Inspired by the How To Bind A Book video (sadly not embeddable) and the books I bought, I had a go at my first hard-back pamphlet this week. I sewed two blank paper signatures and trimmed them square (-ish, as I don’t know where my set square has gone to!) to form the innards of the book, or “book block”.
I then found a random bit of cardboard that I could cover with a nice sheet of paper that was left over from when I was designing wedding invitations two years ago! I cheated a bit and used the spray mount glue that was also left over from making invitations. I know that PVA or wheat paste is preferred, but I’m going to use everything I have lying around the flat for my practice booklets before I start buying new stuff. I then attached the cover to the book block using endpapers.
Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the result. I have learnt a little about measuring and allowances for the spine which will play into my next attempt. The booklet still gapes, and even squishing it under a pile of heavy books hasn’t fixed that, but I think that’s related to the issues around having not quite enough play in the spine area. I also feel like I didn’t sew the signatures together tightly enough. There’s a gap between them in the middle of the book and although it’s not a significant problem it does look unsightly.
Right, now the photos:
The cover has little metallic flecks in it:
The endpaper! Not brilliantly glued down, but still, functional:
If you look at the biggest size of this photo on Flickr, you can see that there’s a bit of an unsightly gap between the signatures. Need to get my sewing tighter:
I really can’t wait to get myself onto a bookbinding course! I’m considering raising the money to pay for it via a Kickstarter project in which I publish Argleton as a hand-bound pamphlet. Whaddayareckon? Good idea?
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