Checkpoint! --Autosaving--
Hello Lovely Tumblr people! It’s time to get back into the book building! Some big changes are happening which means I’ll probably be doing a fair few group projects (as in the projects will be grouped together, rather than me working with other people).
Since this is the first big group project, I’ll show the whole build. Future group builds will start from having the book guts sewn together and such to prevent boredom induced narcolepsy.
Boom! Paper cut and folded into signatures. What you can see is 3 A5 journals / notebooks, 4 A6 notebooks, and 2 A6 landscape journals. All are blank 100gsm paper.
I needed cutting templates! After the move I realised that I had thrown out all of my hole cutting templates in a fit of cleanliness! Ah well, it’s not like they’re that difficult to make.
Start by getting a piece of MDF longer than the paper is tall. Mark one end as the top (T) and mark a line where the bottom of the signature is.
With that done, you can Mark out where you’re going to have your tapes (or cords, I’m not one to judge). Also don’t forget your entry and exit holes at either end of your signatures. These are also used for sewing your head and tail bands. I usually mark mine in 10mm from the ends.
Sandwich your stack of signatures between the templates and clamp hard. Don’t do what I’ve done in the past and get impatient. You can’t just clamp in 4 books worth of signatures and expect it to work perfectly. Do one book at a time. Remember you’re after quality, not quantity (unless you are after quantity, in which case invest in making a jig to hold 100 books and a bandsaw).
Cut your grooves along the markings. You don’t want to cut too shallow - That makes it so you actually have to punch your needle through 1 or 2 pages when it comes to sewing. You want to cut just deep enough that it penetrates through to the middle page. You learn that from practice and from having a line drawn on your saw.
Sometimes you haven’t cut your paper very well at the start. You know what? That doesn’t matter in the end. After you’re done with sewing you’re going to end up trimming your edges square.
Complete cutting sewing holes for all books.
Onto sewing! Depending on how big your book is, you’ll want at least 2 tapes. Anything over A6 I like to use 3. I started by placing my stack of pages on my sewing frame, aligning the tapes to their spaces and then flipping all but one of the signatures back (the stack at the back has the folded edge pointing away from the sewing frame).
If you’re doing multiple books, it’s a good idea to make some risers. That way you don’t have to keep re-setting your sewing frame every time you finish a book.
I’ll be making another sewing frame in the near-ish future, so I’ll cover the building of that in detail.
Some tips!
First, your legwear make good pin holders.
Second, The tail of your thread can often get caught up in your knots when you’re trying to do your kettle stitch at the ends. Tuck it under the corner of the book guts to keep it out of the way.
Okay, with the landscape journals I felt that they were too thick, so I split them in half.
And sewed them in one hit on the risers. See? Useful.
Continue sewing until all your paper is into something resembling book guts.
Trim your raggedy edges so they end up all square and pretty. Yes, I’m using a paper guillotine. No, it’s not essential to the hobby but it helps. You can use a paper plane or even a box-cutter if you like (or your teeth even, if you are feeling overconfident in your own abilities).
The spines are rounded and end pages made. The bottom three are getting special treatment, so they’re not glued on yet (they’re going to be in the next blog). The rest have received scrapbook paper as end pages.
All the excess sewing tape is cut off. I feel that I should mention here that i’m using 12mm cotton webbing here. I’m not using specialised linen bookbinding tape. I’m not made of money (that saying always bothered me. If I were made of money, then I would be even less inclined to spend myself).
Yeah, on the 3 larger books I felt that I should mushroom them. I hear that doing that helps them resist pulling out of their curve. They’re probably not thick enough to discover that particular problem, but it seemed to be the right thing to do.
And there we go. I put some indian cotton cloth spacers in the gaps between the tapes. Over that I glued on a hinge made from the same cloth as the spacers.
That’s all that is for this stage. After this it’s all headbands, pretty cover designs and leather.
Thanks for reading. I appreciate it. Feel free to send me a message or an Ask if you have any questions.
