We visited a rubber stamp carver whose workbench fits on a windowsill. The footage was too dark, so the clip below is a placeholder.
We met at the back table of a print night, where they were trimming a stack of covers with a paper cutter that should probably be retired. The conversation started there and moved to a café when the shop closed.
The recording ran for almost two hours. What follows is edited for length and for the parts where we both got distracted by the café's very good cat.
A note on paper: we buy recycled 80gsm by the box and it runs through every machine we own. Heavier stock is lovely for covers, but it will jam the old copier if you try to feed it more than ten sheets at a time.
If something here doesn't work for you, write in. Half of our how-tos have been corrected by readers, and the corrections are always better than the original.
We keep a guest book by the door. Some people write their name, some write a poem, and one person drew the entire floor plan of the shop from memory. It is the best zine we have never printed.
If you are reading this at the collective, the good scissors are in the drawer marked "do not take the good scissors". Please do not take the good scissors.
Kit Moreno
Thank you for writing this down. It’s the kind of thing people only ever explain in person.
Marcus Yoon
Please send a copy when it is done!
Jonah Mbeki
Sharing this with the zine club at school. They are going to love it.
Mara KesslerAuthor
Seconded. A workshop would be brilliant.
Aurelie Fontaine
Is there a way to do this with legal-size paper? That’s all our copier takes.
Lou Ferreira
I laughed out loud at the part about the good scissors.
Hana Sato
Love this. Any chance of a workshop on it at the next print night?
Lou Ferreira
The photos are great. Is that the laundromat on Elm?
Marcus Yoon
Saved this to print out, which feels like the right way to save it.