WIP the island of doctor moreau/ die insel des doktor moreau
tête-bêche binding with paper onlays
I really need to stop designing on the go and plan ahead more. I love this paper and wanted to do something with it and the island of dr. moreau felt like a good match. For those who know know. It has an amazingly vibrant, in parts neon-fluorescent, colouring to it that pictures don't even get close to capture.
On top I even had 2 really good options for the cloth
I thought the golden yellow (it's Colibri amber) would make a really nice contrast. In hindsight I'm not sure the blue wouldn't have been the better choice though. The intense sheen of the colibri cloth might be stealing the attention from the paper a bit.
WIP - the island of doctor moreau/ die insel des doktor moreau
sewn endbands and partition marker
I planned the endbands to reflect the paper and a found a post to recommend to check for enough contrast of colours by switching the colours to black/white so all the colours show up as grey. If there are hues of grey you can not discern, then there's a good chance you'll have a hard time distinguishing the colours as well.
I knew with my options I'd have at least 2 colours that might be too close to keep apart easily, but decided to give it a try anyway, but I believe that is actually a good way to check colour combinations for endbands. Wether one wants a nice contreast or to blend one into another.
The dark strip of colour you can see here, is a coloured paper that I put in to mark the 2 halves of the book. This is a tête-bêche binding and I like to show where the books end even though it's not strictly necessary since both start at the beginning of their respective side. I simply hooked a single sheet of coloured paper into the section where the books end. It doesn't have to be on the outside of a section either, I actually prefer them to be inside a section so I don't have to bother with the slippery small hooked end when punching the holes.
When I do a Bradel binding, I usually leave the covers wider than needed and adjust them later. This has the benefit of being less likely to cut them too short and accommodating for any skew of the book block (or, as another bonus, a slight skew/unevenness of the hinges). The later is particularly helpful when rebinding old books. Those are often slumped and not quite square or even anymore. With a completly square angled case, that does not take the aging into account, you might end up with a perfect cover that still looks odd and clumsy on the book block. In such a case, making the cover skewed to fit the book block creates the illusion of a book more balanced than it actually is.
To get there I mark the top side to which I align all parts of the case, pre-round the spine stiffener for rounded books and do the dry fitting on the finished book block. For the fitting it has endbands and oxford hollow already attached before marking the front squares on top and bottom. I used to use a compass to make sure your squares are perfectly even, but now I just eyeball it.
It's important to keep the book block pushed well back into the case and firmly in place to mark both covers on top and bottom. Otherwise the skew doesn't get get accounted for!
For the last part here I trim the front squares and now I have a well fitted case for the book block (no matter how skewed it might be).
Bradel binding - reducing the edge of the connective paper and board (without sanding)
For a quick bind or when the endpapers have a lively pattern I often don't care about smoothing this small edge where the connective paper ends on the boards. With single coloured endpapers it's more noticable though or sometimes I just want a binding to turn out more pretty.
Generally there are a few ways to deal with that visible step:
1. glue the connective paper all over the cover board so there simply is no step (which is great, when one expects the cover material to have a lot of pull!)
2. glue in a piece of cardstock to even out the turn ins of the cover material. That way you don't have to bother with the connective paper since there's something glued on top anyway. (nice, for more really smooth inner covers, but also with some pull and, like the first one, it's an additional step that usually also requires some sanding, but great for high quality bindings)
3. glue the boards to the connective paper, but make sure there is some of the connective paper left loose to tear away later (see picture below)
This one is a quick and easy, low effort option.
Once the glue is dry the loose parts can be torn off with the goal of getting the paper to split as wide as possible to have a smooth transition between board and paper. I just make sure the connective paper is wider enough that in the end there's still about 1,5cm firmly attached to the board to make sure the connection is still strong.
For the last step I smoothen the slightly rough area where the paper has been torn away with a bone folder and am done.
One could take this further and sand... but I do this for a fast and easy version.
WIP - The Witch's Heart (re-binding)
sewing endbands and dealing with uneven thickness in lokta paper
I had this book plucked and re-bound in a curved double fan binding months ago, but slowly it's coming together enough for a post.
First obstacle (aside from picking a cover design, which I have not done yet, but I have ideas) was the endpaper. The Lokta paper I picked has a pretty design (called tulip for reasons I can not discern no matter which way I look at it, but tulip it is). The only issue I keep having with Lokta paper is the wide range of paper thickness in one sheet. Because of that, and because I did not like how the backside of the paper looked, I decided to back the paper completely to add strength to the thinner parts and cover the backside of the base.
This lead to adding another sheet of coloured paper to ease the reader into the rather grey printing paper instead of having a harsh break.
(Also because I wanted an extra sheet of paper before the book started. I hate to open a book and having the title smashed into my face first page).
It's also been a while since I've sewn endbands so I chose to sew them on this book despite the whole thing being meant to be a quick low-effort bind (I'm doing really well making choices that keep them low effort as you may have noticed.)
Despite a double fan binding not haveing sections to anchor your endband in you can work around that! One can still sew through the glued spine and even have some sort of anchoring point when the spine has some mull or gauze. To make it easier I usually use a cloth wrapped-pre-made-glue-on sort of endband to sew around. The endband doesn't really need anchoring points then, but I still add them at the beginning and the end to secure my threads and make sure the ends stay neatly on the spine. The glued on core makes things much easier and faster here. On the downside this cheat only works for bead on the edge endbands (no flimsy moving around cores though, which I like very much).
Steps to come:
- make the case
- decide on a design (I know what cloth I want so hooray for that)
Extinction - VER
details and WIP photos under the cut
(see the finished book here)
I had started this bind months ago and my first idea was to mimic the frame on the front page, just in the same paper as the endpaper... that was not turning out as I'd hoped. The frame didn't work with the pattern and even when I went through with it anyway, it turned out the chiyogami was too translucent to look nice and crisp. The bookcloth was shimmering through and gave it an overall 'not so good' look. Eventually I scrapped the case and the book block went on the 'finish later pile'.
(on left you can see a little how the paper of the turn in shines through the endpaper)
I still wanted to repeat the paper and this time decided to go with the paper pattern rather than picking up the frame of the novel and it worked much better. There was still the issue of the chiyogami paper being thin (only 70gsm) and white. This time I backed the paper with a white paper though to counter that effect and it worked much better.
I picked the shapes I wanted to work with and cut them roughly to size.
Because I'm really bad at ignoring the parts that won't be visible and help focusing on the positions, I cut a frame from some wastepaper to cover what would not be visible on the finished case and tried some arrangements.
This also allowed me to see where 'problematic areas', such as bits and pieces in the hinge area (those tend to work loose, so I try to avoid them) and too sharp angled or small bits right on the edge of a turn in, might turn up. When I was satisfied I marked the backside of the paper with a pencil to know where the paper was going to wrap around the edge of the cover.
The only thing that got me worried then was the thickness of the backed paper. Since I did not creat a recessed area for it, there's a good chance of more chaving on the paper when handling the book. I gave it a good press (in a hydraulic press that applies much more pressure than a stack of books or a small iron cast press could). Even with the case all dry already it pressed pretty flat though.
For good measure I worked down the paper edges with a bonefolder while they were still freshly glued and was rewarded with a smooth transtion between cloth and paper. Palpable, yes, but no edge to catch on. Which was all I wanted.
It's taken me more than a year to make this post. And it would have taken even longer, except I realized that what was holding me back now was wanting it to be perfect, which, let's face it, will never happen. So I am here to tell you about my friend @zulufic, about the amazing people of @renegadeguild, the Renegade Bookbinding Guild, and about fandom and community and how sometimes we really do get it right.
Zulu was my fandom and irl friend, and there is no good way to say this, she died of cancer a year and a half ago. She was family. She and my wife and I knew each other for twenty years, a significant part of our adult lives. Were at each other's weddings (her wedding to @belldreams was only a dozen people), travelled to cons, and helped each other move. She spent an unplanned week camping out in our living room one summer, as we torrented Stargate Atlantis, modded a House big bang from our living room couch, marathoned six degrees of actor separation media with us. Fell in and out of fandoms around each other, large and small. Witnessed each other's families and relationships and lives grown and change.
When I started fanbinding, I made her a pamphlet of her crackfic for Christmas. It was right around the time we found out she first had cancer. Surgery, chemo, and then we had another two years with her. She fell into another fandom, hard. I made her an anthology of her A League Of Their Own fic--all that she'd written at the time, at least. ("Would… you make a book of my fic?" she said when she saw my first casebound books. I never want to forget the way she said my name when she was asking me for something that was a foregone conclusion. "That was already the plan for Christmas," I told her.) I bound her rarepair House mpreg crackfic the next year, because that's what friends do. I didn't finish it until the spring--and then we found out the cancer was back.
She asked me for a favour over that summer. "Soooo… could you do something for me? Could you do another pamphlet, of this particular fic?" Yes, I said, yes I will. I will make you a pamphlet. I will make you TWELVE pamphlets. A HUNDRED AND TWENTY pamphlets, and more. (Spoiler alert, I did not make a hundred and twenty pamphlets, but I did make multiple copies of three.)
Here's the thing. She was on the prolific side, as a fic writer, and had been in fandom for decades. I wanted to bind more of her fic than I could possibly accomplish in time. I recognized there were finite amount of things I can finish while she was still here to see it, and that if I had tried to make this the only project I had, I would have collapsed under my own sadness.
That week, I said to a good fanbinding friend, I want to bind more of Zulu's fic, I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. Her response: "Can I help? Do you want me to typeset something?" Me: (ALL THE EMOTION) "… yes. But also, I was thinking of asking the Renegade guild if anyone else would be bind a few of her fic, too, maybe a few quick pamphlets?" Her: "YES, do it."
I did it. I posted. She immediately started a spreadsheet organizing what I'd already bound, and to let other people sign up for things, and put herself first on the list. The fact that someone else was organizing for me (made a SPREADSHEET!) made me a bit weepy. By the time I went to bed an hour later, I think we had half a dozen people signed up to participate.
I should have been prepared for the full force of the Renegade Bookbinding Guild members, otherwise known as the inhabitants of the enabling server.
The next morning came. And a few more people signed up. I tentatively suggested that if anyone wanted to include a card or note and maybe some stickers for her wife and their kiddo L, it would be welcome. And people started asking me questions. Like, what fic does she like best? Where should we start? Can we make a care package? What does her wife need?
Knowing the people in the server, and their general kindness and enthusiasm, I should not have been surprised, I really shouldn't. It just hits differently when you're the one who's the recipient, you know? "I don't know why you're surprised," said another friend. "You asked us to help and we're helping!" And it wasn't an official guild project, just an incredible act of community and compassion. And immense enthusiasm and zero restraint.
I started asking some surreptitious questions of Zulu and Bell. I'd asked Zulu a few weeks before about granting blanket permission for anyone to bind her fic, and for the typesets to be shared. I casually said, "Sooo I mentioned this to the fanbinding group. If someone does want to send you something, can I share your address? And can I suggest they send cards/stickers to L?" (Yes, and yes.)
We started a separate thread in the Discord server to keep up with the planning. Some collaborations started to come up. I'll typeset from South Africa or southeast Asia or from next door in the next US state, you print and bind, we'll collect some of the American books for a mass mailing to Canada. I don't have time to bind, but I can contribute to shipping costs. I don't know that fandom, but I can take your typeset, and make a copy. I love that fandom but don't have time and materials, but I'll typeset if you bind. At this point, there were more than thirty people involved. New-old fandoms were discovered. Techniques and experiments grew.
I told Bell a little bit. She knew there were books coming. I didn't let her know the full scope, but I figured she could use something good to look forward to. Zulu said one of her goals was to finish all her WIPs before she died. (That hurt my heart. She almost made it! But even at the end, she got distracted by a new fic idea...)
The behind the scenes binding continued. There was negotiating over obscure fandoms, and exclamations over fic for niche favourites. A need for a great deal of baseball theming because Zulu wrote a LOT of ALOTO fic in the last few years. There were anthologies and pamphlets, and tiny books, and large chonks, and an entire collection of every drabble Zulu ever wrote in House fandom.
There was a 100-word hockey RPF drabble bound in a one-page folio with metallic foil details. There was a whole-fandom slipcased pamphlet set of her handful of Friday Night Lights fic. There were Buffy and X-Files fic unearthed from deep in her backlist. There were several bonkers-ambitious binds of her SMAUs, social media AUs of tweets and screenshots that had me throw up my hands and exclaim "how am I supposed to typeset this?"
There were obscure Canadian fandoms encased in the fanciest of marbled paper pamphlets, and a House fic about stolen lunches bound in a brown paper bag. A flower-titled ALOTO fic with a cover patterned like a seed packet. A Yuletide obscure movie fic in silk moire. Firefly fic with a marbled paper inset, and a Stargate Atlantis fic with a vellum dustcover. A crackfic five things fic with a metallic paper DVD on the cover as a Chinese stab binding, from a fandom that needed MOAR LENS FLARE. ("I am sure you know this, Luna," said the binder working on it, "but Zulu is really fucking funny." Yes, yes she absolutely was.)
I can't name every single book because there were more than FORTY of them, but I love every one of them and the care that went into them.
I told you Renegade goes hard.
We drove to nearby city to see Zulu and Bell in August, 2024. They'd just changed up her pain medication and she was having a good day. We had a good visit. I put the pamphlet fic in her hands myself. They'd told her in June that she should expect about a year at most. It would only be three months. That was the last time I saw her in person.
We moved up the projected mailing date from mid-October to mid-September.
We knew, over the September long weekend, when the group chat went quiet, that it wasn't a good sign. I'd kept up a steady stream of pet pictures and other small bits of news. As the summer ended, we had fewer responses from her, and were more likely to just get an emoji back. Morning glory flowers only bloom for a day, and they were blooming outside my back door. I started sending a picture of that morning's flowers to the group chat each day. (And cat pictures. Of course.) I don't know if anyone but me really cared about the morning glories, but it felt like something tangible to hold onto.
The first few envelopes and boxes started to arrive. There were cards and stickers and handknit slippers, and a science facts zine just for L. I told Bell, tell Zulu we love her. And that I'm not sorry I unleashed 30+ fanbinders on her AO3 account.
Bell: (lists off the books that had arrived.)
Me: Oh, so the group shipment from California isn't there yet. Plus at least three other packages I know about.
Bell: Holy shites
Several lovely people found my name in the acknowledgements of more than one fic, and sent me copies, too. (Twenty years in fandom together…) I cried.
We knew things weren't good when Bell emailed to set up a time for a video chat. A few days after the September long weekend, we talked to them face to face, to get the news that they were moving Zulu into hospice care the next day. It would be the last time we'd hear her voice. We knew it was coming, it just all went so much more quickly than expected. She died less than three weeks later.
(But take a look at the dates on the last fic on her AO3 account. In such typical fandom fashion, she was updating her last fic from her hospice bed. A direct quote from Zulu: "The most important thing once I'm there, of course, will be to sort out the wifi situation.")
So, timelines got bumped up by another week. There was a rush for mailing. One international package from Europe got returned to sender without leaving the country due to post office shenanigans, and had to make a return trip, too late for Zulu. The package from Japan made it. The big group shipment box was sent via overnight delivery. It was supposed to arrive on Tuesday. It showed up on Friday, the day that she died, after she was gone. But by that last week, I'm not sure how much Zulu would have taken in about it, honestly. Bell took it with her to supper that night with friends and family to open as a special treat.
There were more than forty books of all sizes all told, from more than thirty people, and I still have about four more in progress myself right now, though I'll never get to put them in Zulu's hands and see her grin and say "Aww, you GUYS…"
But we flooded her with books of her own fic. We deluged her family with her words and love.
The books were on display at her memorial service, along with the quilt that her ALOTO friends had made for her. Also, the jersey she got printed based on her own fic (such a dork, I say with the world's most affection.) The books were all over the front of the room, and it wasn't even all of them. Zulu's mom sent a heartfelt thank you card to be shared with the whole group. The memorial also included earl grey tea and shrimp (two of Zulu's favourites) and a video message recorded to her from one of the actors from A League of Their Own (which I am sure confused many people, but we knew what was up!)
The second group shipment arrived with me several months later, and at least one more book came to me in person at the Renegade retreat, and Bell has them all in a bookcase together. I still have a few more to finish right now.
And, Renegade being Renegade, a couple of people have eyed Zulu's AO3 account and said, "Well, we didn't manage to bind ALL her 350 fic… so far…" And I laughed until I cried, and I am still hugging you all right now Renegade, SO HARD. And you've left a legacy, and you've made a difference. There are no thank you's that are enough. The love is stored in the fanbinds.
I've asked anyone who wants to share what they made to tag it #fanbindsforzulu. If you want to see some amazing things, check out the tag. And if you want to read her fic, and if you want to bind it, she would have loved that, and I would love to see it, too. And tell your friends you love them.
It was an honour to take part in this project. Although my books did not arrive in time, I'm happy to know they still get to be a tangible memory for Zulu's family.
I had the pleasure to collaborate with the typesetters @nightingalebindery, who set the physicist bride, and @dawen, who set a Firefly anthology, for the books I bound.
For this one I decided to try some edge tooling and tooling on the squares. While the tooling the squares does not need any further preparation, the tooling the edges does!
The problem is, that the board can split, if you apply pressure with a narrow tool like, let's say a line tool.
To avoid that, one has to glue something on top, I went with a thicker card stock (not quite board yet, but not that far from 1mm). I glued it all around, let dry and covered the case as usually.
In hindsight I could have left a bit uncovered on the front edge and go for a different way of how to make the corners. That might have been easier, well, next time.
I started out with the cover tooling before I went to the edges. Ever since the book was covered in leather I worked on it on a felted surface so it wouldn't scuff and get scratches.
This also helped to keep it in place for the tooling without having the press leave a mark on the leather. First I blind tooled the line to get a guide. (That below is the line tool, I love the asymmetrical shape)
Then I went over it with the foil on top. The first times I used a wider sheet of foil, but that made it really hard to see the edge. So I cut narrow strips from it that were much easier to handle while also allowing me to see what I was doing. The grove previously blind tooled kept the tool in place and only at the ends (when I thought I'd need to be extra careful) I wobbled away from it.
The lesson learned with this mistake is: Next time, tool the front edge first, then tool head and tail edge and START AT THE LINE YOU ALREADY HAVE!
I have no idea what made me think I would be able to tool from spine to front and on head and tail first and then magically manage to connect both ends on the front edge...
Last were the squares. I marked them up, tooled and only after all was tooled glued in the paste down (this really was the very last tooling, so I wouldn't need to handle the book anymore and could it let dry weighed down).
Overall this went really well. I adjusted the paste down a little cutting it more narrow so it fitted better but I had planned for that from the beginning.
Again a few wobbles of the line, but overall the order of steps worked fine for me.
The cover tooling was a bit wonky, I'll have to figure out how to better mark my cover to align the patterns. I did some test tooling to figure out pressure and check if I was able to get an even coverage. But the trouble started when I could not think of how to mark up the cover properly. I found some dots I could impress on the leather to have some guidance, but by now I'm nearly convinced I'd better had eye-balled it completely... or perhaps used the foil to mark the design on the backside and then just not lift it at all before I'm done. I did no blind tooling for the stamps and only one pass with the foil, when the coverage was only somewhat satisfying. No blind tooling and just one pass with foil is not ideal, but I did not want to ruin it so I leaned into that more or less 'used' look it has now.
The cover tooling was a bit wonky, I'll have to figure out how to better mark my cover to align the patterns. I did some test tooling to figure out pressure and check if I was able to get an even coverage. But the trouble started when I could not think of how to mark up the cover properly. I found some dots I could impress on the leather to have some guidance, but by now I'm nearly convinced I'd better had eye-balled it completely... or perhaps used the foil to mark the design on the backside and then just not lift it at all before I'm done. I did no blind tooling for the stamps and only one pass with the foil, when the coverage was only somewhat satisfying. No blind tooling and just one pass with foil is not ideal, but I did not want to ruin it so I leaned into that more or less 'used' look it has now.
I also went with the simplest design, but here are a few more ideas I toyed around with. (I just used the tools and an ink pad to better visualise them). The amount of dots and alignment issues waiting to happen were the reason why I stopped when I did XD
Blackpool - detail shots
(of parts that have room to improve ^^')
See the finished binding here
First is the only structural issue I have with this binding. You can see how the first sheets of the book block are lifted along with the cover. Ideally they would stay flat. How the pages lift is a sign that there is tension on hinge and endpaper. This is not really surprising considering that the book was not intended to become an English case binding (I believe that's the term). The hinges are also too narrow to allow the cover to lift comfortably, but since it's not a tightback binding, the book still opens nicely and it causes no issue when reading.
The next one is paring. I used a Schärffix and did not manage to pare a smooth gradient with it, you can still see the lines. On top of that, I did not notice when a bit of pared leather stuck to the roller part of the paring tool and it created those small indents by lifting the leather there higher than the rest, hence taking more leather off in that part. The bit that stuck to the roller is something I simply need to pay more attention to, the other one I'm not sure on whether to give up on paring a gradient with the Schärffix or put some effort in and get good at it. There is always the option of a paring knife (which I will need to get better with too, but that's another issue)
The rest are simply lack of experience in hand tooling.
I de-greased the surface by rubbing it with alcohol to make sure the foil would stick everywhere. But I still need some training with even pressure on the tools. My test tooling took all confidence from me that I could hit the exact same spot 2 or 3 times in a row to allow for blind tooling and to passes of foil tooling. The lines of these stamps are so thin that I had a hard time to avoid shadowing with only the blind tooling and one pass with the foil. I got the best results with just a single layer of foil so I went with that. Still the imprints are not always deep and clear enough. I tried a few times to add a second layer of foil, but the images turned out smudged and shadowy. It might have been a bit too ambitious to start with stamps like those.
For the last ones I used a line tool that was a joy to work with. Much easier than the first time I tried it. The lines are still a bit wonky. First I tried with a piece of board for a guide, but that turned out to be more of hindrance than help so I just blind tooled and then went on with foiling. I wanted to try this for ages though and finally got around to do it.
What thought of hybris made me think I could tool head and tail of the edges first and then manage to connect both with a line on the front edge I don't know. The smart move would have been to tool the front edge of the case first and then, starting from there, tool from the front corner towards the spine, but well, apparently that's not me.
I greatly enjoyed making this hairy volume of Rats in the Walls. The vision was there way before I knew how to get there and I ran into a couple of challenges on the way.
First one was what to use for hair. I was looking at that wool stuff that's used for fake beards. They had the right colour... but no shop I could get it from in time had it ready for pick up. So I went to improvise and ended up in one of those shops where they sell wigs and fake hair for extensions and braiding. Sadly one is hard pressed to find 'hair that is somewhat 'sickly street rat' coloured and I admit, I was shy asking with that description simply for not wanting to be rude. After studying rat fur colours for a while I ended up getting two colours and just mixing them.
With that first issue of retrieving hair solved, I had to figure out how to get it onto spine. Fake beards get glued on... but I did not trust myself to not make a mess out of this and also I wanted something more durable. I decided on poking holes into the leather and check what it would look if I pulled it from the outside in and from the inside out, but soon settled on pulling the hair from the inside out and rather check 2 different ways on getting there.
First one was using a tiny crocheting hook (I got one with a hook of 0,5mm) and a mending needle. Both worked, but the crocheting hook gave me more of the scraggly look I was going for. The mending needle simply did the job too well. It left me with a lot of hair to deal with on the inside too which would have left with quite some bulk on the spine.
(first and second picture: left shows the result with the mending needle, right the one with the crocheting hook. Last picture shows the backside with the result of the mending needle right and the crocheting needle left)
Next question was, how to trim the hair to not make it look too straight.
I finally came up with a dermaplaner! Just the right amount of dull blade to thin the hair without making it look cut too neatly cut.
Testing was done (and i was running out of time) so now it was picking the right leather.
I have a beautiful brown leather that's easy to distress and looks gorgeous, but it was rather plain. I also had that blue fish leather, that was the wrong colour, but looked so much more cursed with the hair. I went for the fish leather and tried dyeing it with different alcohol dyes. Which somewhat worked?
At least it didn't look quite as blue anymore!
After outlining the case on the fish leather, pre-punching holes, adding hair and gluing them on the inside, add rat tail (braided leather strips) and cover the case.
It took time, but after gathering experience with the samples it was not really a challenge.
Covering the case was a bit different though. I had not expected the dye to 're-activate' when getting moist. But now I know fish leather printing makes some intriguing scaly pattern (especially if you used different colours to dye it before XD)
Once it was dry enough I glued some draw sheets to even out the leather turn ins and cased in
The very last step was trimming the hair, but I enjoyed the look of this long haired spine very much.
I did some graphite edges again, this time going for a mirror finish (I'm still not sure they couldn't be even more shiny).
(The 2 pictures above show the difference between the graphite edge on a trimmed but otherwise untreated edge and a trimmed and sanded edge with burnished graphite.)
When doing all 3 edges, I always start with the front edge because that's the most difficult one to do without making too much of a mess when it's curved from rounding the book.
My process is first of all sanding (so much sanding in bookbinding).
I started out sanding with a 120 grit and worked my way up to 400 before applying a graphite-paste layer. There are pre-made liquids for graphite edges, but I mix my own batch each time, because graphite powder is what I have, so I use that and it's not really difficult to mix it with a thin paste.
It looks pretty patchy before polishing, which is perfectly normal.
When applying the graphite paste the edges should be dust and fuzz free to avoid weird specks on the finished edge. The issue with those specks is that they are usually thicker than the rest and tend to flake off.
Next is waiting for the graphite-paste to dry a bit and then start polishing with a wad of cotton or any soft fuzz-free cloth until the edge is shiny and no graphite comes off anymore.
My graphite paste was a tad too thin though. I polished it, but noticed after a bit I wasn't getting a good coverage on the edge. So I just added another layer, let it dry again and polished some more.
This time I really wanted to see if I could get a mirror finish by burnishing the edge with an agate burnisher. If you do this, make sure your tool, agate burnisher, bonefolder or whatever you use, is clean and unmarred. it's terribly annoying to get scratches on the edge at the very last step.
I finished up with a thin layer or wax to protect the paste from getting reactivated, polished and burnished again with cloth and agate.
I'm not sure that's the best it can be, but it certainly is more shiny than the merely cloth polished edge.
Look at what I found sitting in the rain at a flea market.
Tiny board paper shears!
(Here they are sitting on a A4 paper for size reference.)
They are terribly cute and I could not leave them behind.
While they were originally intended to cut photographs, they will serve me well when making tiny books. Both are in surprisingly good working conditions. The blades are not even that dull (which I had actually expected). The blade on the larger one can be taken off for sharpening, the small one gets the blade part taken off completely.
Both cut 4-6 sheets of paper easily and without issue too.
I'm on a quest now to acquire more tiny workshop tools. So this is where I am so far. I have a small finishing press too, but I'm not sure it would rank as tiny, since it's not that much smaller than the 'common' type.
Paper and leather haul from the Bookbinders Fair in Deventer
I got a beautiful selection of hand marbled papers by Papier Prina
(if you're not familiar with her papers, I highly recommend having a look). 5 of the ones I've got are second-rate/ dry runs and honestly, I can only tell with one.
I also got some painted sting ray leather, a few eel leathers for experimenting, two colours of Dubletta book cloth that I was curious about and some of the rare left over Duo Flieder.
Case repair for a paper blanks notebook before giving it a new text block.
Some might recognise this cover, because I've done a refill for this very case before. Now after 2 years, the case has suffered a bit from wear and cutting out the old book blocks, but it's actually still in overall good condition.
The turn ins have been cut a bit, but mostly the cover has gotten a small tear in the hinge area. Which is honestly to be expected after years of use.
So first i cleaned out the old glue and paper remains and then I decided to reinforce the hinges by adding a piece of cloth on the inside. In order for the cloth not to show but still adding strength I lifted up the turn ins of the original covering paper.
and cut the cloth just a tiny bit shorter than the case was high in order to be able to shove it under the old turn ins.
If you do this I strongly recommend to do a dry fit to see if your cloth is actually short enough to fit under. Once the glue is added on the cloth it's much harder to cut away just a little bit and if the cloth is too long and bulges this will mess with how well the book opens and closes.
Once I was sure of the length I glued it all up and just fitted it under the turn in's and glued it to the case and the old turn ins on top again before weighing it down between boards and with a non-stick layer on top to let it dry flat.
Last I cleaned up the cover to let it shine again and added the book block (no pictures of the casing in here because it works just like casing in any other perfect bound book block)
Sometimes all a notebook needs to shine again is a quick wipe down....
The covers of Paper Blanks notebooks are pretty sturdy, even after a year of use when the notebook has been filled they often still are in good condition. At a friends request I cut out the old book block and added a new one. The cover looked so dull though so I figured, can't hurt to try and clean it up a bit and look at that. All nice and shiny again.
I was a bit stumped on what I wanted to do for lid decoration. Just leaving it plain felt boring, but I also didn't want to go too overboard design wise. Just something simple, fast and easy.
(One of the designs I came up with was a splintered design that kind of drifted outwards from a focal point... no pictures of that because a) it didn't look right and b) I wanted a simple design!)
I had to remind myself a couple of times to keep it simple. In the end I didn't completely succeed with that, but I also didn't a completely fail.
WIP - lidded boxes for endband silk
Part II: gluing in the divider and covering the boxes
My first idea was to have the boxes set with fixed divider, one in the middle and others to make smaller compartments so the cards the silk is wrapped on, don't allow for one to slip under the rest. Finally I decided against that in favour of sliding dividers.
I used some board for spacing the middle divider though. Because in my experience that one is easily glued in with a bent and I don't want that.
Once the middle divider was glued in I could cut all my materials. I could have covered the outside of the box before gluing in the divider too, but it's much easier if you don't have to pay attention not to get glue on the cloth. In this case I used just one large slip of cloth and glued it on in one go. it's easier to do this in parts, but I like it a little better if there's only one overlap of cloth.
I only cut it a tiny bit too long.
But that shows in only one of the boxes. Otherwise it came out really nice and even with a nice mitre cut on the corners.
For the inside I picked a pretty paper (we'll see how well that holds up with the sliders... ) and decided to get largest part done in one go so the paper shows mostly one ongoing pattern.
I know from experience that the divider would be the part where board is most likely to flash through because I rarely get it completely right. So I took no chances and just gave the board there a black coating before I covered the short sides.
With paper stretch using one piece of paper that needs to be exactly right to look even is not simple. It's a tricky to calculate how far the paper will stretch and how much extra is needed to work the paper around the edges and into the corners... so I just didn't.
I made a wild guess and got lucky.
If you are wondering, I chose to have the paper start rather deep because those boxes are stackable and I don't want par that fits into the lower box to damage the paper and scuffing it for not reason at all.
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