Book Binding

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Another update in my adventures in book binding. Until this point, all my work had been glue-free. Just card, paper and thread. But I was itching to push on into hard covers and glue. 

I also had some small offcuts from my re-binding of my innkeep journal, so I thought I'd make some mini books to learn the basics of hard cases! Mistakes were made. Many mistakes! But it was very instructive.


After making a lot of small signatures, I started binding them with the same kind of French link binding that I used for my previous notebook. Only with 1 central place for these links instead of 2, because of how small the book is.


Here's the finished thing! And mistake number 1: My signatures were using quite thick paper (from a sketch pad). Given the size of the book as well, this made "the swell" around the spine pretty big. Less paper per signature would have been a good idea (and a bit of time pressing them before stitching.)


I then applied some glue to create a "text block". And here was mistake number 2: Really, I should have set up some kind of press, even if just out of basic supplies, to hold the signatures closer together. I also should have applied 1 coat, waited a while, then done a second coat. This can let the glue form a much better connection (something I've figured out since then).


Still, our cute little text block was holding together. I used some old ribbon as the "mull" (extra spine support that you glue on), and that seemed to work fine. Something a bit more gauzy would be better but I didn't have anything like that.


I tried my hand then at making a book cover. I applied some cloth just directly to some hard board, and in this case it turned out ok. It's better to use an interfacing material that you iron on (which I got cheaply at a nearby shop since then). But it was OK. However I made mistake number 3 here, in not having large enough hinge gaps. You need pretty big ones (1cm even). Once I stuck everything together, it was clearly not able to open properly, so I had to just remove the spine entirely to get around it.


Luckily, that kinda worked. And you can open the book just fine. Haha. Looks ugly, but still.


And there we have it. My first hard-cover book, mini though it is. I learned quite a bit from this one. And I must say even now I'm very happy with it, warts and all. There's something amazing about being able to turn a bunch of old paper, some cardboard, thread, and bit of scrap cloth into a little pretty thing like this. Out of raw materials, a bit of beauty. I find the smallness of the thing quite endearing too. It's by my computer atm and I can just kinda fidget with it quite happily.  :-) Could be a good thing to stick some poems in. Or maybe tiny pictures or sketches.

Until next time!