Leaving YunmengJiang in an effort to curb the tensions in the Jiang family, Wei WuXian becomes a rogue cultivator.
Even without the support of a sect, he is a rare genius whose name will become known across the cultivation world and whose techniques will influence the course of a war.
However, what influences his own fate is a chance meeting that becomes the first step toward love.
Title font: Viner Hand ITC
Body font: Crimson Pro, 11pt
.
Loved this fic! I also may or may not have a weakness for genius![character] fics...
Pics of the process and rambling beneath the cut.
Printed and folded! (13 signatures of 6 sheets each, with one last signature of 2 pages.)
Paper used: Domtar Earthchoice Multipurpose, cream. 11x17 cut down to 8.5x11 for short grain.
.
Into the press overnight.
.
Removed from press and holes punched!
.
Stitched up! (French link stitching with waxed linen 30/3 thread, and three 3/8" linen tapes)
.
Cut endpapers to size and tipped in with a bead of PVA glue.
Paper from a pad from the dollar store. The colour and pattern are nice, but it’s thinner than I’d like. Tears and wrinkles too easily when pasting things together.
.
Ran out of PVA and made some wheat paste. (Flour, water, heat. So easy, so much cheaper, so much easier to get!)
.
Glued (using wheat paste now unless otherwise stated) and rounded spine. Added bookmark (3/8" satin ribbon) and mull.
It always takes longer than I think for the glue to dry enough for rounding...
My favorite part! Doing 3 colours was new, and I had to redo them a few times before I figured out how to manage more than 2. (Which is exactly the same way as 2 colours. Why didn't I just try that from the start?) Went in blind through the ribbon, couldn’t see where I was putting the needle in. Thought I might break my needle trying to go through ribbon, paper, glue, mull, and more glue... but I didn’t! [No needles were harmed in the making of this book!]
.
[Forgot to take progress pictures from here onwards. Again. 🙃]
.
Trimmed off excess cording on endbands, with a dab of glue at ends (to prevent thread from slipping off the core).
.
Materials for the case: measured and cut to size! (2mm binder's board for covers, decorative paper for covers, and bookcloth for spine.)
Paper for the covers is also from a dollar store find, but it’s a heavier paper than the endpapers. A lot nicer to work with.
In the tea-dyed notebook I made, I've written down formulas and standard measurements for the things I bind. The only thing needing to be measured this time was the spine thickness!
.
The spine stiffener: tried something new.
Not liking how the spine of my last rounded book turned out (it was 600+ pages), I decided to try something new: an Oxford hollow spine. Retrospectively, a regular spine would have been better in this case, but I wanted to try it.
Measured the spine of textblock by wrapping a bit of scrap paper around spine, marking it's width. No futzing around with rulers and measuring tapes. For the spine stiffener I just used some cardstock with the grain running parallel to the spine.
Oxford hollow spine stiffener (diagram above and more info here). A is glued to B.
I glued the spine stiffener to the textblock first and to the bookcloth later, rather than just to the bookcloth like I usually do. I think that was the right way, but I ended up having a difficult time casing in. (Though that could just be because I was trying something new for the first time)
.
Made the case! No issues here, thankfully. Glued book boards to bookcloth, glued decorative paper onto boards. Left overnight to dry, flattened under weight to prevent warping.
.
Casing it in: mistakes were made.
I made the mistake of applying glue to all places at once instead of one at a time like I usually do. End result of wrinkled and torn endpapers, and a spine where bookcloth is not actually glued to spine stiffener. 🙃
.
Slipped in scrap paper between glued endpaper and rest of textblock (moisture barrier), put book under weight overnight.
Note to self: either use something else as a moisture barrier, or use more than one sheet of paper. Moisture still got through and affected a bunch of pages. Maybe my wheat paste was too watery?
.
Next day: a book is in my hands, and soon, on my bookshelf!
Sanemi Shinazugawa is a new teacher at Kimetsu Academy, and upon seeing his new coworker Rengoku Kyoujurou at a distance, he falls deeply in love !!!!!
