Quarantine projects, Part One.

Decreased work hours, locked out of the gym, no travel, no eating out, social distancing, what to do? Well, first off more opportunity for recreational reading.  My IRL book club was one of the first losses to the pandemic. Towards the end of March I read about #TolstoyTogether. The prospect of a "virtual" bookclub seemed a pale substitute for IRL group give and take seemed kinda shaky- to boot, it was going to be on Twitter which I had avoided for, among other reasons, it being Trump's favorite media outlet. It's format, though- 15-20 pp/day and my newly expanded available time made it a- if not now, when- decision to start War and Peace.
My copy arrived (ironically?) on April 1st. By then #TT was on day 15, but thanks to the relaxed assignments was caught up by April 5th. I'm a creature of habits and the daily dose of W&P readily became part of my schedule, such as it was.
By the time the gym had to close up, the weather and longer daylight hours thankfully were making outdoor exercise not a hardship at all. We do miss the social aspects of the gym as it's our version of the pub. DW relented on having a bike trainer in the house as the newer ones don't spew out tire fragments, are compact and have a pedal feel much like a good stationary bike.

If it's raining, it's pleasant to pedal indoors with the TV on or listening to an Audible book.
Our library ladder rails serve double purpose as pull-up bars.

DW drew the limit on in-house gym equipment with the dip bars, thus that is done in the shop.

Speaking of the shop, that initially would seem as the best use of expanded non-work time. Early on the course of the pandemic, it seemed important to avoid any respiratory irritants. In that mindset I limited shop time to small projects such as this iPad handlebar holder and a waste basket to replace one the little round one I'd been using for 20-odd years; impractical now that I'm generating more paper waste as a bookbinder.

As the epidemic progressed, respiratory conditions appeared to be less of a factor for severe infection than other parameters. Since age and to some extent my profession were bigger risk factors, it seemed reasonable to increase my time in the shop. Thus yet another kitchen revision- the fourth in 25 years.

Double Fan Binding

So far, I’ve been able make a book each month and learn something new with each book made- all four of them. As making photo books is my motivation for taking up this craft, one bottleneck is printing the material for the books. Having a collection of Valentines Day cards already done made last month’s book not too bad as far as time demands. 

It would seem that there would be more time available during March given social distancing and travel restrictions. As the month passed, however, I looked for content already printed in letter sized paper and of sufficient pages per topic/event to justify making it into a book. Some of the collections were ruled out as I had punched holes in the pages so they would fit into a ringed case.

Another goal that has developed as I’ve made these books is to learn a new step or technique while still hopefully ending with a viable product. While spending/wasting time on Reddit, I came across  double fan binding as a solution for single page binding. It was not an entirely new technique.

Several years ago, I had a go at perfect binding. I enrolled for a year at  IPRC- “ a Portland, OR 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to providing people access to tools and resources for creating independently published media and artwork”. Perfect binding seemed a means to binding my photos in book format without having to learn bookbinding and IPRC promised access to the equipment needed to make soft cover books- the perfect binding machine and block trimmer.

It was not a positive experience. Their hot press machine was on the wonky side and in order to use it a staff member trained to use it needed to be present. These members were in short supply and with irregular schedules. Further, much of the staff seemed to have the artistic temperament. It seemed that I gave off the wrong pheromones. Finally perfect binding should be (and is referred to by bookbinders) as imperfect binding. 

Double fold binding as presented by Darryn Schneider of DAS fame, does not require a machine and is stronger than perfect binding. It can also be reinforced with embedded threads. Further research presented the complication of PVA not working as well with coated papers. The suggested glue was polyurethane reactive which needs to be applied with a hot gun. Since I don’t have a glue gun, I went with the PVA and a variation of the embedded thread on Darryn’s video.

The first part was the double fan glue application using PVA Jade.

Pressure applied after dble bind gluing spine edges.

Then was a series of 1/16” deep cuts parallel to the spine ¼” apart which was a deviation from his method, but voiced by him as an alternate approach. My hope was that being parallel the threads would hold the pages in a stab binding manner. The thickest nonwaxed thread I had was a nice tight fit with the shallow slots made with the saw. 

Then I re-applied the glue six times in thin layers over two days to build it up. 

The rest was as usual. No attempt at rounding the back here as the book case was ¾” thick. 

I was a bit impatient in paring the leather, the consequence being a gouge. My good luck was in being able to move the gouge and it’s fill to a spine crease where it is completely hidden!

Gouge repair below exposed left hinge groove.

 

When preparing to attach the case to the cover, much to my chagrin I found that the cover was short about an ⅛” width narrow. The inkjet paper used was more film than paper in character, so I was apprehensive whether my paring chisels and Moxon vise would be up to the task. No worries; while the material dulled the chisel, the setup served its purpose.

A week later, the binding is holding up except for the lower ½” edge of the first two pages where it becomes unglued. This is not an issue except if laying the turned page completely down. 

The middle of the block is holding up well.

Thus, I’ll have to do research on hot-glueing with PUR if double fan binding papers with a glossy finish. It might will be that cutting the grooves for the threads a little deeper will do the job.

Twenty Years of Valentines Cards Made Into a Book

Lest I lose whatever skills acquired as a newbie bookbinder, I’ve been making a book every month or so. This being February, while figuring out this year’s Valentines card for DW, I was going through the cards we’ve given each other over the years and thought binding them into a book would make an appropriate project for this month.

Also, to keep things interesting, trying something new every book. Earlier this year, I saw some books using wood covers on Reddit. Being a woodworker, it’s natural to want to combine the two crafts. Reading up on it, aside from a Persian bookbinder, there was not much on combining leather and wood for a cover. Even though it was pointed out that, before cardboard, book covers were made of wood. My initial idea was to use a solid hardwood panel and make a thin rabbett to allow the leather thickness to match the wood edge. That would save me from paring the leather, time consuming chore that it continues to be. 

A visit to the Portland wood retailers led the realization that solid wood covers either needed to be either at least ¼” thick or completely covered on both sides as gluing the end pages would promptly lead to warping. Also looking at the veneers available opened up a whole new medium for book covers. A pack of poplar dyed red caught my eye as a good Valentines theme book color.

Baltic birch plywood is sufficiently stable that I could use 1/8th inch thickness for the covers as long as I veneered both sides. This was a much more appropriate thickness for the size of the book I had in mind.

Thus materials chosen and purchased and content decided, nothing to it but to do it.

As almost all our cards were in folded format and fairly heavy paper stock, grouping them into signatures was not an option, but single sheet signature would work; a concern was that would make for a thick spine. I hoped that rounding the back would solve that and that I would be up to the task. In doing this write-up after the fact, I found the tutorial for two-on and even three- on sewing which would have helped to address this issue and would have been more appropriate. Fortunately, as will be seen, it still turned out OK.

Up to now, I had used a punching cradle to make the holes needed for sewing the signatures. That was not an option here as the cards were of different heights. Plan B was to using a saw which worked out fine. 

Darren Schneider of DAS bookbinding had a nice tutorial on half bound books with leather corners which I used for the corners and the template shown was from his video.

The leather was nearly the same thickness as the veneer which helped to keep the assembly process from being too involved. Otherwise, both  the veneer and leather would have had to be pared to avoid a bulky abutment. That may still be something I do in the future, but then the veneer would have to be finished after the leather is applied which risks staining the leather. All things considered, I’d rather not have to deal with that.

I followed DS’s suggestion of making the corners a bit narrower than the spine, but wound up bit too small for my sense of proportions.

I blame that on the spine rounding and backing adding more to that area than was planned when I did the corners. A learning point- in the future I may leave making and fitting the corners after the spine is rounded and backed.       Another learning point was that leather when wet with glue has quite a bit of malleability and capacity for movement. I was counting on that to be able to abut the leather to the veneer in a gap free manner. But the lettering on the spine moved on me a bit. At first, it seemed quite pronounce which had me thinking very dark thoughts. But on settling under pressure, the alignment became much more acceptable.
      Both DW and I were very happy with the final result.

             And she already has another project in mind for me. Gleefully tells me it does not have to be perfect and as such will make for a great practice project. There is a reason why Wabi-Sabi holds such an attraction for me.

Downtown LA 1976 Revisited

The Holidays were over and with the start of a new year, it was time to make another book. A remake of the little 1976 photo book which had germinated my interest in making books felt like the appropriate next project. Like some other college experiences, its significance in my development to adulthood was disproportionate to an assignment in an undergraduate course so very long ago. In one way it had gotten me back on track after a terrible sophomore year. The photography course I had signed up for at Pomona College was taught by Robert Heinecken and up until the final project, I was not doing well- had the photographic equivalent of writer's block. That little book, rudimentary as it was book-wise, rescued me from a C minus to a B. The course overall though, convinced me that reliance on creativity/inspiration- what have you, was not conductive to an emotionally stable life.

Anyhow, as alluded in earlier posts on my bookbinding forays, the decades had done much wear and tear to it.

I could not find the negatives, but scanning the prints yielded surprisingly good results. As I’m still in the much to learn stage- this is my third bookbinding effort- I used matte photo printing paper. While matte surfaced paper seems the most “book-paper-page like”, there is concern regarding the delicacy of the coating and tendency of the ink to bleed onto the opposing page. So, let’s use it and see what happens. I had some Epson Hot Press Natural that had not seen use for years but was short two sheets for what was needed for the book. Rather than wait for a closer matching paper to come in the mail, impatient person that I am, I made do with another matte paper.

I had used glue-on leather spine titles on my first two books in the hope that I’d be happy with that. I had first considered using a Sharpie, but my handwriting is lousy and it just seemed wrong to do that to a handmade book. I then googled companies that could print the title for me, but no one in a 70 mile radius was interested in a single use order. I looked at hot stamping machines as Cri-cut seemed too amateurish. The Kwikprint  machines if on eBay were expensive to start with, and with the need for type, ribbon and shipping, not to mention the “purchase-as-is” clause, were too expensive for the uncertainty and risk involved.  The cost of purchasing the machines and accessiories new was not justifiable, regardless of my OCD level.

For the next month, I did check in periodically on Craigslist and eBay, hoping for something used and nearby. Early this month, there was a Craigslist ad for a Kwikprint plus accessories in Vancouver WA, a hour away from me. One-stop shopping, I had everything I needed to make a book with a title printed, not stuck on, the spine and at a price I could sorta justify.

The learning curve was not too bad and took a few practice stamps with scrap leather to figure out how to make guides for proper placement, along with force and length of pressing. Just in case, I had cut the leather a little larger than necessary; Nori paste allowed for a very slight reposition of the spine backing.  The title being in the desired position, the cover was trimmed to size, the edges were pared and the cover bonded. Gluing the leather has gotten easier.

The finished project.

A close up of the title.

Other advances were improved corners.

Here is a video of the content.
https://imgur.com/cgUayx1

Bookbinding: Avoiding the Sophomore Jinx

There were quite a quite a few anxious moments and opportunities for self-criticism in making thelll first book. When going through all the boo-boo’s with DW, she commented- “I hope you aren’t going to point all that out to everyone you show it to”. This is a reflection of her longstanding exposure to and irritaton with that aspect of my behavior. Mind you, overall I considered myself quite pleased with how it turned out, but wondered if it was a case of beginners’ luck. With all that,  I was chomping at the bit to have another go at it. 

By stage, the learning points were:

Layout- give wider margins. It looks better and provides more room for trimming if steps further along the way require it.

End pages- The paper chosen has a wonderful feel, color and pattern, but it is delicate and will use sturdier paper for future projects 

Glue- This part generates the most anxiety. I’m grateful for Nori paste as it works well with leather binding and allows for repositioning- essential feature at my level. PVA thick glue is recommended for rounding the spine, but I had not been able to find it. 

Cover inside corners-  A clean well done leather corner requires thinly pared leather, sufficient material to cover the board corners yet not have so much overlap as to be bulky and the excess to be cut off at a 45 degree angle. and The leather cover for the most part wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I managed to avoid gouging the skived portion.  Thanks to experience sharpening chisels and knives, frequent sharpening compensated for inexperience in paring leather.

It is a messy activity that will best be done in the shop where leather shavings can coexist with sawdust rather than my office/work area in the house.

Rounding the back. On the first book, I waited too long to round at the PVA nonthick glue had already set. This time I started to shape the back while the glue was still sticky to the touch. Thanks to a YouTube video, the leather to board glue up went smoother with the case spine up on the vise.

I made sure to have a 45 degree cut and sufficient pared material past the corner tip with the resulting improved inside of the cover.

This went better on the second book but still suboptimal. While the rounding was more even and symmetrical, the lateral mushrooming was not achieved.

Whether I did not use the right glue (PVA thick is specified in the instructional guides consulted, but I could not find), did not pound the lateral pages sufficiently (I don’t have a sufficient feel for what is excessive force and stopped when it seemed I was venturing in greatest enemy of good is better territory) or it’s due to the paper (I get the feeling this is the real culprit- double sided luster finish material is not that flexible. As the ribbons were correctly placed and outer edges of the book and the angled corners more accurate, now the spine inlay joint could be well defined and I could make use of the brass edged boards made for this step.

Making inlays for the ribbon were made too deep on the second book,

Fortunately, DW and I decided we like the look, so might do that on purpose in future books.

As I did not have to re-shape the block, the second book is  ⅜ inch taller and 3/16ths inch wider. The image margins are much better and are square.

I’m lucky that the first book wasn’t a loss. The second book is much more presentable; dare say, I’m pretty happy with it.

I’d love to sink my teeth into another book, but the Holiday season is just about upon us. So a third book will have to wait until next year.

Bookbinding Presses

As previously noted, one of the bonuses of taking up bookbinding is that many of the tools/equipment can be though of as woodworking projects. Some are pretty simple, like the sewing stands and awl punching cradles. Others can take on a more complex design. The bookbinding press became complicated because I wanted to be able to generate as much pressure as possible with the materials and equipment available for me to work with. An all wood design might have been prettier, but the pressure generating components would have to be too bulky for the device to be both attractive and effective. 

The Craft of Bookbinding/M.Bannister showed a design that utilized wood materials along with steel piping and fixtures which I used as the starting point for my design. 

The most challenging part of the design would be anchoring the pipes to generate pressure without having to use floor mounts as that would take away working space from the plates. The wood blocks need to be flat, stable and strong. Thus Bannister recommended  either plywood glued together or maple to a 1.75 inch thickness. Crosscut in Portland the best selection in my area and will at times have remnants at really good prices.  I lucked out at an oak countertop that would provide sufficient material two presses. 

Why two presses? Well, I was using inkjet paper in rolls for my book sheets and was having a hard time keeping the sheets flat once cut into in this project 10 x 20 inch sheets. For future projects I wanted the option of using 12 x 24 inch sheets. Thus the dimensions for the larger press. The smaller one could be of sufficient size to accommodate a 12 x 12 inch book, which at this point, is the largest book I can see myself making. 

I spent some time at Home Depot playing with the fittings and came up with a combination that would serve my purposes.

The breadboard end design was both for looks and to help against warping, although countertop hardwood panels are of quarter sawn and glue-lam construction for the required dimensional stability in kitchen countertop use.

At the time I started this, it seemed like a weekend or two project. In reality though just by surface area and linear feet of bread-boarding, the wood block area amounted to a small table or workbench. The initial design called for holes for the pipes to as snug in diameter to provide a guide for the top panel to stay true to the base while being able to slide up and down freely. But- the pipe hardware is made to looser tolerances so holes had to be widened and the pipe assembly secured in a parallel and perpendicular manner.

Some improvising was needed to support the large and heavy sandwich boards to they could be kept aligned while drilling the holes.

Then for the jig to be held in at times an awkward manner to allow for marking and adjustment for the device to work as intended

. 

Finally, I needed to take the fittings that hold the pipes on the underside to my friendly metal worker to cut off ¼ inch to keep from extruding below the underside of the base.

Note that the support for the screws on the larger vise have reinforcements on the side. This was to address an error in grain orientation- the pressure of the screw was directed parallel rather than perpendicular to the grain. Rather than start all over, I capped the sides with purpleheart glued to to endgrain and reinforced with long screw crossing underneath the pipes. The mechanism thereafter able to withstand as much torque as I can apply to the screw handles. The finished product, while not as ornamental as an antique all metal vise, is just as effective. In the case of the larger vise, it has much more work surface than the great majority of vises available. The cost of materials is a fraction of what two large metal vises go for. And time spent on construction, assembly and finish- well, that entertainment.

Adventures in Bookbinding

LEICA AKADEMIE WORKSHOPS

The photography book remains the foremost delivery system of a photographer’s vision.

In the book the sum equals more than the parts. In the world of photography all the leading practitioners have made their work and their names known by way of a major publication. For many serious photographers, however, the book is a goal difficult to realize. Often the technical steps in making a book remain a mystery

Ralph (Gibson) strongly believes that these are the golden years of the photography book. This workshop is designed to help you explore the process with guidance from a true master of the craft.

From e-brochure for BookMaking Workshop-  Ralph Gibson

Book making, specifically photo books, has long been an interest. My first foray in this format was in 1976 for an undergraduate photography course. RC coated paper glued together,  plastic comb bound and with vinyl; covers, it survives minus the binding and with the prints peeling apart. 

Over the years, prints have gone into  shoe-sized boxes (4x6’s printed by drug stores), printing paper boxes (during my chemical darkroom days), and various types of binders using plastic sleeves. This is how most folks GenX and older seem to go about it. The digital age made all that stuff disappear into phones and hard drives. This is a preamble to how all these methods pale in comparison to a physical print let alone  a photo book. Over the years, I’ve built up a small collection of photography books (don’t have any Ralph Gibson ones) and thought about how cool it could be to put one together.

Well, up until a few years ago, a case bound, custom printed book was not an option for most of us. 

Then came Apple, Shutterfly etc with different quality and price levels but with an unappealing  price to quality ratio. Adding to make that not a viable option for me is that I just like making my own prints. As for digital print technology, while it became acceptable around 2006, it still left something to be desired.  Epson came out with the P800 in 2015. With that generation of printers, together with Imageprint, a RIP (raster imaging processing) software that runs the printer, digital color printing surpassed analog and can compete with B&W chemical printing. Rolls of double sided paper make printing long sheets which can be folded and organized into signatures, if not easy, certainly doable. Since then, I’ve been sufficiently happy with the quality of digital printing to ideate more and more about printing the content for a photo book. So nothing to it but to do it, right?

Well, first like any boomer gen college graduate,  I read up on it- bought some books.For all of the ills brought about the digital age, YouTube videos can be way helpful once one sifts through all the content of widely varying quality out there.

The Incidental Bookbinder

Bookbinding newbies are generally advised to use blank copy paper to make the signatures that form the book’s content, then make the book.  Going through all that to wind up with a blank book was not my idea of a good time. As alluded to in the preamble, the motivation is more in the content of the book, then as an exercise in printing, sequencing, layout, double page spreads rather than the book as an object of art and craft in itself.  Choosing last year’s summer vacation photos as the content gave me the opportunity to exercise all the above while still not being so important that the inevitable mistakes would result in a total loss. Thing is, we took a lot of photos. To place in perspective, Mr Gibson’s 3 day workshop leads to a 16 page signature book dummy which then gets printed and bound by Gibson’s company.  I wound up with 18 signatures which were separated into 2 volumes. Plenty of practice material for folding and sewing.  Culling through the files, doing the post processing from RAW to TIFF of the proper file size and sequencing them chronologically to tell a story was a time consuming task necessary for but only preliminary to making a book. 

Once I had a chronologic sequence and TIFF’s with the desired resolution, the next step was sequencing them in sheets such that 4 sheets can be made into a 16 page signature. Being a complete novice, I could not keep the sequencing in my head.  Workflow was to print a collage of 3x5’s on an A2 sheet, cut into individual photos, tape onto letter sized paper, number 1-16.

A mini loose leaf 16 page picture book dummy (pun there?) was used as a guide  for printing the sheets.

Even, then there were some printed in reverse sequence or upside down. Only a  few and those were used to make the 3x5’s.

Bookbinding as a Woodworking Activity 

As an English chap put it, most of my hobbies have a gearhead component. Fueling my enthusiasm for bookbinding was- I get to make jigs. My intro to woodworking (as opposed to carpentry) came through picture frames  Bookmaking in turn provided an opportunity to generate “bespoke equipment”. Making the jigs allowed me to move the process forward while staying in my comfort zone and procrastinating a bit re actually making a book.

While engaging in new endeavors, unanticipated complications invariably pop up. The topic of grain direction came up very quickly in reading up on making signatures. The inkpress rolls purchased for making the printed pages are economical and of good if not great quality; not as good as baryta or the best matte paper, but less easily damaged than matte surfaces and baryta does not come double-sided. Grain direction is not specified. It has a pronounced curl to it which overrides whatever grain direction it has, Given the luster coating on both sides I’m hoping it’s pretty dimensionally stable. We’ll find out in 15 years or so. An  immediate problem was keeping it from curling as least while going through the printer. Thus the following jigs- the cylinder to begin reversing the curl,

and the rectangular press to keep it under pressure- were made as putting a bunch of books on top of the pages was annoying my organized and tidy spouse.

The smaller book press was put to use to help keep the signatures flat  while awaiting the next step.

The book presses were a challenging but rewarding process. The all metal metal ones available at Talas and on eBay are pretty but expensive and the wooden ones unappealing.  The design was guided by remnant countertop  piece found at CrossCut lumber in Portland and the white maple was made of  leftovers from prior project. The screws were ordered from McMasterCarr. The rest came from the Home Depot pipe section with 8 pieces of pipe fittings requiring alteration by my friendly local machinist.

Finally, Making a Book

Folding 70 some sheets of double coated inkjet printing paper consistently was facilitated by a scoring jig.

I started off with teflon folders which did not work to my satisfaction, Switching over to bone folders produced better results

A sewing punching cradle helped this newbie keep the guide holes square and uniform.

The sewing stand was the first jig I made for bookbinding.

Thus the metal posts. I did not feel like springing for a wood tap and die jig along with the learning curve required.

Said tap and die threader kit did wind up being purchased for the backing board jig as the screws seemed necessary to hold the case at the desired position for gluing then rounding the back.

I had been advised to avoid  rounding the back as it is a difficult procedure, but I went ahead with it. Learning points: I waited too long for the glue to set before molding and as a result needing more force to mold to a sorta mushroom shape. This in turn resulted in the 1 inch wood screws not being able to keep the block in place.

I had anticipated that might happen as the backing boards have a lip to be able to sit in a Moxon vise, This resulted in a workspace change from my office/digital printing area to my workshop. 

This was just as well, as the remaining steps involved generating leather and paper waste inside the house, which would have not endeared me to DW.  My workshop Moxon vise had been previously tested on a catalog to confirm that it could work for ploughing the case.

The setup worked well in the actual ploughing of the case, although the chisel needed to be sharpened once as the coating of the paper seemed to dull the chisel. Before ploughing:

And partway through:

For all the attractiveness of leather bound books, I don’t think we have a single one in our home up to now. It stands then, if I’m going to go through all this trouble, my first book might as well have a leather cover. Ideation progressed to plan when my sister and brother in law, who have a leather goods business, asked us to pick up some hides in Napa while staying overnight in St Helena en route to visit LA.. The prices were more reasonable than the bookbinding supply stores and there was the added benefit of in person inspection. When talking about the project with Soo and Roddy, they kindly let us have a number or hides for practice; many of them  large enough to use for future covers. It took a few hours of practice to get sufficiently comfortable with the tools and material to  prepare my first cover. Much to my relief,  the paring was adequate.  I had also done a practice glue up which went well thanks to advice from the owner of The Accidental Bookbinder. It’s noteworthy and fortunate that the only retail bookbinding store on the West Coast is only 40 miles away. Patricia was very patient and informative, and her recommendation to use Nori paste for the leather which she had in stock along with a few other things I needed was worth the trip.

While the case ploughing and leather paring had gone well, when laying the book out in I found that the non-pared width extender 3/16th’s past the lateral edge of the cover boards. Lesson: I had painstakingly done the counter-sinking and slots for the binding ribbons. But I did not maintain the  1/4th inch gap between the spine and the cover boards the instructions called for.

This resulted in one of the inside end pages bunching up where the body meets the inside cover. No photo, but take my word- it looked ugly. I sliced off the offending area and matched it with leftover paper.

Once that was done, I needed to repair an even worse defect- one of the covers was uneven with no overhand over the block!

I needed to re-plough the lateral side of the block to even it up and have the covers symmetrical A little repair work and much to my relief, I had a book of acceptable quality for its function.

It still needs a title on the spine for ready identification, as I’m hoping it will be the first of many. I’m exploring options. Lettering and tooling covers is a whole story I haven’t even started on. What I’ve done so far has made me a firm convert to Bookbinding as a fulfilling activity in and of itself. DW and her sister are already talking of making books themselves.

Our twentieth wedding anniversary was last year. We still don’t have a wedding album. That is one intermediate range goal once I feel sufficiently competent to do it right.