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Rant: Saw a guy at the Midwest Book Arts Fair last year using a laser cutter for all his covers. Everyone was raving, but I think it's a shortcut that kills the craft.
He was making these intricate geometric patterns on bookcloth, and the crowd loved it. Said it saved him 15 hours a week. I asked him if he ever hand-tools anything anymore, and he just shrugged. It made me realize we're losing the hand skills. My shop in Toledo still does everything with a finishing press and brass tools. It's slower, but the book feels different. Am I the only one who thinks the 'maker' tech is pushing out the actual making?
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spencer7076mo ago
Honestly that laser work sounds cool as hell. Saving 15 hours a week means he can make more books for people to actually buy and read. Tools change, that's just progress.
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xena_taylor646mo ago
Saving 15 hours a week sounds good until you think about what's in those hours. That's the time where you learn how the material behaves, where you fix your own mistakes, and where the craft actually lives. The laser just follows a file, it doesn't build any skill for when the machine breaks. We're not just making products, we're supposed to be makers. Outsourcing the hard part to a computer seems to miss the point entirely.
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