Bookbinding: Avoiding the Sophomore Jinx

There were quite a quite a few anxious moments and opportunities for self-criticism in making thelll first book. When going through all the boo-boo’s with DW, she commented- “I hope you aren’t going to point all that out to everyone you show it to”. This is a reflection of her longstanding exposure to and irritaton with that aspect of my behavior. Mind you, overall I considered myself quite pleased with how it turned out, but wondered if it was a case of beginners’ luck. With all that,  I was chomping at the bit to have another go at it. 

By stage, the learning points were:

Layout- give wider margins. It looks better and provides more room for trimming if steps further along the way require it.

End pages- The paper chosen has a wonderful feel, color and pattern, but it is delicate and will use sturdier paper for future projects 

Glue- This part generates the most anxiety. I’m grateful for Nori paste as it works well with leather binding and allows for repositioning- essential feature at my level. PVA thick glue is recommended for rounding the spine, but I had not been able to find it. 

Cover inside corners-  A clean well done leather corner requires thinly pared leather, sufficient material to cover the board corners yet not have so much overlap as to be bulky and the excess to be cut off at a 45 degree angle. and The leather cover for the most part wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I managed to avoid gouging the skived portion.  Thanks to experience sharpening chisels and knives, frequent sharpening compensated for inexperience in paring leather.

It is a messy activity that will best be done in the shop where leather shavings can coexist with sawdust rather than my office/work area in the house.

Rounding the back. On the first book, I waited too long to round at the PVA nonthick glue had already set. This time I started to shape the back while the glue was still sticky to the touch. Thanks to a YouTube video, the leather to board glue up went smoother with the case spine up on the vise.

I made sure to have a 45 degree cut and sufficient pared material past the corner tip with the resulting improved inside of the cover.

This went better on the second book but still suboptimal. While the rounding was more even and symmetrical, the lateral mushrooming was not achieved.

Whether I did not use the right glue (PVA thick is specified in the instructional guides consulted, but I could not find), did not pound the lateral pages sufficiently (I don’t have a sufficient feel for what is excessive force and stopped when it seemed I was venturing in greatest enemy of good is better territory) or it’s due to the paper (I get the feeling this is the real culprit- double sided luster finish material is not that flexible. As the ribbons were correctly placed and outer edges of the book and the angled corners more accurate, now the spine inlay joint could be well defined and I could make use of the brass edged boards made for this step.

Making inlays for the ribbon were made too deep on the second book,

Fortunately, DW and I decided we like the look, so might do that on purpose in future books.

As I did not have to re-shape the block, the second book is  ⅜ inch taller and 3/16ths inch wider. The image margins are much better and are square.

I’m lucky that the first book wasn’t a loss. The second book is much more presentable; dare say, I’m pretty happy with it.

I’d love to sink my teeth into another book, but the Holiday season is just about upon us. So a third book will have to wait until next year.