Some people have asked "Where in the World is Joseph Moxon?". Understandably so as I first set out to produce a new edition of Moxon's Mechanick Exercises nearly a year ago. Numerous technical hills had to be overcome, some basic book conservation tasks had to be revisited, some software was not up to snuff and a wide variety of family crises served to slow the entire process down.
Needless to say, handling and imaging a book from 1703 requires quite a bit of care, planning and holding-of-your-breath. This copy has an original 18th C binding, at least from what I can see. I have no desire to rebind it. Sure, most of the spine is missing, the covers have bits and pieces of leather chipped off and there are a few loose pages. But so what? This book is pretty much the way it came to the hands of the first owner. Lopsided pages due to poor binding abound, finger prints, the remains of a shoe heel imprint on the cover, personal annotations, creases, wrinkles and so on. All of which adds to the allure of holding and reading The Real Thing.
To achieve a truly flattened image, I would have to disbind the book, press and flatten each set of pages and image them individually. That could be done, but once again I'ld have to disbind it. After viewing the results of trials under magnification, I really didn't like the quality. So the book went into a book press and sat there for three months. I checked it every now and then and relegated it to the press for some more torture. Finally, the pages had flattened as much as they wanted to be. Some wrinkling from centuries of damp is evident, but that is what a really old book looks like. Just take some dramamine before reading it.
A funny thing happened on the way to scanning. I have used Lasersoft Imaging's Silverfast scanning software for years. The latest version seemed to lack something. Greyscale images lacked definition, contrast was muddy and the page texture seemed to disappear into a granular mess. Lots of tweaking but still not up to what I wanted. Photoshop Elements 4 (Mac) and Graphic Converter did good jobs of correcting the problems, but I really prefer to produce a scan at the scanner end that contains the best possible image before I start on image manipulation through a graphics program.
I've been using an Epson 4490 which really is a great scanner. But the software, while good, was not up to Silverfast for options. Until the latest release. There is an all important parameter set that I wanted to use: 300 dpi Greyscale, original size output. What's so important about this task? If you set the output for physical dimensions, most software will adjust the dpi to suit the height and width of the object. Why? Because dpi is really an indication of physical dimensions when scanning. The way to produce a higher quality scanned image is to force the dpi to meet the physical dimensions. The latest Epson scan software does that beautifully. The older version had these settings, but the output sometimes varied.
Then comes Photoshop Elements 6 for the Mac. Sure, I have it on the PC too, but it's sort of slow and fussy. The batch functions are a breeze. Adjusting contrast became easy-peasie. Plust the output was a perfect reproduction of the original with suitably enhanced contrast to bring out text and the page texture.
Along the way to this stage, I finally realized that almost everyone who expressed interest in Moxon, as well as a variety of other titles (e.g.; Denning, Jones, Nicholson, Holtzappfel, etc), asked for a PDF of sufficient quality for printing off their home printer. That was the next glitch. Getting a PDF that is small enough for downloading yet contains sufficient quality for printing... of a 305 year old book... was a failure in the making. Let's step back a moment to discuss your typical reprint. What you see from the vast majority of reprints of classic books are actually recreations. The content has been re-typed, re-word processed or re-typeset, graphics have been properly placed for an end result that looks like the original, but is clear as a bell. Some companies do work from scanned or photographed images that have been carefully cleaned in imaging software. The end result is the same, a copy that looks like new.
I have this thing for old, stained, wrinkled, creased paper. I don't iron out the creases and wrinkles in billheads, I don't bleach out paper. I will gently erase modern smudges or remove loose surface dirt, press out particularly bad creases and mend tears that threaten the viability of a page but that is about it. A book may be pressed for a good many weeks to correct any one of a number of faults but I rarely rebind.
There is a form of reproducing incunabula (a book or page that was printed before 1501) that I like. The image, scanned or photographed, is reproduced as is, as you see it, in greyscale or color, typically with a fairly wide clear margin surrounding it. You know that you are looking at the original, warts and all. Maybe I can't afford to buy a copy, or even find a copy, but I can pretend I am reading the real thing. That is the goal of most of my reprints, PDF or hard copy.
Which brings us to the present. Over at work, we have been using a POD (Print On Demand) service to produce bound copies of lengthy reports. We have an in-house publications department, but in some cases we needed features only a full scale publishing house could provide. Aha! I've been investigating POD publishers for the past few months and find that in the past year, the quality and reliability of POD has improved considerably. What was a venture in it's infancy even a year ago is now a fully grown industry for the independant author or publisher.
And that is were I am at now. The current plan is to produce a series of books, beginning with Moxon, in paper. Hopefully there will be the option of trade paper back or hard cover, depending upon the readers preferences. I may offer a PDF version at a much lower price for those prefer a digital read. In general, prices will be kept reasonable and affordable. I'm in talks with a few POD publishers to see which best fits my requirements. In the meantime, I'm rescanning Moxon at press quality settings: higher dpi, high contrast text, background adjustment for legibility, etc. The whole will be formatted in a desk top publishing program, sent to the POD agency and, voila! Offered for sale in an eStore.
In summation, if it don't look good from the get-go, it ain't worth doin'.
Till next
Gary
from my bookshelf for a re-read. Written by Don & Anne Wing and published in 2005, the book is sub-titled "Recent Discoveries in the Tallow Chandlers and the Joiners Companies". This book spoiled me. This is how books should be written. Particularly books that cover an historical subject. From the get-go, the authors state that this is a work in progress, that the material held within the volume is the result of their personal research and that, to the best of their ability, they are relating what they have discovered and will note what questions remain unanswered. 
from my shelf and re-read that one too. It seems there is, in all liklihood, a direct connection between the early Dutch plane-makers and the British trade. There are similarities in designs... heels look the same although toes differ, wedges may or may not resemble each other, etc. The problem is, in both books there are hints but as of yet, no hard evidence has surfaced. Perhaps in some nearly forgotten archival box, on a shelf in a dimly lit British or Dutch Archives, there sits a toolmongers ledger or an invoice that sheds light on this question. 
by Wayne Franklin. Franklin, a Professor of English and American Studies at the time this book was written.
