Darbin Orvar

For a little over a year or so, we’ve been homeschooling (or rather unschooling) our 6 year old son. It’s been quite the adventure so far, and I from what I’ve gathered by meeting other homeschooling parents and seeing what people do online, I think we have a quite different approach. We don’t use a curriculum, and we don’t have a strict schedule. Everything is quite relaxed, yet at the same time we have rather focused lessons that are far beyond what other kids are learning in school, in terms of similar ages.

I've been using arduinos and other micro-controllers for about 10 years now, for all sorts of projects. My son is now old enough to start him on some basic programming, and teach him to understand how you can use these little computers to control all sorts of sensors and lights with just a little practice.

You know how young kids often like to know how old they are? And if they're anything like my son, just the number five or six is not good enough. He wants to know his precise age.

So we started thinking about how it would be neat to have a clock display that showed exactly how old he is all the time. And this clock would constantly be changing, because his age is never the same.

This is a blank leather journal that I’ve been making using our different bookbinding tools such as the book press, vise, plough and sewing frame. Let’s get into it! Making books in a classic way obviously takes a fair amount of time, however what you get in return is a custom book in every way: you get to pick the size, the type of paper, the cover etc…

In the course of making a book, there’s one tool you use many times throughout the process, and that is a book vise. It’s what you use to hold the paper properly while marking, cutting, rounding the spine, gluing, separating the cords and more. Now while the vise is a great tool all on its own, it also works in conjunction with another tool: the cutting plough. If you turn the vise around, there’s a groove which the plough fits into, and now you can use this tool to trim the sides of the paper nice and crisp.

The sewing frame is a really interesting tool you use in bookbinding when binding signatures (or booklets) of paper together. In many ways, it’s like a jig that enables you to hold cords or tape taught while sewing your thread around the cord and in and out of the paper. Quite the ingenious contraption! And now I have a building plan of this project: Sewing Frame Plan