of an arming or blocking press. The
block is attached to the movable plate of the press called the
"platen." To do this some stout brown paper is first glued to the
platen, and the block glued to this, and the platen fixed in its place
at the bottom of the heating-box. In blocking arms on a number of
books of different sizes, some nice adjustment of the movable bed is
needed to get the blocks to fall in exactly the right place.

For blocking, one coat of glaire will be enough for most leathers. The
gold is laid on as for hand tooling. The block should be brought down
and up again fairly sharply. The heat needed is about the same as for
hand tooling.

CHAPTER XVI

Designing for Gold-Tooled Decoration

DESIGNING TOOLS

For gold tooling, such tools as gouges, dots, pieces of straight line,
and fillets are to be had ready-made at most dealers. Other tools are
best designed and cut to order. At first only a few simple forms will
be needed, such as one or two flowers of different sizes, and one or
two sets of leaves (see fig. 100).

[Illustration: FIG. 100 (reduced)]

In designing tools, it must be borne in mind that they may appear on
the book many times repeated, and so must be simple in outline and
much conventionalised. A more or less naturalistic drawing of a
flower, showing the natural irregularities, may look charming, but if
a tool is cut from it, any marked irregularity becomes extremely
annoying when repeated several times on a cover. So with leaves,
unless they are perfectly symmetrical, there should be three of each
shape cut, two curving in different directions, and the third quite
straight (see fig. 101). To have only one leaf, and to have that
curved, produces very restless patterns. The essence of gold-tool
design, is that patterns are made up of repeats of impressions of
tools, and that being so, the tools must be so designed that they will
repeat pleasantly, and in practice it will be found that any but
simple forms will become aggressive in repetition.

[Illustration: FIG. 101.]

Designs for tools should be made out with Indian ink on white paper,
and they may be larger than the size of the required tool. The
tool-cutter will reduce any drawing to any desired size, and will,
from one drawing, cut any number of tools of different sizes. Thus, if
a set of five leaves of the same shape is wanted, it will only