Shopsmith Forums

My daughter has many hobbies and often has me make her tools/equipment for presents.

This year she has started doing bookbinding, and for Christmas she asked me to make her a punching cradle. The signatures of pages are laid in the trough and an awl is used to punch holes along the fold, (there is a small gap at the bottom of the "V", this makes it easier to sew them together.
I don't know what kind of wood it is, (maybe cherry?), but it was a joy to work with an I really like how it turned out.

If I get time I'll try to make some other pieces of bookbinding equipment to go with it.

nice

Way to go! I love seeing lost art functional tools being replicated and continued.

About a month ago I made a guide to go with the punching cradle, to make it easy to space the holes evenly.
To drill the holes I set the table at 45° so the fence acts as a v block, and I made a spacing jig with some aluminum angle and a broken drill bit for a pin. I still had to center punch the hole locations or the bit would wander.
Today when I went to visit, my daughter gave me a small notebook that she had made with the aid of the punching cradle. (the coin is a quarter, for scale)

Clever idea to make the punching guide. When making something for the first time, it can be really productive to spend a lot of preliminary time plannning before the actual build of the project. I find that I spend more time planning my projects in my head than I actually spend making them. The more time I take planning, the happier I am with the finished job.
With that punching guide, you now have a template to make more of them if you need.