Swatch Book

 

A few years ago I took a couple of sheets of Fabriano Artistico watercolour paper and broke them down to make this little book. It gives me a page size of 190 x 170 mm, and about 24 leaves (48 pages, front and back)

The paper is pretty heavy, about 380gsm I think, and has a pronounced tooth. That makes it a bit problematic for the sort of drawing I do, but it is excellent for watercolour wash.

I'm using it primarily as a swatch book, with examples on each page of various watercolours that I've acquired, so that I can see at a glance how they behave, while keeping the resulting swatches protected from the light.

The examples shown here are Schminke 787 Payne's Grey, and Winsor & Newton Cotman Sepia.

This is a pretty crude and amateurish binding, but I've learned a lot since then. I'd do better next time.

Book-cloth (again)

 

I've made book-cloth before using fusible web to back the cloth with paper. This is a different method.

The cloth is a light cotton fabric that I found in a rack of swatches at Spotlight — probably intended for quilting or something. They're 600 x 450 mm, sufficient to cover a couple of A5-ish books, or one A4-ish.

I lay it out flat on a polypropylene sheet, and then use a spatula to drive a 50/50 mix of acrylic medium and 4% methyl cellulose paste through the weave, right across the whole surface of the piece. 

Then I turn the fabric over, smooth it out again on the polyprop sheet, and with a wide, flat brush I brush more of the paste/medium mix across the whole surface. You can see the brush marks reflecting in this photo.

The paste mix glues it to the backing sheet, but it won't stick to the polypropylene and can be peeled away after it's dried.

When it has dried thoroughly, I'll peel it off the poly backing sheet, roll it up loosely, and put it away ready for later use. The paste mix forms an impermeable barrier so the cloth can be glued to boards without the glue striking through the weave of the fabric. It also provides a measure of protection for the cloth from dirt and grease, and makes it easier to clean.

This process can alter the tone of the colours of the printed cloth, usually darkening them somewhat. That's something to be aware of, and if it is crucial that the colours be maintained, it would probably be better to use the fusible web and paper method.

Cutting Corners

 

When covering the boards for a case-bound book, whether using book-cloth or paper, one needs to mitre the corners to minimize the overlap bulk when it's all folded over and glued down. That mitre needs to be offset from the corner of the boards a bit so that the folds overlap and the boards don't show, and in theory that distance out from the corner is supposed to be 1½ times the thickness of the boards.

I generally use 2mm or 3mm grey board for this purpose.

I designed these cutting templates in Blender and printed them on my Ender 3 in PLA+, and they not only ensure that I'm cutting the right distance away, but also that I'm getting a perfect 45º mitre.

In truth, the tolerances required aren't all that fine, and I could easily get away with just using the 4.5mm offset template (for 3mm board) for both board thicknesses, but it's not really any more trouble to make a separate template for each. So that's what I did.

Piercing Cradle

 

Made another job-doing tool — this time a piercing cradle for accurately stabbing the stitching holes in signatures for bookbinding. It's just MDF and hardboard, so nothing pretty, but it does the job well and makes the task 100% easier and better.

I've made it large enough to cope with A4 page signatures, though since I only have an A4 printer (and thus can only make A5 or smaller folded signatures) 99% of my work will be A5.

Bookbinding Again (but smaller)

 

As may have become apparent lately, I've been teaching myself a bit of bookbinding, courtesy of dozens of Youtube videos, and I've been practicing on the NORTHAG pdf I got way back when the original publication pre-orders for the hard copy were under way.

I printed it in 4-leaf (16 page) signatures using Acrobat Reader's booklet printing mode, and because I only have an A4 printer, the resulting pages are A5 (or slightly less due to the print margins).

I'm very far from being skilled at this craft, but I'm reasonably happy with this result. The stitching is pretty horrible, but that mess is invisible behind the spine stiffener, and the book opens nice and flat. The cover boards are grey-board covered with some printed cotton off-cut I got recently, sealed with a paste/acrylic medium mix.

I don't know that I'll get a lot of use from it, as the reduction in page size necessarily means smaller type, and my eyes aren't what they once were. The smaller form factor might make the book more convenient for travel though, as it's small enough to fit in a (largish) pocket.

Awl

 

Following along with my habit of spending more time making tools to do a job than doing the actual job, today I made myself a little awl for punching holes in signatures for bookbinding.

It's made of oak, a little bit of 10mm brass pipe, and a mattress needle, and it's about 130mm long. I flattened off one side so that it won't roll around and fall off my work table.

2023-06-29
Awl Mk.II

Today I made another awl, for punching larger holes if need be.

The actual spike came from an el-cheapo plastic-handled awl, but it's hardened steel so it should serve well in its fancy new oak handle.

Bookbinding

 

I've been watching a lot of bookbinding videos on YouTube lately, and I thought I'd give it a go.

I've done some bookbinding before, but I never really knew what I was doing — I was just guessing really. This is the first time I've actually followed any sort of instruction. In the photo it's sitting splayed out to dry overnight.

It's a very slender volume, just 48 pages (so 24 leaves), roughly A4. The text block is just a double-fan glue binding; I would have liked to try stitching it, but I don't have access to an A3 printer to make folded signatures of this size. The cover is a bradel binding, and I made the book-cloth covering from a scrap of printed cotton, saturated with a paste and acrylic medium mix to give it some stiffness and prevent glue strike-through.

The boards are 3mm grey-board. I could have gone a bit thinner I think; 2mm would have been quite adequate. They've warped a bit with all the glue, and I'll see if they settle down as everything dries out properly. If not, maybe a bit of clamping will help. And if it doesn't... well, it's not the end of the world.

2023-06-29 — More Bookbinding

This one is a copy of the GORE d100 system retroclone, built via Chaosium's BRP SRD to more or less replicate the game as it was in the early to mid 1980s.

This binding is more successful for various reasons, but not least because I did leave enough space at the spine this time for it to open fully flat

Also, this one is stitched rather than double-fan glued, and it's (roughly) A5.