A little book binding.

Ryan Mooney

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I wanted a new sketch book.. so.. I'm making one. No idea what I'm doing, but that's never stopped me before :D

Roughly following the directions from here:
http://www.jamiebutler.com/tutorials/bookbinding1.php

First step was to fold the "folios" which are basically pieces of paper folded in half and then nested together. I'm using 10 folios of 5 pieces of paper each (so 100 pages not counting that you loose two for the cover, so 98 usable). No pictures of that...

Once that's done you punch holes through the fold and then stitch them all together with "tape" (pieces of cloth) tucked into the stitches. The tape will be glued down later.
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Then you put glue in the crack between the folios and clamp it for a while (no pics of this) and then the tape is glued to the outside. The scrap if paper in the middle is wax (actually butcher) paper to prevent any accidental bleed of the glue into the inside pages.
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A piece of cloth is then glued over the whole back and outside pages and clamp the whole thing overnight.
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To be continued.. later... we have some other team members in town this week so not sure when I'm going to get a chance to get back to it, by/before next weekend anyway :D
 
I am using linen (because I had some) and waxed the thread with beeswax, but have just been using DAP weldwood contact cement for the glue (a bunch of places recommended it as easy for beginners and I already had some), I don't think its exactly acid "free" but perhaps a better than some alternatives. The paper is high bond (and high cotton content) paper aka "resume paper", mostly because I prefer writing on it, and have a couple of reams stashed in the office. Sacrificing 50 sheets for an experiment was within my risk envelope.

I was actually pretty sure that the whole project was going to be an unmitigated disaster and was half prepared to write it off to experience, but so far its been only a mitigated disaster. If it continues on as well as its been going so far I'll have to give it another go with better materials and perhaps improve the tooling a smidge (the "not at all a book press" isn't as convenient as a primitive "almost a real book press" would be).

I do have a couple of other things that I'd like to print and bind if this works out so am definitely interested in using better quality materials if I end up doing that.

I was actually considering using hot hide glue for the second attempt, although I haven't really tried using it for anything quite like this before... I figured if I was going traditional.. might as well go traditional :D I'm not quite sure what to used for the boards in that case though, I don't think single ply would be stable enough? and I'm not quite convinced of my ability to make a thin enough three ply from scratch (although might take a shot at it because the worst that happens is it doesn't work..).

If you have other beginner resources or suggestions I'd be quite happy to hear about them, like I said ... I really have no idea what I'm doing here other than reading a couple of online articles but figured it wasn't a super expensive experiment to try. So far its been a fun project. A+ would recommend attempting.
 
And so you get hooked , maybe you like paper so much I've seen people go off in directions making paper.
Very interesting texture to work with. After all it is wood.

Check this supplier out. You'll find all you need.

Dave
 
Dave, link appears to have gotten dropped.

Hah, well.. I've considered that before... There is a lot of nice paper already out there though so unless I was planning to do something absurd.. https://www.poopoopaper.com/en/ .. its likely not worth it ;) Although it might be fun to make some actual mulberry paper sometime... :rolleyes:
 
Ryan when I find sites like this, my imagination kicks in. What can I do with this or that. Is it a technique I can use to promote and build on my talent. Looks like a place you might like. Glad I could help out.
 
There are definitely a handful of items there that got me thinking ... but I could MAKE that!! .. :rofl:

The bone folders in particular - I have a set of antique origami folders but they're a bit light for the heavier paper I'm using here (still worked pretty well though). I have a nice selection of elk shins (don't ask... there are crochet hooks in my future...) that I'll likely have some off cuts from that should work pretty well.

I also liked the little skiving machine they have... not quite $350 worth of liking... buuut.. it looks very reproducible.

Of course I needed more projects like a hole in the head :D Not that I can throw any stones on the enablement side ;)
 
Well, just finished the last glue up on this and I can say fairly definitively that several of the things I did above are straight up wrong, in fact if you count all of the things I did wrong, its more than I did right :rofl:

We'll see what it looks like tomorrow when it comes out of the clamps for the last round.

I definitely ended up with a bit of glue bleed on the one inside page so that's something I'll have to deal with, no fixing that now. I also ended up not making the spine of the cover quite right... I glued it all down and you're supposed to let the backer board float, so the lumps from the tape (cloth strips) telegraphed through a bit - thinner/lighter cloth would be a good idea as well.

To be perfectly fair the things I did wrong were not because the instructions were faulty, but because my interpretation of them (and recollection between reading and implementation was a bit off in a couple of cases).

Still looks a lot like a book if you squint at it a bit :D Pictures of the finished product to follow once the last bit of glue here is dry.
 
Did it say in the instructions no drinking craft beer while reading and executing the project. Lol

I lost you in the second para when you mention wax paper. I presume this is a piece inserted into each folio of paper and folded to keep glue from the stitched holes dunno no comprehend.

Any book discussion always interests me in this digital age.

Yesterday was at a meeting and new book was put in table. The interesting thing was the data in the book was all available in digital form, everyone round the table still liked the idea of this data in book form some things just seem to work in a book form.
 
Hah, more a problem of an excess of confidence in this case :D I tend to learn a lot by making mistakes so from that perspective this project was an unqualified success .. on the learning side :rofl:

The wax paper is used to keep glue from bleeding through pages and sticking adjacent pages together. The fellow who's instructions I was following used it any and every place where you might accidentally stick the wrong pages together (probably smart for an intro instruction).

Here's the finished product. It does indeed look and behave remarkably like a book, so all other things aside its at least moderately a success and was a fun project that only cost a few sheets of paper, a bit of scrap cardboard, a couple small pieces of cloth, a little glue, and a small piece of old goat leather I wasn't sure what to do with anyway.

The outside is light cardboard (removed from the outside of a used up notebook) covered in some really light cheap goatskin I bought for another project it didn't work out for (the goatskin was supposed to be "black" but instead had some black mylar stuff glued to it.. the risks of discount purchases - the mylar pealed off leaving a fairly nice light hide, maybe 2oz).

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I probably could/should have gone a smidge stiffer on the boards as it has a bit of a tendency to warp as shown here, but I kind of wanted a "soft" cover for a sketch book so I dunno.. It is what it is.
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On the one side I ended up with a fair bit of bleed from some of the contact cement. This is why book binders like "white" glues like milk and flour paste I guess. I could glue down the adjacent page to hide it but I'm leaving it as a reminder of what not to do :)
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The other side looks pretty good.

There was no reason to use contact cement there at all it turns out... one of many oops. The tapes and cloth backing should be glued to the boards not the paper and then you just glue the paper down to the boards. Problem solved.
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You can see the stitching on the inside. I guess this is ok? The commercial books I have that are bound kind of like this are a lot tighter - I think that's just doing a better job of compressing it and applying the tapes/backing better.

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You can see some glue bleed along the top near the back. I would say skip trying to glue up there altogether and things will be "happier". Adding some "headbanding"[1] would clean that up a little and make it look a bit nicer as well, but I was already far enough over my head to start with that I skipped trying to do that this round.

Thus also shows the back as being a bit concave, it would be better structurally to be a bit convex.. something about how you lay the tapes while sewing it I think.. There are "guides" people make to shape the book as well although I haven't found an explanation of how they're used that I fully groked based on my limited experience here.

You can also see what a poor job I did on the corners of the outer wrapper here as well - skiving the leather back a bit before folding it over the boards would help that - or just be less ambitious and use a thinner covering material.
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Other oops included
  • gluing the spine to the cloth backing, apparently its supposed to just be glued to the outside wrapper.. I got away with that because I'm using a soft material for the "boards" (and spine) but it also allowed some of the tape to telegraph through. Gluing the spine down also gave me less room to wrap the outer covering over the spine board so that looks a bit scrunchy (and I had to do a bit of "clever" cutting to make it work).
  • tape and cloth backer were to thick, I'm not sure how thick they should be but thinner than I used.

Overall - 10/10 for amusing. 5/10 for exectution. 8/10 for learning exercise.

[1] headbanding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIfyY0XjHio
 
Ryan,

That came out very impressive for a first effort! I put together some paperback books of poetry, roughly a hundred pages if I remember correctly. It's been almost forty years but I believe the real reason I can't remember a thing about it is that the trauma caused me to lock those memories away in a small forgotten corner of my mind. I got to putting together some pretty decent looking little books but I found a lot of ways to not do it first.

For those who just want one copy of a book, some printers can do it. Kinko's used to do it at a pretty moderate price. A big plus for work books, manuals, and dast I say it, sketch books, they can spiral bind books so they spread open and lay flat with no tendency to flip pages or close. Manuals and work books that are going to be out in the shop can have the pages laminated too.

My hat is off to you! That did come out nice.

Hu
 
Thanks Hu,

I think the softback books are mostly done with loose leaf and then glued along the back? In some ways I think the stitched book binding might well be "easier" to do for the complete amateur, at least the stitching mostly holds it together even if the glued up bits go sideways :) Its a lot slower though!

I'm not unhappy with how it turned out, but man there are a lot of details to get right luckily even if you get it only ~mostly~ correct it still pretty much works :)

For most things the spiral bound books are a really good deal - less so for exercises in stubbornness :rofl:
 
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