pansa

emailing you now.

Oh man. Thanks for the offer. I'd have done this in a heartbeat, but I ordered from leathercrafttool.com yesterday. How do you like your knife?

Any recommendations on knives? I've been on the hunt hunt for a Japanese style knife for a while now, but I'm open to suggestions. I've seen a bunch on instagram, but if I can find them online they never seem to make a left handed version.

I followed him on instagram (@cmdachong) and emailed him at the address listed on his profile there. He didn't respond for a couple weeks, then I noticed he posted something and emailed him again immediately. This time he responded. He seems pretty busy, and I'm sure this time of year he will be extra slow in responding since it is the Chinese New Year holiday season and the whole country shuts down until mid Feb.

Good to know! Thanks for your help.

Thanks for the help everyone.While the Amy Rokes are beautiful and have good reviews, I've decided to go ahead and order from cmdachong since he replied to me yesterday and has such reasonable prices. I'm not interested in selling my work (nor is it up to snuff to do so just yet) so it's a hobby that is not yet paying for itself. I'll report back on my thoughts when they arrive!

seems like a good plan! I found my hard copies of a coptic tutorial but honestly when I googled it the first result is something that is arguably more clear. Not that you need it, but just in case: https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/mborhani/coptic_binding.pdf Good luck! and Take some pictures!

Curious what method you used to get in touch with him, or if you used an english to chinese translation? I've emailed him to no response... it's been about two weeks. I'm about to just order some Amy Roke irons, but his price is better and I like the way these look.

I'm a pretty amateur leather worker in terms of this site, but I am a professional bookbinder/conservator, and I just want to add that it is really important to remember the grain direction of the paper and the wood (everything needs to run parallel to the spine), otherwise you will get major warping. Depending on how many signatures you want to include, I'd consider using 1/4" board. 1/8" will warp pretty easily with leather attached to it, though I understand if it's a thin book, 1/4" can look too hefty. You'll also want to sew the text block directly to the boards, as typically glue alone won't hold up over time. I'll try to dig up a few coptic or longstitch pdfs I have floating around and upload them here when I get home from work. What do you mean "extra leather around the edges?"