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Progress(?) in bookbinding
Jun. 5th, 2021 03:41 pmI have now made five books. I've never actually made the same mistake twice, but the problem is, I keep making new mistakes! Also I never quite get the hang of glueing the endpaper to the board, so there are always wrinkles. /o\ My favorite part is sewing the signatures together, because you don't make mistakes doing that.
Things I resolved to do differently after book one:
- Punch through the signatures with the awl from the inside, not the outside.
- Not make the spine quite so rounded.
- Shape the bit of thinner cardboard that goes against the spine into a rounded shape before I glue it to the cloth (much harder to do afterwards!)
- Make the boards for the front and back slightly less wide.
- Get more practice glueing the end papers on.
Yep, I've got the hang of all those things now (well, except for the last one).
New mistakes made in subsequent books (I won't make these again, but I'm sure there will be more):
- Forget to keep a sheet of paper between the endpaper and the book pages while I paint glue on the endpaper, so that there are bits of glue caught on the edges of the book pages.
- Not check for and smooth out the small bubbles that can form when you glue the cloth onto the board.
- Work so much on smoothing out the wrinkles on the endpaper that my fingers make smudges on it (from the dye in the cloth, which I apparently touched with not-entirely-dry fingers).
- This one was the worst, because it ruined the shape of the book: be inattentive when I glue the case on, so that the side of it close to the spine is too far in and the pages actually stick out a little beyond the case. /o\
When I watch people glueing the endpaper on Youtube, it all looks so easy? I mean, many of them just close the case down--but when I tried that, there were wrinkles! What I do now is to try to smooth it on, but it never goes entirely well. The basic problem is that the wet glue makes the paper expand and you can't fit it into the space it ought to occupy, which causes wrinkles. Of course, it dries again, but. Arrrrgh.
Things I resolved to do differently after book one:
- Punch through the signatures with the awl from the inside, not the outside.
- Not make the spine quite so rounded.
- Shape the bit of thinner cardboard that goes against the spine into a rounded shape before I glue it to the cloth (much harder to do afterwards!)
- Make the boards for the front and back slightly less wide.
- Get more practice glueing the end papers on.
Yep, I've got the hang of all those things now (well, except for the last one).
New mistakes made in subsequent books (I won't make these again, but I'm sure there will be more):
- Forget to keep a sheet of paper between the endpaper and the book pages while I paint glue on the endpaper, so that there are bits of glue caught on the edges of the book pages.
- Not check for and smooth out the small bubbles that can form when you glue the cloth onto the board.
- Work so much on smoothing out the wrinkles on the endpaper that my fingers make smudges on it (from the dye in the cloth, which I apparently touched with not-entirely-dry fingers).
- This one was the worst, because it ruined the shape of the book: be inattentive when I glue the case on, so that the side of it close to the spine is too far in and the pages actually stick out a little beyond the case. /o\
When I watch people glueing the endpaper on Youtube, it all looks so easy? I mean, many of them just close the case down--but when I tried that, there were wrinkles! What I do now is to try to smooth it on, but it never goes entirely well. The basic problem is that the wet glue makes the paper expand and you can't fit it into the space it ought to occupy, which causes wrinkles. Of course, it dries again, but. Arrrrgh.
