Booth Diary Aging

A few weeks ago I started a thread showing the long process of making a perfect replica of a john wilkes booth diary.

The diary was made in "new condition" with no aging. I knew when it came time to age it, I wanted to be the one to personally do it so I could match it as close as possible without compromising the book itself.

After few members said they would love to see it aged, I started the slow process of aging it so it can match the original.

I started by slowly distressing and aging the gold foil stamping so it would look aged and worn. Next was to make the postage and ticket pockets tattered. This was actually really hard and took a few days to complete in stages. The only slight difference with the way I aged my pockets compared to the original is, the right "postage" pocket, the cardstock is worn all the way down to the red leather which can be seen. I personally didn't want to destroy that much of the pocket because then I couldn't use it daily. So it's a fine line between "aging" and or "destroying" something, you can age it all the way if you were to display it and not use it or handle it very much.. But I chose to keep the integrity of the diary intact. Which is why aging and distressing is such a slow process. Once you do it, you cant go back. Every little mark or crack or stain is thought out.

Then I moved onto the book pages and cover page. I copied even all the visible and faded pencil notes made to the inside of the hard cover.

There is still some work to do on other pages, but I wanted to post a picture to give everyone an update and get some feedback.
cheers.

picture of original for your reference


picture of my copy

Looks great! If I were to do anything additional, it would be more 'dirtying' than distressing, just assing more of the natural soil marks that an item picks up over time. Nice work!

laellee said:

Looks great! If I were to do anything additional, it would be more 'dirtying' than distressing, just assing more of the natural soil marks that an item picks up over time. Nice work!

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thanks for the kind words!
it depends on the light, but I pretty much soiled the book and cover page to the extent that the original is. I'm worried to soil it too much because then it just starts to look dirty rather than old. Here are a couple more pics of the book cover page and inside hard cover. You will notice I even replicated the area to where the spine of the book has the dust cover pages ripped away like the original.

the leather for the wallet portion is ultra thin leather and it's dyed all the way through, so if the leather is sanded in area's to replicate ware, it will be the same color only roughed up, so that's the problem I am trying to solve now. filling the pages with all the hand writing will also be time consuming. Everything else is printed in the book though, distances, calendars, cash account pages, memo pages, dated pages, its all there. Also going to trim the opening tab a little shorter. All little tweaks to bring this closer and closer.

pictures only do so much justice, but if you had this in your hands, you would think it's the original.

Looking great, your diary is a high water mark in replication of that there is no question.

Besides the pages themselves, the edges of the diary, the pencil loop and especially the corners of the diary will need heavily weathering and abuse. For the little pocket inserts, for my diary I used genuine vintage paper for those buff colored parts that were then worked back to reveal the leather underneath. The foiled lettering is also quite tricky to weather because on the genuine diary, they appear to be almost burnt in colour through ageing. I achieved that through washes of acrylic paints and glaze...

Yours is still a work in progress and I am 100% convinced that you are going to ace it. Looking forward to seeing how you get on...

High regards,

KramStaar said:

Looking great, your diary is a high water mark in replication of that there is no question.

Besides the pages themselves, the edges of the diary, the pencil loop and especially the corners of the diary will need heavily weathering and abuse. For the little pocket inserts, for my diary I used genuine vintage paper for those buff colored parts that were then worked back to reveal the leather underneath. The foiled lettering is also quite tricky to weather because on the genuine diary, they appear to be almost burnt in colour through ageing. I achieved that through washes of acrylic paints and glaze...

Yours is still a work in progress and I am 100% convinced that you are going to ace it. Looking forward to seeing how you get on...

High regards,

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It’s funny because I was planning on using an acrylic for the ticket and postage embossing to give it that burnt look. That is something I was putting off till last because of the risks involved ruining the leather with paint leakage..

As for the heavy weathering, I have detailed pictures of the original from the museum, there really isn’t that much wear on the outside cover, as you suggested mostly it’s just to the edges of the book.

Do you have pictures of your booth diary you speak of? Would love to see how it came out.

here is an update shot of the "burnt" embossing effect on the postage pockets..

I had to make sure I got the paint mix just right so it could be a little transparent so you could see hints and highlights of the gold leaf here and there.

I think I pretty much nailed it.

Probably one of the best graphic prop replicas I've seen on RPF. You, Sir, have done an amazing job! Have you asked Ross about the prop? He might be willing to share a few photos of the inside as he's supporting of replicas if done right (and this one is done amazingly).

Delete - sent the same post by accident.

LorduDesign said:

Probably one of the best graphic prop replicas I've seen on RPF. You, Sir, have done an amazing job! Have you asked Ross about the prop? He might be willing to share a few photos of the inside as he's supporting of replicas if done right (and this one is done amazingly).

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Thank you for such kind words, means so much to hear. This prop has been in the works for a couple years and means a lot to hear that all the time and money spent on this project paid off.

It’s funny you mention it because I own one of Ross's copies actually. I purchased a replica from Ross probably 5 years ago.

It was a huge help for size reference.

But so much of his prop was pretty far off from the original booth diary.

We had to get many photos from fords theater directly for reference on this project.

Ross M’s copies he made for the movie had to have insertable booklets for quick change in between the scenes of the actors ripping the pages out and tossing the pages into the fire.

Ross also burned the lines in his leather with a soldering iron which isn’t a true emboss, also his gold embossed fonts were a little off for the pockets and he wasn't an expert on knowing how to properly "tool leather" per se, you can see this with the way he shaped the postage pocket edges .

Much of the red dye on his replica would come off onto my fingers since he dyed the leather himself. It was more of a display piece and not something to really use or handle.

Also, Ross made a mistake and didn’t add a correct period clasp. His diary didn’t have a clasp at all, he just put a bent piece of brass on the leather tab.

This was actually the most challenging part for us to figure out the style clasp the original had. In the end the clasp was custom made. Through a close investigation from photos provided by fords theater, we were able to finally crack that mystery.

For my copy, we had to use antique presses for much of the leather work. No expense was spared.

Ross did a great job filling out the pages with writing. However, For his copy he photo copied all the writing onto each page though. So it didn't look 100% if you saw the writing up close. I also had to add some aging and handwriting to Ross's copy he made for me because he forgot to include some of the pages seen in the film. My book I plan on doing all the writing by hand.

Ross was the first to ever make a copy of a booth diary, he figured out a lot of the guess work so my hats off to him. He puts a ton of work and time into making his replicas and are worth the price for sure. The fact that I own one of his copies made this project a lot easier.

I personally wanted to get my copy as close as humanly possible. Also, when I started this project, I had to realize that there is a big difference in making a prop that has to look the part on film VS an actual functioning diary that is a replica of the original. If we didn't adopt many of the original techniques that the book was made with, it would have never of come out half as good as it did.

Here are some detailed pictures of Ross's diary below.

As far as I know, Ross wasn't allowed to create a perfect spot-on replica, due to the law and regulations. It happens a lot on film/TV/others productions, for example on my current project we had to recreate the 1970s Canadian dollars but of course, we couldn't do it exactly the same way as it would be considered a counterfeit or plagiarism. Generally, if productions replicate a historical object the same thing happens as well.

How did you age yours and what methods did you use for leather (embossing etc.)? Just curious.

LorduDesign said:

As far as I know, Ross wasn't allowed to create a perfect spot-on replica, due to the law and regulations. It happens a lot on film/TV/others productions, for example on my current project we had to recreate the 1970s Canadian dollars but of course, we couldn't do it exactly the same way as it would be considered a counterfeit or plagiarism. Generally, if productions replicate a historical object the same thing happens as well.

How did you age yours and what methods did you use for leather (embossing etc.)? Just curious.

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counterfeiting currency is certainly understandable and can see where you would run into some problems..

Not trying to knock Ross's work. Just speaking in terms of the original and making comparisons to any existing copies ever made. All variations and examples help me get closer.

As for Ross's replica, as far as I know, there is no copyright or plagiarism laws on reproducing a diary of a certain period. One can only assume at the time, more than one of these style diary's were produced, so the likeness can't be considered historical. Maybe the writing and contents could be however, but since the writing and contents are different in Ross's copy, I don't think that would fall under plagiarism either.

From my conversations with Ross back in the day, he made the diary as close as he could and to the best of his abilities. He used what leather he could source and what techniques he knew in order to keep it an in house job.

But the diary booklet for instance, he bent a stack of pages together and ran a seam through them, instead of actually binding the pages like a book. The font for the postage pockets were the closest hot stamping "old English" font he could find. Mine had to be custom made dyes, otherwise we were going to have to use the same style that Ross used as that's all that is commercially available.

I have seen Ross's personal diary copy and he definitely put a lot more care and detail into creating what is seen on film over what he makes for his customers that buy replicas. I only say this since I own one of his and it has it's short comings compared to his others. But I also get that each one is hand made and its very hard to make them all the same for sure.


If plagiarism or counterfeiting laws were a factor, I could almost guarantee Ross's replica is close enough in "likeness" compared to that of the original, he would already have problems and his diary would have never made it to the film.

At the end of the day, Ross isn't a leather worker, he specializes in paper props and documents mostly but can do many different things and is certainly a talent. Also as said before, its very different when making a prop and making something that can actually be used like the original diary was.

For myself, I sourced a master leather worker, one of the best in the US actually that has a workshop filled with everything imaginable, including presses that are all of the period.

This project was a long time in the works and was expensive.

Towards the end, there was so much back and forth, we both got burned out. There are only two of these copies, the shop owner has one and I have one. But unfortunately its not practical nor is it cost effective to produce them on a larger scale. They are completely hand made, each line on the leather is embossed one by one in a custom made jig. so you can imagine the man hours that go into one copy. I tried to get him to make another and he is not interested and has other work to get to. these take up too much of his time I'm sure. I'm still trying to convince him to sell me his personal copy so I can own both of them. It took me a year alone just to convince him to take the project on truth be told.

All of the aging was done by myself using a variety of techniques and is still an on going process. once the aging alone is done, that would be almost a month long process to keep taking it closer and closer to the original without overdoing it.