Book Binding

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

I've been diving into a bit of book binding youtube lately. It looks like it could be quite a relaxing little craft hobby. Now I've got a baby I've been thinking a bit about activities we can do together when she is older, and I think we could have a lot of fun doing some arts and crafts (painting, drawing, collage, etc.) Being able to make notebooks and such together could be fun too. I'm picturing making books that we then can fill out with things, like little 'diaries' that start out with pasted pictures and scrawls and progress to writing practice and clipped-out art from stuff we find.

Here's some nice channels I've found so far.

Four Keys Book Arts (some amazing videos here on medieval binding too).

Bitter Melon Bindary (nice introductory videos)

Ido Agassi

Book Care Studio
DAS Book Binding


Finally, I think the reddit page on book binding is quite inspiring! 

I'm at the stage now of accumulating some basic tools, with a few remaining things on their way in the post. I'm not sure how much time I'll have for this hobby at the moment (maybe just a few hours a month to start with!) but I'll post my creations here.

Is there anybody else here who has some experience binding?  Maybe you have some resources you'd like to share? Or pictures of your creations?

[Spritelady]

Coincidentally, I did a short book binding workshop a few weeks ago at the Coventry Book Fair, which was very enjoyable and involved no specialist tools or equipment.

We made little notebooks out of:

• Pretty paper for the covers (apparently wallpaper cutoffs make for good covers but any relatively thick paper, not card, will do)
• Plain or lined paper as you like for the pages
• String to bind them

The only equipment we needed was a hole punch and pritt stick glue, but the pages and covers etc were already cut to size so I imagine a guillotine or similar would also be very useful for cutting multiple pages accurately

[Jubal]

I know some conservators etc who may have more detailed advice on this: I've never done book binding myself, I have made paper but never whole books

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Coincidentally, I did a short book binding workshop a few weeks ago at the Coventry Book Fair, which was very enjoyable and involved no specialist tools or equipment.

We made little notebooks out of:

• Pretty paper for the covers (apparently wallpaper cutoffs make for good covers but any relatively thick paper, not card, will do)
• Plain or lined paper as you like for the pages
• String to bind them

The only equipment we needed was a hole punch and pritt stick glue, but the pages and covers etc were already cut to size so I imagine a guillotine or similar would also be very useful for cutting multiple pages accurately

That sounds like fun! Yes it seems pretty accessible as hobbies go really. I'm going to keep an eye out in thrift stores for materials I can salvage, like old books and things (extracting heavy card from ancient coffee table books and such).

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

I know some conservators etc who may have more detailed advice on this: I've never done book binding myself, I have made paper but never whole books

Oh would like to have a crack at making paper. I did once visit a Japanese paper producer in the hills near Kyoto while doing some translating for a Hong Kong magazine that was visiting different makers. The texture on that stuff is phenomenal. I got a sheet that I was able to transform into a crude lamp shade.

[Jubal]

I hadn't realised before I did it how much the real problem is not "making paper" but "making paper that ink won't just soak over in a huge blob making it impossible to write on". There's a lot of manual labour that goes into polishing and working on the surface of paper to get between blotting paper and writing paper, and we have notes in medieval documents to the broad effect of "I apologise to the reader that this is hard to read, please blame whoever's job it was to polish the paper who has given me DEFECTIVE PAPER AGAIN."

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

I got some binding supplies in the post a few days ago, so this weekend I found a bit of time between baby care to do an initial couple of projects. First, I made a book binding cradle using some hardboard I grabbed at a craft store. I followed this tutorial by Four Keys Book Arts.



Then I proceeded on to making a pocket notebook following this tutorial on the same channel.



First step was to cut some old A4 printing paper in half, so I could fold it into a 'signature', keeping it 'long grain' when eventually folded.



Then I could use my new cradle and awl to punch some holes. An add number is good. You can see here I have a little guide, but it's not really necessary.



Sewing using a binders needle! I used unwaxed cotton perle. My good (and more expensive) linen flax I'm saving for proper books that I want to last. It's a pretty simple process for a single signature. Only takes a minute or two.



Finishing off with a few knots.



All finished! Not shown here is the trimming I did with a knife to straighten the edges, using a steel ruler as a guide.






Here's how the spine looks.



I'll make a few of these I think. Some for myself for short term note taking, and some to give away as gifts. Fun initial foray into the world of binding. 

[Hufflescruff]

I desperately want to learn how to Book bind but I'm naturally terrible at anything remotely arty. This looks amazing!

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Thank you! Then go for it! I am not at all arty by natural inclination. Just following the tutorials and learning as I go.

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

I managed to do more binding today. 

I wanted to tackle the next tutorial in the series by Four Keys Book Arts, which is for making a multi-signature book without needing glue.

You can bind these with card stock too, but as it happened, I had the perfect leather cover already. I previously received a journal from my publisher Mythwright, modelled on a guest book type object in Innkeep.

I ended up half filling it with gamedev to-do lists and other related scribbles. Then much of that shifted online to spreadsheets and txt file build notes.



Now I think it would be perfect for a grail journal / zibaldoni type book for narrative design, to help me get creative. So why not rebind it? It already had the same exposed spine structure as what i needed (although the binding originally used was a bit different, meaning the thread was too short for me to recycle for this method.)


First step was to deconstruct the old journal.



Then I prepared some fresh signatures. The sketch pad paper i used for this was a little thicker than the paper originally in the journal, so I reduced the number of sheets in each signature from 10 to 9 to compensate.


The thread I was using would also be quite thick. I'd stitch it with a bigger needle to match. Still it felt more suitable than my small thread for this bulky journal.


I also waxed the thread using a regular tea candle. Bees wax would be nice in future. First time doing this, but it definitely felt like it helped.

With my cradle I pierced all the signatures. Four holes instead of five this time.  The placement also needed to match the existing holes in the leather cover.



Then it was time to stitch them together. The process was more involved this time. I couple of mistakes were made where I realised id forgotten to do a loop / link at the top or bottom properly. This required a bit of back tracking each time.




The view from the bottom. The top and bottom holes are each used twice, with the thread doing a kind of figure 8.


The spine. 


The 'deckled' side edge. I quite like how this turned out. The original signatures had been cut straight but this rougher look fits the binding better i think.


Ready for use. Looking forward to scribbling innkeep narrative stuff in here!

[The Seamstress]

This is so cool!

Thank you for sharing your projects and also for sharing the resources/links. It has been my dream for a very long time to learn the basics of bookbinding, too, so the info will be helpful. Maybe I'll manage to do some of it this year as I had originally planned, but right now there are so many other things going on! Sigh.

I'll follow your progress on here though for inspiration

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

You're welcome! I think at this point I will settle in to making a lot more simple notebooks to give as gifts and things.

Before I can advance to 'real' books ill need some bricks and laminated board to act as a makeshift press. And time.. maybe in a few months.