Sharpness test of my paring knife!

After I cut myself real bad the other day, I became curious about how sharp my paring steel was. Here's my "hair cutting test". - It's a good way to know whether your blade is dull or not. I don't think my steel is sharp enough to call "razor sharp", but I think it is within the category of "Lethal! Watch Out!" as it does cut the hair at the moment the blade touches the hair without any force. Well, I'll make an official sharpening knife/paring leather video in the future as requested by some of you. (This video is unlisted on Youtube.)

Yikes! Cut to the Bone !

So, without looking, I grabbed the wrong paring knife that was larger than the one I intended to use, and my sense of distance between the hand and the blade wasn't correct when I started using it, resulting the tip of the blade to slice my finger all the way to the bone... I might need to stitch it, but right now, I have to work. The blood keeps on gashing out like a fountain, so in order to keep working, I sealed the wound with layers of band aids and masking tapes and tin foil! (You see, it's on the middle finger, and you can imagine I'm having fun with it. *grin*) Well, although rare, injuries do happen in a bookbindery, and it's usually a burn or cut fingers, but this is the worst cut I've had since I stated working here. As for a burn, I remember one intern who was branded a word on her upper arm by a hot stamping machine! I don't remember what word it was, but I know it wasn't a cool word to be permanently branded on the arm. I hope it wasn't someone's name or anything! Yikes!

Bookbinding 101 Prior to Case Making

Because each of my videos is an individual tutorial of a particular section of bookbinding, some of you might have wondered how they actually line up in order of the process. So, I made the first part of this video to be a brief summary of the videos I've so far created , and gathered them in order. Each short clip is extracted from the name of the video mentioned on top of the each screen. You can find those videos on my channel.

The latter part of this video shows a sewn book's last preparation for case making. A simple task, but it must be done. As for the medieval binding information at the end, I hope you don't put too much thought into it. I just added the rough information there strictly because I showed how to sew Sewn-on cord (medieval sewing) on one of my videos, and I thought the viewers would wonder how it's bound to be a book. It has nothing to do with the next video I'm to make, "basic case making".

The bottom line is, I'm making videos that I’ve named "Bookbinding 101" at this moment, and I don't know how far I can or will go as far as the advancement is concerned. There is only so much I can do in a brief video clip tutorial on YouTube. But let's wait and see what happens. 

NOTE: You do need a backing hammer to back sewn-on cord spine.

I hope this video is useful for some people... Ah,, for some unknown reason, YouTube gave me a nasty trouble with uploading this clip. (!!?) - every time it got to the 95% complete at processing stage after it successfully uploaded the video, it just got stuck there for hours!? and I had to re-upload this again and again.... Boy, I tell you..... it drained the sane sense out of me!

Anyway, you adorable pumpkins in LOVE!!, Please have a wonderful Valentine's Day!! And those of you didn't get a rose...... here are the~****roses<3****~from thankful M.H.R. to you who decided to visit my humble blog.