by Steve | Aug 21, 2011 | Bookbinding |
Over the past week I’ve been putting together all the ingredients for some small flat backs. The book blocks have been sew and glued up and I sliced up the paste paper I made a couple of weeks ago and used it to cover the cases that I’ll be putting the book blocks in. I’m going to add headbands to the book blocks but because these are meant to be lightweight journals I’m just going to use pre-made headbands that will just be glued in. Once that’s done, I’ll add the endpapers and then I’ll case the book blocks in. The photo below shows most of the finished parts before assembly.
by Steve | Aug 7, 2011 | Bookbinding |
I’ve got several sheets of paste paper and paper I’ve applied color to with acrylics sitting around and I’ve been trying to decide what to do with it. Making some flatbacks seemed like a good idea, the paper will be used on the covers. For those of you who may not know what a flatback is, jut think of a standard hard cover book. While I use wood, metal and polymer clay for most of the books I make but I do actually like this form and I make them all the time.
These will be about 5 1/2″ x 4″ and I’ve been assembling the book blocks over the past couple of days. The photograph below shows one of the signature in the piercing cradle. This get done very quickly because the layout is fairly simple.
Once they’re all pierced, the next step is to sew the signatures into book blocks. These are five signatures consisting of five sheets each. I’m using Wausau 57 Lb. Vellum Bristol and sewing them onto linen tapes — fairly “traditional”. Here you can see the final stages of a book block being sewn together.
It took me about three hours to pump out ten of them. Here are the book blocks awaiting glue up.
by Steve | Aug 3, 2011 | Bookbinding |
I’m working on finishing up the Woodland Gnome cahiers I’ve been making for JournalFest. ONce the sewing is complete, all that remains is trimming them to width and rounding the corners. In the images below, you can see the final two steps of the process. In the first image, you can see a pile of Gnomes being trimmed to width. The second image is a completed Gnome with corners freshly rounded.
by Steve | Jul 26, 2011 | Workshops |
I’ve started sewing up the Woodland Gnome cahiers and they’re coming along nicely. In the meantime I’ve started working on something else, I haven’t decided what form it’s going to take yet but I’ve made some paste paper as a start. It has been a while since I’ve made some flatblacks and I’m leaning towards making some small ones for swapping at JournalFest.
by Steve | Jul 18, 2011 | Bookbinding, Workshops |
Tonight I wrapped up the printing for the covers of my Woodland Gnome Cahiers. I stopped at a Kelly Paper store on the way home and found a stock to use for the book block which gave me the information I needed to put the colophon together. I created another Gocco screen for it and knocked out the last of the printing on the covers.
