insightful course on edge trimming that he was kind and considerate to post on YouTube. If you are seriously considering binding a book, watch this video by DAS Bookbinding.

I live in a condo and my home office is my workshop. That means that I don't have the tools handy that my Dad had in this home wooodworking shop. For instance, the only grinder I have is my Dremel. That means that repurposing a wood chisel into a proper skiving knife by rounding the edge, is out of the question.

First I tried trimming with my scalpel - blade's too small and too short, and the edge is tapered on both sides of the blade. Then I tried, multiple times, with my box cutter. It kind of worked, and the trim was 'OK', but not good enough. These attempts were applied to my first 11 signature attempts, the experimental ones that taught me how to make proper signatures.

So I ordered a proper skiving knife from Lee Valley.

It is perfect, the edge is perfect, and it is beautifully Zen, with its plain wood handle, and a blade that came stunningly sharp. That it is made in Japan delighted me. I wasn't expecting that.

Why was I delighted, you ask. That's a good question. Allow me to digress a little.

The other day I was trimming bookboard with my scalpel. Depending on whether I am cutting with the grain or against it, and whether I am using a fresh blade, it takes me from 75 to 143 passes with the scalpel to complete the cut.

That takes concentration, and a lot of patience. Getting ready for our imminent trip to Japan, I bought an album of modern Zen Japanese music on iTunes. To complement the wonderful calming serene musical backdrop, I posted this image on my iPad, taken from a recent newspaper article on the best places to see in Japan, so I could contemplate the image while I took pass, after pass, after pass with my scalpel. Me being me, I counted my passes ("... 54, 55, 56, 57...").

I suspect you may feel that this a poor way to spend my precious time, but I assure you, it made me feel... very "Zen". When the cut completed and the board separated, and I saw that the edge was close to perfect, it was a source of deep satisfaction.

Practice makes perfect

That is so true.

This project of mine has two test books, and hopefully one final attempt that will be close enough to perfection. My fingers are tightly crossed.

Where do things stand?

As mentioned earlier, I have at present two test books. 

The first test is truly trashy. It consists of the earliest signature tests, something like 10 or 11 signatures. As I worked on this initial test, I also started experimenting with covers. The cover and the book are closely related but in fact are completely separate until the very end.

The first test cover was just glued to the first book test, and the 'finished' book will sit in the book press overnight. I'll share that little saga in an upcoming post. For now all I can share is that it has a brown leather cover, with a 'window' on the front cover that reveals the cover art. It has many flaws. The good news, I think, is that I have learned a lot from the first test.

The second test will attempt to come much closer to the final product. At present that second test book has been folded, sewn and glued, that's all. The good news is that all the pages are right side up, and all in the right order, from the introduction to the conclusion.

Stay tuned. That's all for now.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments. I promise to do my best to answer them.

Bye for now.  

Elbows up, Canada!

I was twelve when Canada's Prime Minister Lester Pearson decided that it was time for Canada to celebrate its independence by adopting a national flag to replace the flag known as the Canadian Ensign. The former flag placed too much emphasis on Canada's imperial roots. I remember the summer of 1964 when versions of our new flag were circulating seeking public consensus.

Ultimately our simple red and white maple leaf flag won the day.

When I began riding Vespas I sewed a modest Canadian flag on each of my riding jackets. That was pretty much the first and only time in my life that I had a Canadian flag on anything I owned. I did that because when I rode in the US, which I did on multiple occasions, I wanted people to know I was a proud Canadian.

Canadians never flew their flag anywhere near as much as Americans flew theirs. Most Canadians felt, to be honest, that Americans were far, far, far too addicted to the Stars and Stripes. 

All that said, if you look carefully, you will now see a Canadian flag on my Brompton.

There is one on the other side of the bike as well, and I have one on my helmet, and one on my helmet's winter shell.

I sewed one on the strap of my sling and there are now Canadian flags on our cars, one here...

...and one here as well...

... and we are also flying a Canadian flag on our balcony...

We are doing this because for the first time in our lifetime, Canada is under attack from the US. I never would have thought that would be possible. And yet that is what is happening. Our economy is being hammered by American tariffs, and as American democracy flails under a growing aggressive presidential dictatorship, our independence and our sovereignty are under attack by Americans, along with those of Panama and Greenland, all while an aggressive tariff war is being inflicted by Americans on the global economy.

We are now flying our flag not so much to make an impression on Americans, because that is pointless. We will never cross the border or buy American products so long as this insanity lasts. We are doing it to remind our fellow Canadians that we stand strong and defiant, because we cherish who we are as a nation.

Elbows up Canada!

Make sure your voice is heard by voting in the upcoming Federal election!

Riding into the past's present

Cemeteries make some people cringe. I get it.

To me they are interesting, and a nice way to find valuable context.

On my Vespa I visited family members at the Mount Royal cemetery, back in Montreal.

Here in Toronto, my Vespa took me across Toronto to see the intimate connections of Toronto to Vimy Ridge, including majestic Vimy oak trees, and the resting place of Walter Allward, the man who gave the Vimy Memorial to France in honour of Canada's soldiers who fought and lost their lives in World War I.

Back in Montreal, in suburban Beaconsfield actually, my grandfather's resting place is in the Last Post Cemetery, one of the few military cemeteries in Canada. Georges Terroux fought in World War I. I would often ride my Vespa to visit his grave, and it was also within dog-walking distance from our home. 

My Brompton, all by itself, doesn't get me too far from home, but we do have a cemetery within bicycle range. And that cemetery has its share of surprising wonders.

Among them: 

• a member of the Romanov family who escaped from the Bolshevik revolution, Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia;


• THE Tim Horton (yes THE doughnut king!);


• and yet another amazing individual you are about to meet.

Last year I found the princess and the king, but I couldn't manage to find the person whose resting place meant the most to me.

It's completely appropriate that her resting place eluded me.

Having lived an amazing and very public life, Barbara Frum is now very much sheltered and protected. It's as if she is wary of public life, in death, and seeks to avoid attention.

It's almost poetic.

To access her tomb, first you need to find it. It's not really visible the way most graves are. In the height of summer it all but disappears in the greenery. That's because it is a modest intimate gravel rectangle completely surrounded by hedges, with a single narrow gated stone passage on one end. The headstone is not in any way visible from outside the hedged enclosure.

Even in leafless early spring, it's still hard to find.

Once you do, you find the narrow passage through the hedge guarded by a massive cast-iron gate.

There is no catch, latch, or lock. All you need is a fairly hefty push to gradually open the gate and enter Barbara Frum's presence. A final obstacle is an unadorned grey stone high curb that makes you turn right as you enter the enclosure so that at first you face the hedge, instead of the headstone.   

True to her spirit, Barbara Frum's gravesite lacks any trace of typical pomp and circumstance. Her tombstone is very bare and does its best to be inconspicous. It faces inwards, into the gravel-covered, hedge-surrounded space, doesn't face the enclosure entrance, and faces away from the cemetery's open spaces. Such humility is rarely seen in any cemetery.

Who is this Barbara Frum, you ask?

She was the soul of CBC's As it Happens. I have such fond memories of commuting in a car and listening to the most amazing news stories. Like when in the spring of 1977 there was a large hostage event in three office buildings in Washington D.C. Barbara Frum managed to have one of the hostage takers on the phone at the B'nai Brith offices, and was speaking with him. She asked the guy to hold the line, they had another person to speak to. On the other line she managed to get the Washington D.C. police chief. Have you spoken to the hostage takers, she asked. No, came the reply, we can't reach them, and we don't have time to talk to you, we have our hands full. I have them on the other line, Ms. Frum said. And that's when the negotiations began. It kind of left me speechless. No? This was not an isolated bombshell, Barbara Frum managed to do this kind of incredible in-depth reporting week in, and week out.

So here you now have a tiny slice of my present, and of Barbara Frum's present.

Finding it, and sharing it with you, was easy-ish, thanks to my trusty Brompton, presently the key ingredient in my life on two wheels.

Bookbinding challenges - Building a piercing cradle

Bookbinding is a holy endeavour.

Relax! This has absolutely nothing to do with religion at all. Not even in any remote, metaphorical way.

I say it's "holy" because once you figure out the deeply strange domain of signatures (yes there will be episodes here devoted to the magic of signatures), the next thing you must do, if you plan to make your way to a beautiful leather-bound book with gilded pages, is to punch holes in the fold of the signatures.

The thing is, of course, that the holes can't be just anywhere, ideally, they must be right in the middle of the fold crease. In addition, the position of the holes should be identical in each signature.

As I experimented with signatures, I applied what I learned from Chanel of Bitter Melon Bindery. If you tend to be nervous or anxious, even if you have no interest whatsoever in bookbinding, check out Chanel's channel (odd, I just saw that - Chanel channel). Chanel is an expert bookbinder, and also a wonderfully calming person.

I learned everything I thought I needed to know from Chanel about hole punching. Following Chanel's lesson, I made a piercing guide, and bought an awl.

I figured I was set. So I punched holes in all my test signatures as they were printed, folded, and proofread.

Then a couple of weeks ago I looked closely at my draft signatures, and saw that my holes weren't as aligned as they ought to be.

Fortunately, Dennis of Four Keys Book Arts, another very gifted bookbinder, taught me I would be well served if I had a piercing cradle. Click here to watch the lesson I learned.

Following his guidance in his YouTube video, and only using the materials I had available, I was able to craft my own piercing cradle. Since the materials I had couldn't exactly match Dennis' measurements, first I made a test model from a sheet of paper.

Since that worked, I proceeded to make an actual piercing cradle from the book board I had and some scrap leather.

My piercing cradle will absolutely essential once I print the final version of the twenty-three signatures that make up the book I am making in their proper format, on really nice paper, in colour.

There will be no room for errors.

Using the piercing cradle, the holes I punched are now quite nicely aligned.