Mechling Bookbindery is a kind of anti-assembly line.

Explaining and demonstrating the half-dozen steps involved in making hardback books from cardboard, cloth, glue, thread and folded sheets of paper, owner Al Mechling zigged and zagged around his plant floor.

	Upcoming workshop Two local writers will join a genealogist, a graphic and design coordinator and publisher Al Mechling at a one-day workshop April 9. Speakers will include writers Howard W. Worley Jr. and Ceane O'Hanlon-Lincoln, graphic coordinator Kari Bolam and Luanne Eisler, genealogist at the Butler Area Public Library. Details on the workshop, which will be held at Mechling Bookbindery in Oakland Township, are available by calling 724-287-2120 or e-mailing info@mechlingbooks.com. The deadline for registration is March 11.

Some of his equipment is more than 60 years old. Employee Stella Chiappini used a Smyth sewing machine, built around 1940, to stitch together bundles of 16 pages, known as signatures.

Nearby, Wanda Morgan was gluing endpapers, one volume at a time, onto copies of a family history, while Katy Wood was attaching cloth headbands to protect the top and bottom of the spines.

Quality and craftsmanship, combined with a willingness to adopt new technology, are at the heart of the operation Mechling and his wife, Marla, have created in Butler County.

The business began as a hobby 25 years ago and originally was run from the bedroom and garage of their home in nearby Center for many years. As they acquired more equipment and offered additional services, they expanded the garage. For the past three years, the business has operated from a 6,000 square-foot plant in Oakland Township, southwest of Chicora.

While the Mechlings and their seven employees make use of some examples of what is near-antique machinery, they also use 21st century computer programs for typesetting and layout. Much of the equipment is very specialized. One Swiss-made device, called a backer-rounder, pinches and pushes sewn and glued pages to produce the characteristic curved back and concave front of a hardback book.

Mechling, 50, had traveled Western Pennsylvania for 20 years selling nuts, bolts and screws to hardware store owners. He has learned the various aspects of printing and bookbinding on the job.

Did his wife Marla have experience in the book business? "Not me. I was an X-ray technician," she said.

Mechling Bookbindery produces both hard- and soft-cover volumes. The company catalog of about 400 books includes about 300 local histories, biographies and genealogical works produced in Oakland Township.

The company also finishes books for other printers, often turning out as few as 50 volumes in the case of publications on specialized science research. That business comes in from all over the Northeast. "There are a lot more printers than bookbinders," Mechling said.

Another important part of the business is restoring textbooks and library volumes that have broken and cracked spines.

Mechling explained how that process works. A device that looks like a combination milling machine, planer and router shaves about an eighth of an inch from each edge of the bundled pages of a damaged book. It then cuts angled grooves into what will become the new spine. Those grooves hold additional polyvinyl acetate glue and can produce a restored book that is stronger than the original.

Press runs range from a dozen copies of a family history or even a half dozen of a master's dissertation to several thousand for historical societies and local writers like Howard V. Worley Jr., of Saxonburg.

Worley has produced five volumes of local history and is completing his sixth, "Pittsburgh Inclines and Street Railways."

"If you are not Stephen King and can guarantee sale of at least 100,000, it can be tough to get published," Worley said. "That's why it's great having a small local publisher who knows the business, has the equipment and can work with you one-on-one."

On his earlier books, Worley had to travel to Philadelphia or Chicago to confer with printers. "It's better to have face-to-face meetings, and I can come up to his place every week or so."

Debby Rabold, chairwoman of Franklin Park's history committee, learned about Mechling Bookbindery from a friend, Arthur Fox, the author of "Pittsburgh during the American Civil War, 1861 to 1865."

"I'd seen some of their books and thought they did a good job," she said. "They specialize in history and genealogy ... and they are nice people."

This fall Mechling is scheduled to print and bind a new history of Franklin Park.

Mechling can produce a new hardback for $20 and a paperback for around $10. Rebinding in leather can cost up to $100 while cloth-covered books can be restored for $40. He does library and school books for less.

Another major part of the company's business is restoring and re-covering antique books. Such work usually costs from $150 to $400. It usually involves reconstructing the bindings, adding new endpapers and replacing the covers, or case. Restoration is a labor intensive task.

Mechling and Chiappini, who do much of that work, try to save at least portions of the original embossed covers. Mechling displayed one example where the original leather was shaved down before it was glued onto an inlay on the new cover. It was hard to see where the old material ended and the new leather began.

Nigerian goat skin makes some of the finest, and most expensive, leather for custom bookbinding or restoration, Mechling said. He pulled out a roll of licorice-black leather from a tall rack in the far corner of the plant. Calfskin also provides a soft, pliable cover, he said, while cowhide is cheaper, because as many as six sheets of leather can be sliced from one much thicker skin.

Much of the restoration work involves family Bibles, many more than 200 years old. But customers have also had him rescue cookbooks, photo albums and even favorite children's works. "Muggins Mouse" by Marjorie Barrows was among the books awaiting repair. "And I have a customer in Polynesia who sends us old encyclopedias," he said

The roots of the business are in Mechling's efforts 25 years ago to discover his own roots and pass that information on to his daughters, Sonja, now 29, and Melissa, 26.

As he tried to fill in blanks in his family tree, he found local histories and genealogical works were hard to find, were in bad shape or were long out of print. Book collecting led to book sales, publishing, restoration and reprinting.

"We learned the business a little bit at a time," he said. "We wanted to do some offset printing. We bought a small press, then learned how to use it."

"It's a hobby that got out of hand," he said.

What does he like best about the business?

"Every day certainly is different," he said. "And we think that we are really doing something good."