About 9-10 years ago, I attended a free bookbinding class at a local library, and it stuck. I haven't made a book in a few years now, but I recently developed The Itch. I want to make a couple books, and I know what materials I want to use, but because I haven't done it in a while, I'm feeling a bit rusty. Also, I want to try a couple new techniques. So I'm making a Practice Book! And I decided to write a lot of words about it along the way!
Let's be clear, this isn't a real book, this is just...a fake book. It doesn't matter if it's good or not (or at least that's what I'm telling myself). The main goals here are:
- Test out the overall book structure I'm planning on using
- Test out some of the materials I'm planning on using
- Experiment with ways to use found materials for the cover, when the design goes right to the edge and I can't wrap the paper around the board the way I normally would
I started last night. Decisions so far are:
- Dimensions: 4.25" x 5.5", so that I can make the signatures out of half-sheets of copier paper
- Page count: 128 pages, because I want it to be small enough that it's a fast project, but thick enough to test the book structure properly
- Text block: 8 signatures of 4 folios each
- Book structure: stitched on tapes, glued and rounded spine, hard covers, flexible back
I was originally going to do a square, hard back, no tapes, and case binding, but after a whole bunch of reading I decided that tapes with a rounded and reinforced spine was more work but probably a better structure.
Things I'm doing for the first time:
- Four folios is a small signature! Feels like a lot of stitching and I'm worried about how much swell there will be, but I'm trying to offset that with the next two new things:
- Rounded back!
- Sewing thread for the stitching instead of something more decorative and heavyweight
- Sewing on tapes, and kettle stitching! I've done coptic binding before for open-spine books but this is my first book where the stitching will be hidden in the final product and I can go with something simpler.
- Combined stitched and adhesive binding. I've done perfect binding before and didn't really like it (neither the process nor the result). I've generally preferred non-adhesive binding out of some sense of "purity of process" but those books always feel a little bit loose. So I'm finally trying out stitched + glued.
- Using a bone folder and a guillotine paper cutter. Both are obvious tools to use but I haven't made a book since I acquired them.
- Trimming the signatures on the fore-edge after folding. With small signatures and the guillotine cutter, this is actually possible!
Last night I actually cut, folded, and trimmed the signatures.
Things I learned:
- Working with small page-count signatures is nice. Everything feels super neat.
- Trimming the fore-edge makes a huge difference. It's not going to be perfectly square when I'm done but it's so much tidier than before trimming. For some books I like the ragged look but this is a nice alternative.
- If I'm going to write huge verbose posts about this, I need to take more photos.
Next steps: selecting ribbon to use for the tape, punching holes, and stitching.