Tour Stop 9: The Gluer
Operating the gluer (or the ‘Perfect Binder’) is typically a two-person operation. Everyone, however, partakes of its particular odour and mind-expanding properties. The glue, which comes in bags of Chiclet-like solids, is poured into a pot that heats it to a temperature of 300 ºF. (Despite its former use as a literal coach house, chp has never used the once commonplace horse-hoof glue.) The procedure: one person feeds the collated book, jogging it into place in a metal clamp; a button is pressed and the clamp glides along a sawblade that ‘grinds’ the spine of the book so that the glue adheres better; the book continues, hot glue sticking to its rough edge; the pages are then ‘nipped’ into a cover that hydraulically embraces them and then the finished book is caught by the second operator. Again, each step is crucial: the pages must be jogged correctly, the glue the right temperature and its amount precise. At top speed, two people can glue about 400 books an hour.
Nick Drumbolis, the irascible proprietor of Letters bookshop, covert author of God’s Wand and an intermittent CHP gluer, assembled the vast collection of Coach House ephemera now at the National Library.
