Then I turned the board on end and marked the vertical offset of one hole from the end. I like to think it works better wooworking a tub. My bbinding woodworking plans book binding press mac the rest to put under kitchen cutting boards. It's nice to have a "grinding lathe" for woodworking. It was much easier to make because the holes were in the travel range of my little mill. The platen was made by gluing two boards face to face.

This post first appeared on our sister site — Queen Bee of Honey Dos! Of course, being a typical DIYer, I decided to make one myself. So, if you want to be able to create beautiful books yourself, I can show you how to make a bookbinding press for just pennies on the dollar.

To begin, take the two pieces of MDF and clamp them together. Make sure that they are aligned perfectly and are held tightly. Repeat for the remaining corners. Next, you need to choose a drill bit that is the same size as the bolts that you are going to use. You want the drill to be as close to exact as possible.

If the holes are too loose, the press will shift when being tightened down. If the holes are too tight, you will have a difficult time getting the bolt through. Next, drill four holes all the way through both boards at each of the corner cross marks. Try to get the holes centered on the cross marks. The more precise the build, the more evenly the pressure will be. After the holes have been drilled out, insert the bolts through the washers, and then through the four holes.

Flip the boards over and attach the wing nuts to the bolts. The press can be kept flat during bookmaking, or it can rest on any of its sides. I find that turning it on its side helps when working on bindings.

I then lay the press flat during the drying process. But, more importantly, is the technique for applying pressure. Uneven pressure can cause lop-sided results. I cross cut 4 identical pieces of maple. These were squared up and made parallel with the jointer and planer. The next problem was to drill the holes for the guide rods in exactly the same place.

It's hard to mark on wood with high accuracy. And the distance between the holes was larger than the table travel of my milling machine.

So I had to layout the holes with a height gage and scriber. To make clean lines, I taped scraps of brass shim stock to each end of the boards. With a board laying on its long side, I scribed a line to mark the center line at both ends. Then I turned the board on end and marked the vertical offset of one hole from the end. Using the same orientation, I offset the height gage and scribed the line for the other hole.

I clamped each board to the mill on parallels and found the crossed lines using the centering microscope. The boring head ensures that the holes are round and have parallel sides. It is also finely adjustable so the holes will be a close sliding fit for the dowels.

The holes for the outer ends are bored for threaded fasteners. The holes for the platen are bored larger to fit the guide rods. It would have been a lot easier if I could have stacked two boards face to face.

Then I could have bored the holes two at a time. But I didn't have a boring bar long enough to pass through two at once. If you have a Bridgeport or some other full sized mill, this whole process would be very easy: You could bore two at a time and simply crank in the distance between the holes.

I was constrained by the small size of my my machine. This step was difficult because the Beall wood threader can't cut threads up to a shoulder. In fact, it requires that a full two inches remain unthreaded inside the plastic guide bushing.

Because of this, I couldn't simply thread the ends of the guide rods because the shoulder on the rod needed to be closer to the threads. To deal with this, I had to make short plugs with threaded ends and glue them into the guide rods. Using thicker boards would eliminate this complexity.

It's nice to have a "grinding lathe" for woodworking. I'd sure hate to do this with the Hardinge. The wooden nuts are easy to make. The Beall kit comes with a plastic template for drawing all sizes.

I drew 4 outlines using the template and bored the holes with a Forstner bit. Then I bandsawed around the outline and finished the sides on a belt sander. You may ask yourself, "Self, why did he bother with those nuts? Why not just glue the press together? The platen was made by gluing two boards face to face. I made it double thickness so it wouldn't bind when sliding on the guide rods.

A double thickness also distributes the force from the press screw more evenly. I put in the guide rods to align the holes and then installed two temporary wood screws near each end.. After removed the guide rods and the screws, I glued the boards together and reinstalled the screws along with several iron clamps. Using alaphatic glue, clamping time was about an hour.

It's best to remove the clamps ASAP so you can scrape off the excess glue before it gets rock hard. The press screw was made by threading a 1. One one end, the threads are turned off, leaving about 1. One end of the press frame is bored and tapped in the center to fit the screw. One end of the platen is bored to make a close fit for the turned-down end of the screw.

These dowels also pass through a groove cut into the press screw. The dowels are a press fit in their holes. There is a tricky detail here: The groove in the screw and the holes in the platen must be positioned so the end of the screw will press on the bottom of the hole when tightening the press, rather than on the dowels.

To get this right, I first turned down the end of the screw to fit the hole in the platen. Then I drilled the dowel holes so they would intersect the edges of the screw. This marked the screw with two round cavities. I put the screw in the lathe and turned the groove to remove these cavities and then extended the groove a little bit away from the pushing end.

Midway though the project, I also located Timothy Moore's bookbinding tools. He has such a great idea for eliminating the round guide rods that I'm totally disgusted that I didn't think of it first. His tools are both beautiful and reasonably priced. I expect he can make them without machine tools. And so could you. This is the paper trimming plane that goes with the laying press. It was much easier to make because the holes were in the travel range of my little mill.

There was no need to fuss around with optics. I did a rough layout with a ruler and pencil. Next, I drilled the holes undersize with a big Forstner bit. Finally, I used the mill in horizontal mode with a boring head to finish. I just read about this nifty plough made with a circular blade. It seemed like a good idea, so I started looking for a suitable blade. Unlike the design described above, I decided not to have the blade rub directly on the press rail.

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