Category Archives: bookbinding

January 16, 2014 · 6:20 pm

Making the Cases or Covers for the Books, next step

Before the Industrial Revolution, most books were made by sewing the pages or textblock directly onto the covers, which were usually made of wood and then covered with leather or fabric.  Binding books in this manner was always done by hand, one book at a time. With advances in printing, faster ways of covering the pages had to be invented.  The answer was the case-bound book.  A cased book is made in two parts, the textblock and the case. These two are then joined together in different ways.  Almost all modern books, including those with leather covers, are case-bound. To the purist, they shouldn’t be referred to as “bound” at all.  I have made a few bound books, but almost all of mine are actually cased.

So on to how to do it.  I use Davey Board for my covers and it comes in large sheets, 30″ x 40″ so the first step is to cut it into usable sizes. The arrows on the board indicate the direction of the grain.  I mark the sheet before cutting when it is easy to determine the grain. As the pieces are cut smaller and smaller, it is harder. The grain of the board must always be parallel to the spine of the book. If the grain is crosswise, it can warp and pull against the joints, breaking them. I have three cutters in my studio. The grey fancy one (Ideal) is wonderful for cutting lots of paper to exactly the same size. I do use it with light-weight board, but I probably shouldn’t.  The tan cutter (Boston) doesn’t have a guard so I can use it to cut the big sheets.  It’s just large enough that I can cut halfway down the sheet, flip it and cut the other half.

The first cuts I make are just rough cuts. If I need 71/2″ finished board, I’ll cut an 8″ strip.  My last cutter is an ancient Milton Bradley school cutter, probably from the 1940s.  It still makes a beautifully sharp cut that is perfectly square.  It is also the only cutter I have that can cut very small pieces (1″ x 2″) accurately. Both of the other cutters have guards and edges that get in the way of making accurate small cuts. Before starting to cut, I measured the textblocks and since I am doing four books at the same time, write down the height and width of each.  The boards should be cut the same width as the text and 1/4″ taller. After I have rough cut the boards, I make an exactly square cut on one corner and mark it.  All other cuts will be measured from this corner.  The marked corner is always placed against the guard of the cutter, even if this means flipping the board over. This solves the old problem of cutting one side after the other and finding you never have parallel sides.  After cutting the boards, I check them against the text just to be sure.  Yes, I have made complete covers with spine and paper added only to find the measurement was off and the text doesn’t fit. Of course, I could avoid this by making the books all the same size, but that would be boring.

Spine stiffeners are cut from 2-ply museum board.  They are the height of the case by the width of the textblock.  Next step is to cut the bookcloth spine and attach it to the covers. Most of my books are quarter bound, but here I decided to add corners to one book making it half-bound. First I measure and mark off the depth on the spine overlap onto the boards.  It depends on the size of the book, the pattern of the cover and my mood.  Mine range from 1/2″ to 7/8″. I also marked the corners for the half-bound book. The spines are cut 1 1/2″ taller than the boards and the width of the edges plus the width of the textblock plus 1/2″. The spine is glued to each edge and the spine stiffener laid down in the center.  There should be 1/4″ on each side of the stiffener, but for some reason these were a little tight.  I must have been off on one of my measurements.  Sometimes 1/16″ will do it. After the stiffener is glued down, the head and tail cloth is glued.

Next, it’s on to cutting and gluing the covers.

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January 14, 2014 · 4:59 pm

Making the Cases or Covers for the Books, first steps

I’ve been back in the Studio playing some more with my books.  It’s been difficult for me to get back down there and I think the weather is partly to blame.  Somehow when it’s -4ºF outside, the basement doesn’t sound very appealing.  My basement is well heated, and has great natural light, but cement floors are not the warmest.  My house is built into the side of a hill so while the back is underground, I have windows all across the front with the sills just above ground level. It does have a wonderful view and I can watch birds and squirrels and sometimes deer and rabbits while I work.  Windows

There are four sets of these double windows across the front of my studio.

The last design step for the books is choosing the material for the spine.  I usually use an Italian bookcloth, either textured or smooth. Very occasionally I use Kennet cloth or leather.  I like leather, but it requires skill and patience, so I really have to be in the mood for it. Here are pictures of my stash of bookcloth and photos of my testing.  I take a bunch of different colored scraps and place them on the cover papers and endpapers.  One by one I eliminate the poor matches until I’m left with my final choice.  Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes not!

Notice that I carefully put everything, including the bookcloth sample into my plastic bags.  History makes me careful!

This is a short blog, but next onto making the case.

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January 5, 2014 · 11:39 am

Sewing the Books

There are many ways of sewing text blocks for bound and cased books.  In fact there may be hundreds.  Linda Blaser wrote an article once documenting the styles she had encountered in her career as a book conservator.  I once had a copy, but can’t find it and haven’t been able to track it down. The method I usually use twists the thread over the tapes rather than leaving it flat. The benefit of this is that the gatherings are pulled tighter together.  This is important for me since I don’t have a proper book press for gluing out the spine, so the extra compression is important.  The problem is that it creates more bulk on the spine which can be unsightly, especially if you are binding with leather. If I am doing a large book that needs three or more tapes, I sometimes alternate the twist with a flat thread.  I had planned to do it on the larger books as a demonstration, but once I started sewing, I forgot!

On my four current books, the first thing I had to do was to tip in the frontispieces on the two larger books.  I first trimmed the illustrations to the size of my pages plus about 1/4″ for a tab. The frontis was placed in position and the tab was very gently – I’m dealing with paper that’s about 150 years old – folded around the first gathering. Using PVA as the adhesive, it was then glued to the back of the section.  The only glue was on the tab, not on the engraving itself.  By the way, I tend to use the terms glue, paste and adhere interchangeably although technically they are different.  I only use a reversible PVA in my books.  Well, occasionally I use paste, especially with leather, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.

Adding the frontispieces.


I’ve tried to photograph the entire process of sewing the textblock with descriptive titles from punching holes to finished sewing. I don’t use a cradle for punching as I find them cumbersome and my books are usually only five section books.  These four happen to be a bit larger, but still only have seven sections.  For the same reason, I don’t use a sewing frame, plus my books tend to be different heights.


All four text blocks.
TextblocksNext I tipped in the endpapers and trimmed them to size.  An extra 1/4″ is left along the inside fore edge of both endpapers.  This is folded under and glued to the first and last pages of the textblock.

Now it’s on to preparing the spine and covers.

You can see more of how I make my books on previous pages.  Design, Frontispieces, Sewing.

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December 27, 2013 · 11:36 am

Books, Step by Step

Sometimes I make books in almost a production mode, working on them every day till they are done.  Other times, I do it in fits and starts, leaving them half started for a while and coming back to them after many interruptions.  The last four books that I wrote about appear to fall into the latter class!  I did the design work, choosing papers and then put them aside.
This week, I went back to them for the next step – choosing paper for the text block and deciding on the size and shape of the book.  I didn’t do anything special with the papers this time.  I’m using my standard Strathmore and Canson drawing papers. I like the weight and feel of them.  I would love it if I could get them in colors, but the colored sheets tend to be heavier as well as much more expensive. I do use Pastel paper occasionally, but it has a definite “tooth” and is not right for some of my books.  I also like the Strathmore “Toned Tan” and “Toned Grey” for my earthier creations and have used a lot of that in the long-stitch books.
Back to the current four.  After cutting the text paper, I print a title page, verso and colophon.  Most blank books don’t have titles, but I like adding them.  I think it makes them more like real books. My titles range from the pedestrian My Journal, to the whymiscal Wish on a Fish. They tend to reflect the color, Purple Prose, or content, Purring Thoughts, of the book’s cover.  These titles were more of the pedestrian variety. Here the pages have been cut and folded and the titles printed.

The two larger books are almost the same size. The smaller one was cut to fit the tiger endpapers and the medium sized one was determined by the cover design. The pages are folded and gathered into sections or gatherings, ready to be punched and sewn.  I like to add an extra ornamental page of light weight paper around the even sections, just to add a little something special. Here are the papers I chose for the larger books.

I also added frontispieces to the two larger books.  These are illustrations that were taken from two different books from 1840-1850.  The books were badly damaged and had fallen apart, but I was able to rescue some of the engravings.  The illustrations are not copies, they are the real thing.  As you can see in the photo, they need to be trimmed down and tipped in.  I’ll do this by leaving a narrow edge that will fold around the back of the title page.  The flap will be glued in, but it will also be sewn into the first gathering, making it an integral part of the book.  Sometimes, when the paper is too brittle to fold or is smaller than the book, I just tip it in opposite the title.

My next steps will be to attach the frontispieces and sew all of the textblocks.  In the meantime, I have learned to put all parts of each book into a separate plastic bag!  Before I did this consistently, I would switch papers mid-stream and discover I had to cut paper all over again to match the new configurations!Bagged2

The reason I didn’t move on to sewing the textblocks was that I was sidetracked by note cards, which will be my next blog.  I hope to get to it soon.

I have written at length about all the processes in making a book on other pages on this site, starting here.

 

 

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December 13, 2013 · 1:41 pm

Tigers by Design

Last blog I mentioned wanting to do a book cover from some tiger patterned paper that I had.  Here’s the paper:DSCN5377It’s a long, narrow piece and I was thinking about making a very small book with just one or two tigers on the cover. As soon as I started to think about size, I realized it would never work.  Even a small book needs at least 1/2 inch turn-in on both top and bottom.  This is what the cover would look like after a normal 3/4 inch turn-in. DSCN5378 Not really what I wanted.  I can use it for endpapers, so I revamped my thinking and started looking for paper to use as covers. I found a piece of my marbled paper that goes quite well with the purple, so even though it’s not at all what I’d planned, I’m happy with the combination.

Since it’s easier to do several books at a time, I had to go on a hunt for more papers that I could become excited about.  As I sifted through stacks of paper, I came up with the following pairings.  For a change, I found good matches quite quickly.  Only the airplanes gave me a hard time, but I like the final choice.

It feels a bit strange to reverse the normal place of cover papers and marbled paper.  I like to emphasize my marbling and give it pride of place and covers use less paper than the endpapers, so I can use pieces that are too small to be inside.

I don’t know what size these books will be.  I’m thinking of trying some larger sizes for the gray-toned papers.  The largest size I make on a regular basis are 7 1/2″ x 5″, so maybe I’ll try 8″ or 8 1/2″.  I can’t do anything taller than that because of the size of my printer.  It depends also on the size of the text paper.  The sheets I start with are roughly 18″x 24″, direction short, making great 6″x 6″ pages.  I’m tired of square books though.  I frequently change my mind once faced with the text paper and having to study the cover paper to see exactly which pattern would fall on the front center.  All over patterns are so much easier than larger, poster type papers.

I may even start cutting tomorrow, I may not though!  I’m sitting watching the snow fall – very gently, but it is getting deeper.  I’m glad I don’t have to go anywhere farther than my studio!

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November 24, 2013 · 5:09 pm

Corners, Double Boards, and Gothic Bindings

Finally, back to my books from the Folk School.  My first two books are shown here.  I have always said that I don’t work in leather. It’s too fussy, too expensive and too time consuming.  This week I ended up four leather bound books!  The most complicated is a variation on a traditional Gothic structure.  I cheated and used a textblock sewn over tapes rather than lacing in the boards, so it is more like a cased rather than a bound book.

Many important Gothic and Victorian psuedo-Gothic books were made with double boards, allowing many different types of ornamentation. While thinking about what I could do with double boards, the idea of windows kept running through my mind.  I had a piece of very thin copper that I had tried to torch fire. It didn’t come out very well.  It was bumpy and uneven and generally a bit of a mess.  I had no idea if it would just crack when placed between the boards.  I was able to trim the copper to a suitable size, so the first problem was overcome.  Here are some photos of the process.

Fortunately, the enamel hasn’t cracked and the bumpiness gives an interesting texture to the piece.

The other book I made with an enameled piece was an easy one.  I used the same technique I had used before with coins.  I cut a recess in the top board, tucking the bookcloth into the recess and glued the piece in place. I used this same technique with a black cloth book after I returned.

The last technique we used was working with metal – brass, copper, bronze and pewter – as corners, bosses and latches. This was the first time I had ever worked with metal and was a bit of a challenge.  Metal has to be exact.  You can’t nudge it, pinch it or approximate. I’d love to have more time to work with metal and hope I can in the coming year.  For this time I just made some brass corners. Not much for a metal worker, but exciting for me.  There’s a lip that fits around the edges of the boards and then the corner is fastened to the boards with a rivet. I also gave a brass a bit of texture. As a final touch, this book has a line of blind tooling parallel to the spine.

So that finishes all five books I made during my week.  Since I’ve been home, I’ve been finishing up odds and ends, trying to put together stock for the shopping season.

You can always find my books and paper on Etsy via my page or by going to www.Etsy.com/shop/LosingHerMarbles

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November 17, 2013 · 2:22 pm

Books, Metal and Magic

It has taken me a long time to get around to this blog about my last week at the Campbell Folk School.  I’m not sure why – the press of catching up, my tiredness from the week or just the difficulty of encapsulating seven very busy and eventful days.

I think I’ll start backwards and show the books I finished during the week first and go into detail later.

As you can see from the outside of these books, I was playing with lots of different ideas.  What you can’t see, is that the  internal structures on these are quite different.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my camera for the first few days, so I have no pictures of some of the books in progress.  I’m hoping some of my classmates will share a few of their pictures.  There were only four students in the class and we were all working on very different projects, but there were some commonalities.

The first book I made was the 12th century account book.  I love the shape and size of the book. It’s only 3 1/2″ wide by 10″ tall.  This type of book was used for accounts and also for reading aloud. Since most of the population was illiterate, recitation and reading aloud were very important social and cultural activities.  I can imagine Chaucer holding a book like this and reading his poetry in the English Court.

The instructor, Gian Frontini, had made a book like this from vellum. I had found some old rolls of rawhide in my basement and had brought them with me on the chance I could find something to do with them.  The match was perfect! My rawhide had been cured and scraped rather crudely which left some interesting texture and markings on the book.  I used a slightly rough Fabriano paper for the textblock. It was sewn over narrow strips of the cover rawhide which were later laced into the boards.  You can see the lacing in the photos. I made the headbands with embroidery floss, sewing them into the textblock. The book was then finished off anachronistically with some of my marbled paper.  Even though it is not correct for the period of the binding, I felt it was a wonderful match for the organic feel of the book.  Traditionally, all the edges of the book would have been painted, usually red, but I decided not to.  A laced thong of rawhide was added to the back board of the book. The thong helps to keep the book closed and was also used as a “leash” for the book.  I added a small silver bauble to help in grabbing the book.

I had also found in my basement ( yes, it is a bit like Aladdin’s cave) a long, narrow roll of snakeskin.  I threw it into my box at the last minute intending to ask Gian if I could use it for something in binding. The answer was yes and I decided to make a very small book.  The snakeskin at it’s broadest was less than 4″ wide, so I settled on a book that’s only 3 inches square. Because it’s so small, I made it thick. Lots of pages with few words on each!  Like the rawhide, the snakeskin had to have Japanese paper pasted to the reverse side to give flexibility and durability to the piece. I sewed this textblock with a running Coptic stitch that was used in many Gothic books.  This stitch is not as stable as sewing over tapes, but it is more appropriate to the materials.  I cheated here on the headbands and use the paste on variety, mainly because I was afraid of running out of time. The spine was not glued down, but left as an open tube.  Again, I used my marbled paper as endpapers – a very snaky match.  I was amazed that I had brought just the right papers with me.  I only brought four or five sheets with no plan of how I would use them.  To find I had two that were such great matches was miraculous.  If you have read any of my blogs, you know how I agonize over finding just the right papers.

Next blog I’ll talk about my metal corners, enameled insets and unfinished business.

 

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August 17, 2013 · 8:13 am

My First Enameled Book

Some weeks ago I took a class on enameling and was very excited to get working on some projects.  As usual, life intervened, but I have finished my first book.  Here it is!

Now I can’t decide whether to keep it or sell it.  One one hand, it may be the only enameled book cover I ever make as the rest of the pieces are smaller inserts.  On the other hand I really don’t need another blank book.  What to do?

I also decided just to hang my biggest enameled piece. I found out then how fragile the enamel is. Just trying to thread a cord through the holes in the piece, I cracked some of the enamel.  Not catastrophic, but you can see fracture lines in the enamel. You can just see them in the upper left corner when the photo in enlarged.  If I had a kiln, I could just re-fire it.

DSCN4479At the same time I was making the enameled book. I made another of the diskette books.  They are such fun! DSCN4518

I don’t really care for Coptic bindings.  They are not nearly as stable as a cased or bound book and they don’t protect the textblock as well, but they are a lot faster to make and are cute. I’ll probably keep them in my repertoire for fun, quick projects.

I’ve also been doing some marbling. Not terribly happy with the results as I been having a hard time with my carrageenan.  I don’t know if it’s the heat, the humidity or the carrageenan itself, but it’s been breaking down very quickly.  I was getting five or six days from a batch, but the last batches haven’t lasted more than two or three days.  Frustrating! I haven’t changed anything about the water, paints of the way I work, so I just don’t know.

I did have fun with these!

DSCN4512

 

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July 2, 2013 · 7:12 am

Nibbled to Death by Ducks

Last week was one of those weeks where I was busy all the time but accomplishments seemed to be few.  Dental appointment, watch it rain, doctor check up, mow the high hay, watch it rain, finish up the “real” books from last week’s blog, watch it rain, pick and freeze strawberries, switch closet from winter to summer, finally finish cleaning up the marbling stuff, spend an afternoon as a sub playing cards, and did I mention – watch it rain.

The good parts are that the garden has started to produce. I just hope the cukes aren’t quite as prolific as last year because I still have a dozen or more pints of bread and butter pickles from my canning frenzy of last year.

The wild blackberries that grow all over my property are coming on.  I love being able to gather a handful every morning on my walk about.  The best are from a bush that came up next to the garage.  I don’t take care of it except to try to keep people who are helping me from tearing it out!

Here are the books I finished from the previous week.  Cased in and ready to go.  I’m particularly happy with the one with the leather spine.  After struggling with paring the leather, it went together very nicely.

After saying last week that I was tired of novelties, I returned to my cross laced long-stitch books and finished up most of the leftovers.  Because of the way the tabs are cut to interlock for the front and back, if you don’t use the same paper for both covers, you end up with either a lot of waste or an extra piece already cut.  Of course, I don’t like to waste good paper, so I had a bunch of leftovers, which became more long-stitch books last week.

JuneBatch2JuneBatch4

 

Not sure what I’m aiming for this week – work in the garden for sure, no marbling but maybe some playing with the dos à dos format.  It’s close to a real book and I’d like to try it with a case-type binding.  We’ll see if it works!

I also have set up a Losing Her Marbles store on Facebook.  It doesn’t have many bells and whistles yet, but social media is slowly creeping up on me.

 

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June 21, 2013 · 3:12 pm

Back to Basics – Marbling and Book making

For the past few months, I’ve been consumed with the idea of making “different” books.  I’ve tried some soft covers, some Coptic bindings, some upcycling which were all fun stuff, but last week I felt the need to get back to the traditional, case-bound hard covered book. I started a batch of five and it proved to me several things.  As much fun as the other books are, I don’t feel as if they are Real books and I get more satisfaction out of making a book I know will last than the novelties.  They are fun, but transient. I can’t imagine that my hanging books or the floppy diskette books will be around in fifty years; the hard covers could be.  That said, I know I’ll still make both kinds.

These are last week’s books.

June Hard Bound

June Hard Bound

These aren’t actually finished.  They still need casing in.  The fifth book has a leather spine, so it is taking a bit longer.

As much as I enjoyed the marbling class, I felt a bit frustrated by it.  Since I was demonstrating, teaching and helping everyone, I didn’t have time to do any real work myself.  I hadn’t expected to, but still  … When I finally finished cleaning up everything and reorganizing my basement, I wanted to spend some time doing some real marbling.  Here again, I have been playing with a lot of different techniques (over-marbling, masking, figures) and wanted to go back to form and color.  One of the best things about marbling is that it’s so easy even a child can do it, yet it can take years to truly master different techniques.  Maybe like playing a drum!

Again, my last few marbling sessions have been caught up in special effects.  This time I was determined to slow down and enjoy exploring color and pattern.  Turned out to be a great idea.  I’ve had a marvelous week, in spite of the usual frustrations! Tuesday and Wednesday were unusually productive and so far I’ve produced over 50 pieces.  And that’s not counting the “tray fillers”.

Again, my basement becomes my Studio and some of the papers.

Lots of things going on here!  As you may be able to see, I tried to stay with a single color palette for several sheets, making small change in color and design from sheet to sheet.  It’s hard to tell from the pile, but there are probably five or six sheets of each colorway.  You can see it most clearly in the black set.  I used only black, grey, white and one accent color for each sheet.  I used the same pattern, but changed the size of the comb and the rake.  The feel of the piece becomes quite different.  The Dark blue set was on a very stiff card stock and is generally a mess.  I haven’t used anything that heavy in a while and it takes getting used to!  Since it doesn’t bend easily, it is very easy to catch air bubbles and the technique used to lay the paper on the marbling tray is a bit different.  As you can see from the closeup, I was also having some problems with contamination in the tray about that time.  With marbling, there is always something to keep me on my toes.

I love doing maps and did a batch from atlases, road maps and street directories.  I also cut a Pennsylvania highway map into  strips that would fill the tray when I was doing smaller pieces. Not sure what I’ll do with them, but they’ll come in useful some day.  If not, I know a number of collage artists who will use them.  My favorite map was the one of Turkey done in browns and yellows.  It reminds me so much of the time I spent there many eons ago, travelling across from Afghanistan.  Couldn’t do that now.

Marbling is always interesting and always a bit of a surprise.  The colors are never quite what I expect, sometimes better, sometimes not.  And there’s always that dreaded air bubble just waiting to spoil the perfect piece!

Now that summer is really here, my marbling trays will probably remained packed up.  I just have to start using up or selling all this wonderful paper so I can make more!

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