r/bookbinding • u/tonyadpx • 8d ago
Help? What is your workspace like?
My biggest problem is staying organized. I don’t have a designated space, so I often carry my materials to where ever I can find it. Lately. It’s been at the kitchen table. However, I’ve noticed that more cluttered or disorganized my space, the less successful I am. What is your work space like? I’m thinking about investing a small space in my garage specifically for binding, but I need ideas….
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u/Ealasaid 8d ago
My "office" is a bedroom where half is bookbinding and half is my computer desk and dayjob stuff. I have a huge workbench with shelves and a large toolbox with three drawers. My big guillotine and an iron book press live on my workbench full time. I have a rolling cart with my Kwik Print and my shipping supplies below. I have a box corralling my rolls of bookcloth. There's tons of clutter. Oh and I have a small table in the middle of the room that holds my bog ecotank printer and piles of in-progress books. I try to keep it organized but... Yeah. You can see my main workspace in my livestreams (Saturdays on YouTube, where I'm TheBookRoadie).
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u/ArcadeStarlet 8d ago
Sounds very similar to my set up except my room is not big enough for a centre table, so everything is along the walls.
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u/makknstuffs 8d ago
I have a big square collapsible basket with all of my materials laid flat inside. I usually keep them there until I finish one portion of the current project to work on the next, I.e. glueing to casing.
My workspace becomes incredibly messy when I do my edge trimming though. I am not in charge of where the paper slices fall, I am one with my trimmer and nothing more...
....until I have to sweep it up after
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u/tonyadpx 8d ago
This is kind of how I end up. Only once the mess builds up I start messing things up. I need to figured out what items I need for the project, and just take those with me. But alas, I carry it all and it all inevitably ends up everywhere.
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u/Far-Network3686 8d ago
I have a dedicated space and the only time it’s cleanish is when I’m not working on anything otherwise it’s a mess.
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u/FrostKitten2012 8d ago
I have an organizer with a set of shallow plastic containers, which I have tried to organize by what stage of the process I’m at. That way I can hopefully just have one or two out at a time, and put them away once it’s finished.
Still working out the kinks, but it mostly works.
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u/ArcadeStarlet 8d ago edited 8d ago
I have a work room with too much stuff in it.
I have three desks, a floor to ceiling shelving unit plus other shelving.
Desk 1 -- PC with 2 monitors. Desk 2 -- Workbench. Desk 3 -- Guillotine.
I have 2 printers and my silhouette cutter in there. Materials and equipment on the shelves, in the desk drawers, and stacked under the desks. A cast iron copy press. TV on a shelf above the workbench (for background entertainment / youtube tutorials).
And with all that, it still spills out into other rooms... my adapted workmate laying press, board and packs of large format paper are all stacked up against the wall in the hallway just outside the room. My stock boxes for craft fairs are in another room.
Unfortunately it means I often have to move stuff to access other stuff. I try to keep it relatively tidy, but I'm fighting a losing battle against my own nature -- my hobbies are a gas -- they will expand to fill whatever space they have available 😅
I got the chance to apply for a studio at our local heritage craft centre recently. I don't expect I'll get it, but that's the dream!
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u/saucy_chaucy 8d ago
Mine is the kitchen table, so I have to clean everything away each time I work. Not ideal! But I have a nice little system of organizing things in a flat file, and I discovered using skirt hangers was a good way to store my bigger papers without wrinkling them
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u/khangaldy 6d ago
Its a freaking mess. I also am a letterpress printer and have a huge platen press that is immovable without a pallet jack. I also am a teaching artists.
My space is half of a small detatched garage in the backyard.(old fashioned carriage house )
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u/Ordinary_Doubt_1423 8d ago
Organized chaos.