Finishing - Conventional

The Magnapak system with 42 positions being installed at the Tribune Direct facility will support selective packaging of the company’s total market coverage (TMC) product and several other products for its growing list of newspaper packaging customers.

To celebrate, Technifold USA is sponsoring an essay contest, entitled “Why I Should Win the 60,000th Tri-Creaser Contest.” The winner gets two Fast Fit Tri-Creasers for the folding or scoring machine of their choice. The Tri-Creaser is a patented rotary creasing device that helps binderies and finishing departments boost productivity.

If you print, finish, collect or design Transpromo pieces, or if you know of a good resource for Transpromotional mail, I’d like to hear from you. I see tremendous potential in researching the different format opportunities and sharing them with the industry.

Acquiring a Bobst Novacut 106 diecutter for paper and/or board products serves a dual purpose of strengthening CFP’s operations and setting a course for future growth, said Greg Orlando, company president. “It immediately supports our current customer base and gives us total control of the production process and turnaround times, therefore eliminating our reliance on outsourcing work to third parties.”

Deep within the warehouse-like building that is home to the Government Printing Office lies an artist. His medium is paper, his task both poetic and prosaic. Bookbinder Peter James practices the ancient task of marbling paper, which beautifies book edges while helping to preserve the pages.

In proper Dickensian or Hardyesque fashion, James began his bookbinding apprenticeship at 15, when he went to work in a loose-leaf and library bindery. While completing his apprenticeship, he also studied at the London College of Printing, where he learned how to make a book from start to finish.

“Just producing my first small book, I

The Binding Industries Association is pleased to announce that entries are now being accepted for the 2012 Product of Excellence Awards. This contest recognizes outstanding craftsmanship in the binding, graphic finishing, and custom loose-leaf manufacturing industry.

The great Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson bound this lavishly gilt apple green morocco masterpiece of art, craft, taste and restrained splendor with his own hands. A key work in the history of bookbinding—this is a superstar binding in all ways—it is being offered for $65,000.

This is an important, early specimen of the work of Cobden-Sanderson, the central figure in the history of English bookbinding and the father of modern binding. Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922) did not produce many bindings with his own hands, but he did nothing short of change the entire course of bookbinding in England.

Its covers are diapered in gilt

Instead of seeing a gaggle of tire kickers, the printers and trade finishers who perused McCormick Place South during Graph Expo 2011 had more sober intentions. There is clearly pent-up demand in the marketplace, particularly for finishing equipment.

Kindles and iPads have a lot of advantages—but they still can’t duplicate paper cutouts. Here’s a roundup of impossible-to-digitize reading. For all their wonder and promise, one crucial component of the joy of reading still eludes the publishing platforms of the future: holding a beautifully bound, meticulously designed, thoughtfully crafted tome in your two hands.

Hardly does that tactile delight get more intense than with a magnificent die-cut book. (Die-cutting is a process using a steel die to cut away sections of a page.) Here are five old-timey treasures that will make you swoon in rediscovered awe of the analog.

The blend of old and new coexist at B&J Book Bindery, tucked into a nondescript, glass-fronted, red-brick building at 108 S.W. Third St. Inside might be one of downtown Corvallis’ (Oregon) best-kept secrets, a place to take a break from the 21st century.

Nobody works the guillotine except Susan Stogsdill. She spins the big black enamel-painted wheel that raises the thick iron cutting bar. A few adjustments tamp a thick pad of paper into place. She pulls back a lever, and that lowers the cutting blade, which evenly cleaves the paper into two tidy stacks.