hoo-swee-tiang1-blog

[no-name-publishing]

Manacled by SenLinYu

My 8-month marathon on this project has finally come to a close, and I have a ton of pictures to share!

We’ve got a split-board binding with made-endpapers and a built-in tab for extra support. Hand-sewn endbands with silk-finish cotton sewing thread. Done in a millimeter binding style with black leather, and a hand-drawn and -painted floral motif across the middle. Final page count is just under 1.4k. I figure altogether this was around ~50 hours worth of work for the whole binding, from beginning to the typeset to pulling the final book out of the press.

More pictures of the binding and typeset under the cut! If you have any questions or want more info about the process don’t hesitate to ask!

In truth I over measured/estimated the needed length of my leather; this and my poor pare job is definitely visible through the cloth lol, but I’m still jazzed with the result since I’d never touched leather before this. I designed the spread digitally in Procreate, printed it, transferred it to my cloth using carbon transfer paper, then painted using Jacquard Lumiere Metallic gold paint and a refillable .75mm paint pen.

Printed:

Transferred:

Mid-painting:

From starting the drawing to finishing the painting I’d say this part took ~15 hours. Close up of the spine:

Each endband measures around 3 3/4″ (9.5cm) in length and took around 5 hours to complete. The core is 4-ply hemp cord that I coated with PVA glue. Wrapped with a single strand of red silk-finish cotton thread, and one strand of polyester yellow thread, since it’s kinda shiny. Last I counted it was something like 300+ wraps of thread for each band. The uh, cat hair here is just an added bonus I suppose. Like when you buy a new pair of jeans and get that free sticker.

Some progress shots:

The tie downs. I usually will try to tie down every other signature. With 68 signatures you can understand this ate up a metric shitton of thread.

Different angle. Also a good few of the top of the textblock, which was trimmed painstakingly by hand with a wood chisel.

Smooth as a shark etc.

And some shots of the innards!

Each chapter page when through four rounds of printing: 1st through an inkjet, for the floral; 2nd through a laser printer for the number; 3rd through a laminator for the gold toner-reactive foil; and 4thly for the rest of the text.

Half-title page:

One of the attempts to foil a crane. The toner may have been too thin a line for it to work, or perhaps not dense enough tonerly. I don’t have control over that setting on our Xerox unfortunately.

A second shot of a golden crane. This was slightly more successful but lord knows why. Luck.

Fun fact is that this Daily Prophet page ALONE was about 8 hours worth of typesetting. I do all my typesetting in Word, and this page was recreated line-by-line individually. A few of these elements I also had to redraw by hand since there were just no good alternatives online. Anywho though, good payoff.

Nextly, some in-progess shots I don’t have a good segway into lol. A detail you can’t see on the book but I know is there, is hand-dyed scarlet linen thread, drip drying on my shower curtain rod:

Freshly sewn. 68 signatures, no waiting:

Rounded and backed:

And a close up of the special tab/made-endpaper construction. Stupidly I didn’t take any shots of gluing the split boards on, but I think the idea is pretty easy to imagine. Just picture this tab getting glued in between the cover boards.

You can kind of see it here:

And finally, the behemoth on the shelf. This bad boy tips the scales at just over 4 pounds (about 1.8 grams). Glad to have it; more glad to move on with my life.

Thank you for reading!!

[no-name-publishing]

The gift has been received and I can share some pictures of a recent (late) christmas gift for a friend! A copy of away childish things by lettered, typeset by @clovenhoofbindery, with a hand-painted silver ocean motif across the cover. I only have two in-progress shots this time, below the cut as usual.

[no-name-publishing]

What Doesn't Kill you by Hanschen (@whatwememeintheshadows)

So so SO pleased with how this turned out. It's almost one-to-one how I imagined it in my head. If you're a fan of the WWDITS movie then this is a MUST read. Check under the cut for close-ups of the cover and typesetting!

My idea for this specific binding was to replicate the imagery of the peeling wallpaper inside the character's home. I did this by first painting gray paper (using acrylic ink and white tempera paint) to look like water-stained drywall, and then using the same acrylic ink mixture to stain the marigold paper. After I assembled the cover paper I used some coptic markers to finish coloring in the moldy areas and accentuate some of the 'discoloration' and running water.

Transferred the title using carbon transfer paper, used a paper towel to really smudge it out, then darkened it a bit with black acrylic ink. After that was just tearing up the marigold paper and arranging it over the 'drywall', just used wheat paste and put it under my press to dry as flat as possible. No shots of that though, I forgot lol. Anyway, the typesetting, complete with emails and journal entries and text messages:

Thank you so much to @whatwememeintheshadows for sharing this lovely piece of writing with us and for letting me bind you a copy.