Louis Crandall, owner of the Crandall Historical Printing Museum, invited 20 volunteers to help out with the 11-hour feat on Saturday 19 January at his replica E.B. Grandin print shop, where the original book was printed.
Around three volunteers at a time were required to apply ink to the type and pull 2,500 large sheets in total through Crandall’s replica Peter Smith hand press, one of only two machines in the world apart from that used in the original Book of Mormon project.
These sheets were then cut down to 16-page "signatures" as seen in the original Book of Mormon.
Scottish printer Dan Clarke took two weeks to set the type, and preparation for the project has taken over a month.
A print speed of two sheets per minute was recorded during production of the original Book of Mormon, according to Royal Skousen, editor of the critical text for the project. He predicted that, without training, Crandall’s volunteers, some of which are American football players, would not be able to match that speed.
But, at one point during Saturday’s team effort, production reached four sheets per minute, although Crandall said he was amazed that the original printers could have produced 5,000 600-page copies in the recorded time of seven months and 11 days.
He said: "There is no earthly way that it could have been done. The printing of the Book of Mormon was a miracle, as I proved on Saturday."
Book of Mormon resurrected by Utah print museum
A Utah print museum has attempted to reproduce the Book of Mormon by hand for the first time since the original manuscript was created in 1830.
