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Lately in Da Studio I've been working on a most tiny ickle Torah. The column height is six inches - that's seven lines per inch, and when we're talking handwritten with a quill, that's pretty darned amazing. It's a similar size to the text you get in many mezuzot, but very much more beautiful - most mezuzot that size are a scrawl; this is exquisite. I cut a quill to size and tried to imitate the script, and I just couldn't - it needed more skill than I've got. It honestly looks like one of those toy paper Torahs you get for kids, except it's real. I'm smitten - I want one!
A lot of the work we've been doing has been patching; the seams were sewn very oddly, with very thick tendon-thread and huge knots, not right for the very very thin parchment, so the thick threads wore through the parchment at the seams and they were coming apart. To fix this, we unsewed the seams and patched over all the holes, before sewing them together again with much thinner tendons. Patching too has its challenges on parchment this thin; the spare parchment we have is of ordinary thickness, like thickish cardboard, again quite unsuitable for use with this paper-thin Torah. Overly thick patches aren't very good news; they look funny, first up, and when you roll the scroll tightly the patch may damage the rest of the scroll - like if you leave a paperclip in a book, the pages change shape to accommodate it.
The solution is to take a very VERY sharp scalpel, and pare away the surface of a piece of ordinary parchment until it too is paper-thin. It's easy to go too far and slice right through, but if you don't go far enough your patch will be all lumpy. On seams especially, lumpy patches are bad news, because a seam has multiple thicknesses of parchment already, and the folds need to be as flat and smooth as possible - imagine sewing something lumpy like a rag rug to something fine like a handkerchief, and you'll get the idea.
So anyway, we spent lots and lots of time scalpelling bits of parchment to super-thin levels. It's quite absorbing - you want to keep on snibbling away at it, to see just how fine you can get it. Then you want to see how big a piece you can do, so you keep on going. It's the same sort of feeling as when you try to peel an apple all in one piece and make the longest peeling ever. You go through blades like nobody's business - I changed blades three times yesterday - cos once they get to a certain level of blunt you just can't use them for this any more.
Interestingly, when you glue such a thin patch on, it becomes transparent because of the glue, and you can see right through it. The texture of the parchment beneath is clearly visible - if the writing showed through, you see it; if there was discolouration, you see it, and any natural features like hair or veining are plain to see. Half the time it looks as though you didn't patch the hole at all, but when you hold it up to the window you can't see the light shine through, so you know it's okay. On the other hand, there is no doubt at all that you yourself have been patching, because you're covered with parchment shavings.
Sometimes you can use a power sander to get biggish pieces of parchment to an appropriate thickness. It's very easy to get carried away with a power sander and sand so far through that you make holes. The power sander makes shavings which are a whole lot finer and spread further, so you end up covered in a fine white fuzz, and can go around pretending to be the Easter Bunny.
A lot of the work we've been doing has been patching; the seams were sewn very oddly, with very thick tendon-thread and huge knots, not right for the very very thin parchment, so the thick threads wore through the parchment at the seams and they were coming apart. To fix this, we unsewed the seams and patched over all the holes, before sewing them together again with much thinner tendons. Patching too has its challenges on parchment this thin; the spare parchment we have is of ordinary thickness, like thickish cardboard, again quite unsuitable for use with this paper-thin Torah. Overly thick patches aren't very good news; they look funny, first up, and when you roll the scroll tightly the patch may damage the rest of the scroll - like if you leave a paperclip in a book, the pages change shape to accommodate it.
The solution is to take a very VERY sharp scalpel, and pare away the surface of a piece of ordinary parchment until it too is paper-thin. It's easy to go too far and slice right through, but if you don't go far enough your patch will be all lumpy. On seams especially, lumpy patches are bad news, because a seam has multiple thicknesses of parchment already, and the folds need to be as flat and smooth as possible - imagine sewing something lumpy like a rag rug to something fine like a handkerchief, and you'll get the idea.
So anyway, we spent lots and lots of time scalpelling bits of parchment to super-thin levels. It's quite absorbing - you want to keep on snibbling away at it, to see just how fine you can get it. Then you want to see how big a piece you can do, so you keep on going. It's the same sort of feeling as when you try to peel an apple all in one piece and make the longest peeling ever. You go through blades like nobody's business - I changed blades three times yesterday - cos once they get to a certain level of blunt you just can't use them for this any more.
Interestingly, when you glue such a thin patch on, it becomes transparent because of the glue, and you can see right through it. The texture of the parchment beneath is clearly visible - if the writing showed through, you see it; if there was discolouration, you see it, and any natural features like hair or veining are plain to see. Half the time it looks as though you didn't patch the hole at all, but when you hold it up to the window you can't see the light shine through, so you know it's okay. On the other hand, there is no doubt at all that you yourself have been patching, because you're covered with parchment shavings.
Sometimes you can use a power sander to get biggish pieces of parchment to an appropriate thickness. It's very easy to get carried away with a power sander and sand so far through that you make holes. The power sander makes shavings which are a whole lot finer and spread further, so you end up covered in a fine white fuzz, and can go around pretending to be the Easter Bunny.
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