UC Davis is a high-tech campus quickly building innovative buildings and academic programs.

But in the same place where UC Davis researchers are making scientific breakthroughs and historians are constructing revisionist theories, glass lab equipment needs to be repaired. Damaged antique books have to be bound for use and study. Signs must be erected directing visitors to new campus locales.

This work, creating a backbone for campus progress, happens in UC Davis' craft shops, where the tools of the trade are often far from modern, but the work is always of high quality.

As the campus grows, the role of these shops and those who perform handiwork in them grows increasingly important, said book conservationist Wendy Jones, whose workshop is in Shields Library. The presence of the shops and craftspeople help UC Davis retain a sense of "creative individuality."

"I think it's wonderful," Jones said. "A lot of times you are able to tap into people's interests and talents to do special things."

The university could contract out its trade services. But Max Gerdes, who works in the School of Veterinary Medicine's farrier shop, says UC Davis has an advantage not going that route.

"People get a more complete education by seeing what we do and asking questions," he said.

WENDY JONES, PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT

Tucked into a corner of Shields Library, through a hallway marked "staff only," up the elevator to the fourth floor and around a corner, people don't easily happen upon the Margaret B. Harrison Preservation Department.

But once they find the restoration shop for UC Davis' oldest and rarest books, they find it difficult to leave.

Student workers have been known to stay for more than five years - an eternity in the life of a young person. And book conservationist Wendy Jones has worked in the department, endowed in memory of noted Sacramento bookbinder Harrison, for 18 of the 30 years she has been at the library.

Jones became interested in book conservation - preservative binding, stitching and paper repair - while working in the library's collection maintenance department. She earned a certificate in the art at the University of San Francisco and, while working on her master's of library science degree, interned at the rare book conservatory at UC Berkeley.

Book projects in the preservation shop can take Jones anywhere from an hour to more than a week of steady work to complete. This summer she will embark on the intensive conservation of a land and property atlas of Solano County published in 1876. The book's stitching and binding are ruined, so she'll separate each page, wash it and de-acidify it before putting each sheet in a Mylar case. The book will then be stored in a box. Later in the year Jones will restore crinkled and warped 17th century articles of indenture written on vellum, the skin of an unborn calf.

The craft of her work hasn't changed much over the years. Jones stitches groups of book pages on the same sewing frame that Harrison used. Many of the techniques Jones uses to rebuild antique books are hundreds of years old. "It's nice. It's very ar-chaic," Jones said. "You are doing some of the same things people did in medieval monasteries."

MATT KOVANDA, KALE OSBORNE, SIGN SHOP

UC Davis' two-man sign shop is at your service producing shiny posters and signs marking visitors' way around campus.

On the computer, Matt Kovanda designs signs and prints them out on a thermal transfer vinyl printer. He also manages large sign projects. Using special transfer tape and a squeegee, Kale Osborne carefully attaches the vinyl sheets to special event and directional placards and signs. He also digs fence posts and pours concrete for large building signs.

"Some of it's heavy work, some of it's intricate," Kovanda said. "You need someone who can do both."

The two senior building maintenance workers are excited about the recent expansion of the shop, part of the Grounds Division. In February they moved from a temporary building off Cushing Drive to a location behind Custodial Services on LaRue Road. With new equipment and more training, Kovanda and Osborne will soon start providing logos for vehicles such as the campus police cars as well as iron-on clothing decals for campus workers.

In the past, the shop focused on lettering and installing monument signs. Now, the shop will produce many items UC Davis has been using contractors to provide. "We save the university money; that's our goal," said Kovanda, who has worked in the shop several years.

The shop's expansion has also offered Kovanda and Osborne - on loan from Facility Services' Structural Operations unit - the chance to learn new skills. But mostly, the duo says their greatest job satisfaction comes from seeing their handiwork in signs firmly planted around campus.

Kovanda says his proudest moment came two years ago when he along with a team of sheet metal workers, welders and aluminum powder coaters installed the large blue and gold south entrance sign greeting visitors as they enter campus off Old Davis Road.

Osborne says he understands the feeling. "You get the satisfaction of driving around and saying that I've done a sign, and it should last for quite a few years."

ROXANNE FEMLING, COSTUME SHOP

• oxanne Femling has worked at costume shops at Paramount's Great aAmerica, Universal Studios, the Sacramento Theatre Company and San Diego's Old Globe Theater.

Despite the renown of these venues, the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance costume shop, where she serves as manager now, looks and functions little differently from shops at those performance arenas.

"The work you are doing is usually the same, it's just the number of people you work with and the mass of costumes you have," Femling said.

Not that the UC Davis Costume Shop is any minor production.

In the two-room main shop in the basement of Walker Hall, Femling manages a costume inventory of 10,000 pieces for student and faculty shows - from Viking hats to military uniforms, hippy get-ups and 1,000 century-old formal wear pieces purchased from a Russian opera company. Shoes and bulky robes are stowed in another storage area under a stage in the building. The costume shop also includes a hair and make-up area nearby.

In the shop's production room, bolts of cloth in dramatic hues of orange, fuschia, blue and purple lay stacked along one wall. Shelves stacked with boxes of tiny buttons, baubles and beads line another. Scattered about, on tables and in corners are sewing machines and stand-up design busts. As manager, Femling, a UC Davis theatre graduate, tracks inventory, checks for needed repairs, and orders costumes the shop is too pressed to make.

She also supervises two fabric cutters and several student assistants who sew costumes from patterns and campus designers' specifications. Femling - who learned to sew when her mother refused to make her any more Barbie doll clothes - also does some design work herself. "(The designers) are only here a few days a week, and I need to know what their vision is," she said.

Often, however, she is happy to sit at a center table and take stock of the design progress going on around her.

"I like to manage everything and make sure everything gets out the door," she said.

BILL COBB, GLASSBLOWING SHOP

Bill Cobb can build a Schlenk vacuum line, but don't ask him how the glass manifold is used.

"I don't have time for that," said the campus scientific glassblower, who works out of a shop in the Chemistry Building. Cobb works a part-time schedule but is full-time busy designing and modifying flasks, tubes and other glass used by the chemistry, environmental toxicology, viticulture and enology and several other UC Davis departments. For the past year he's also spent a week each month working in the glassblowing shop at the University of Nevada, Reno.

• Schlenk line - used for removing solvents, drying products and handling of air- and moisture-sensitive compounds - is one of the most challenging items Cobb builds because of the apparatus's three-way valve structure. The line can take four to five hours to make. "I have to keep all of (the valves) hot so they don't crack," Cobb said. "I have to go back and forth and reheat them. A lot of times they'll still crack."

After using a glassblowing torch to seal the glass of an item he's working on, Cobb places the glass in an annealing oven, taking the stress out of the object and strengthening it for use.

Cobb has been following this routine since 1969, when he came to UC Davis to learn the glassblowing trade from Gene Sturgeon. Cobb took the job on a whim and, at the time, he didn't think he'd stay in the profession.

"Making test tubes sounded very boring, but I thought I would give it a shot," Cobb said. "Actually, I've made very few test tubes."

The security of working for a UC campus and novelty of his job have kept Cobb at work over the years. "I kind of like the idea that my job is unique," he said. "I like the idea that I'm the only one on campus."

MAX GERDES, FARRIER SHOP

Most farriers, people who shoe horses, only stay in the profession for about five years, says UC Davis farrier Max Gerdes.

The job can be body breaking. Farriers bend down or crouch to fit and shoe their horse patients, straining back and knees. Forging iron shoes over an anvil breaks down elbow joints. And then there's the kicking from spooked horses or those suffering from the lameness that often brings them to the campus vet hospital in the first place.

But Gerdes, who operates his farrier shop in a hay barn behind the hospital, has been working on horses in the trade for 15 years. He's taken some blows, but he couldn't imagine doing anything else. "I've been with horses all my life," said Gerdes, a native of northern Germany. "I was looking to make a living at it. You are either a horse trainer, farrier or vet. I like to work with my hands."

After training at a Berlin racetrack and veterinary hospital, he visited Davis during a vacation in 1988 and stayed on to work as a farrier in the area. Gerdes started working on campus parttime several years ago and was hired fulltime this year.

He says he enjoys the teamwork approach to his job. As a commercial farrier, Gerdes, working alone, would have to quickly examine or shoe a horse as another one waited. At UC Davis, Gerdes gets to spend ample time with each horse and its vets to develop the best shoe treatment for an ailing horse.

"The greatest thing to me is a horse that walks in lame and walks out straight," he said.

Gerdes shoes about three horses a day and sees about 10. Despite the rigors of the job, he doesn't plan on leaving the campus farrier shop anytime soon.

"No day is ever alike," he said. "No horse is ever the same." •