The Bindery

This is the final installment of pictures of my workplace. Tonight we are in the bindery.

When a job has been printed, the stacks of finished sheets are wheeled out to the bindery to be folded into books and magazines. There are literally hundreds of different ways to lay individual pages out on a printed sheet, and the binders have to know how they all fold up. Books can be saddle stitch, wiro bound, Canadian bound, burst bound, perfect bound, etc, etc. The list goes on.

The bindery is pretty hands on. The stacks of printed sheets are often first trimmed on the guillotine, and then the binding machines will transform a flat sheet of paper into a folded and readable book. Books are usually done in sections depending on how many pages they are. The stitching machine will marry up the sections, drop the cover over the top, staple it all together and trim off the edges. After that you have a magazine.

If you don?t mind backache and paper cuts then this is the job for you.

In the photo fron the top left: Stacks of printed sheets, the folding machine, Shane sorting and stacking, stacks of folded sheets awaiting stitching.

In other news I went to my Father-in-Law today to drop off some things. I decided to take my bike because the weather is spot on for a bit of cruising. Then, on the way home, BANG, something in the engine let go and proceeded to pinball around inside the crankcase. Of course I stopped and had to get a friend to pick the bike and I up. So that was a good start to the end of the week and the beginning of the weekend. I will have a look at it tomorrow and see if I can be bothered stripping down the engine and doing another rebuild. Last time it was just the top end. This time it will be the whole thing. I am going to take the magneto cover off and see if it is just a case of a loose nut bouncing around in there. I have a feeling that will be unlikely though. It's a bit more terminal...

My favourite blips for the day:
This one reminds me of a Blondie album cover, not sure which one though.
And this shows that the blip is working like clockwork....i think.