#chiseled

First of all, handling this contraption and using the chisel is damn hard. Even lining it up straight was a total nightmare without another pair of hands. I had a carpenter show me how to sharpen the chisel on a sharpening block, but I honestly had no idea what I was doing, so it was a little hard to tell whether the chisel was sharp enough.

To my credit, I did test it out on a cheap paperback and it worked pretty well, which is why I felt emboldened to use it on my book.

Important realisations during my failed attempt:

1. Chiseling requires a really steady hand and a thick enough piece of wood to rest it on. The videos I watched gave me the impression that it was easier than trimming the text blocks with a ruler and box cutter (which I had also tried and couldn't do well), but I would say that it is only marginally easier. If the piece of wood that you rest the chisel on is thick and straight, you will get a good straight edge, but only for the first 100-200 pages, because it'll get harder and harder to cut evenly. I should have used a thicker piece of wood to rest the chisel on and gone a lot slower than I did!

2. The chisel needs to be re-sharpened during the trimming process. I was in a bit of a hurry to trim my text block because I didn't want the glue to get too dry so I just steamed ahead without sharpening the chisel again between passes. As it turns out, trimming thick text blocks (my book was 700+ pages) is not very easy, especially if the paper is on the thinner side (I used 70gsm Munken paper). If you look closely in the image above, you'll notice the little "bobbles" on the text block. These were created by the blade snagging on the paper and creating rips and swirls that were then impossible to fix and have sadly irreversibly ruined this book (I'll still bind it, but I've been kicking myself so hard for this!!!).

3. Chiseling is hard, physical labour. I underestimated how extremely physically challenging this process would be - it takes considerable stamina to chisel, and I was sweating like crazy by the end and my arms were numb. Taking breaks would be highly recommended.