zhalfirin-binds

[zhalfirin-binds]

Full cloth binding with paper onlay

My latest path to explore on cover decoration. After another bind that I enjoyed greatly I have gotten some more papers that make it easy to be cut in a more organic shape instead of straight lines.

For this bind I had 2 papers to choose from that would both play well with the book. Each in different ways. First was challenge was to determine which field to cut away to make room for a title and make the paper less busy.

Eventually I decided for the one that is not quite as fitting colour-wise, but that I liked more for the cut outs. Cutting the fields away was a slow process, not only because I cut around the bird wings, but also because I checked again and again if I liked the look or if I wanted more of the cloth shining through.

There are no pictures of the actual covering of the case because I had no hands or time for that. It was a challenge though. It sure is easier to work with multiple parts of paper and just see to get them on the case evenly than having the whole flimsy wet paper and try to keep the glue side off the board until it's exactly where it's meant to be. Things to try another time. I'm also considering to try and use a sheet of plastic to keep the case clean. I'll see if that's an option or just sounds like a good idea.

Eventually, like always I tidied up the uneven turn-ins before covering the case with paper. I often use the width of my ruler because it's sufficiently broad and I know the squares will be covered even if I glue the text block in a bit uneven.

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - Apothecaria III Covering the case - take 2

This time I relied on a commercial book cloth with a lokta paper covering the lower half of the case.

To not waste the cloth I covered only the area that would be visible later with cloth. Now I could have just pasted the paper on as well and be done with it. But even with thin cloth there is a visible step from board to cloth and it shows under the paper. When working in straight lines I usually don't mind that step. There's a just a small overlap of maybe 2-3 mm and that's fine by me. I decided to use the natural edge of the handmade paper so that overlap had to be enough to cover the whole area where it was needed (and also allow for some skew, because I know myself and how easily I get some skew in). I learned from experience that I do not like the edge when it's wider or combined with an irregular edge though.

Now getting the cloth on was the easy part, I drew a line with a compass and made sure I hit that line when covering the top half with the cloth. Then I took care of the step by pasting on a paper that had the same thickness as the cloth. I cut the paper a bit larger than needed to make sure the board was completely covered. It's also simply easier that way and I'd have to cut back anyway since even if I had cut it exactly to size, the paper stretches the moment glue is applied and will be wider than the board anyway. I checked in advance if it was square to the cloth and luckily it was so I could just paste it on, press and let dry before cutting the excess paper off.

Now I could add the lokta paper to finish the case, as pretty much expected I got some skew. No board was visible though and it actually plays into the design quite nicely, so I only cut back the turn in where cloth and paper did not align and called it done.

I should also mention that with all that layering of paper and cardstock and cloth on top of each other, I always keep grain direction in mind! If you start mixing the different materials and their pulls can cause serious warp in the book.

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - Apothecaria II

Covering the case with self-made book cloth

which was not a success. I'm still not sure if the issue was with the fabric (a synthetic fiber) the backing material (a Japanese tissue paper that comes with a layer of glue on one side and is actually intended for paper repair) or the method of applying glue.

I did it the usual way, spreading glue on the thinner material and pasting it to the sturdier, when I got the cloth on the board and working it into the hinge and smoothed it onto the boards I noticed airbubbles though. I hoped it would still work out once it was dry, but there was already glue seepage and after drying a bit I had to admit, this would not work.

Curiously only the fabric came off completely and without any issue or resistance. The paper layer was stuck to the boards though and I could still see where the glue had not completely dried out yet.

I decided to not do that again and added a cardstock to counter the one sided pull I had now and that would only get worse when adding a new cover material.

I cut the cardstock a little bit wider and when gluing it on the inside of the case, I only aligned it properly at the hinge side. Everything else could be cut back later. After a good press and letting it dry sandwiched between boards and with a weight on top for maybe 30-60 minutes (I wanted the boards to really stick together) before I kept working.

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - Apothecaria I

Backing endpapers I made the experience that lokta paper can comes in varying thicknesses and is often rather uneven within one sheet as well. That makes it no always suited for endpapers. I really wanted this pattern for endpaper though.

To have a sturdier paper and also mute the light colour a bit, I cut it roughly to size and glued it to a black Ingress Bütten paper for backing. I did not expect that amount of cloudiness, but the effect is lovely imo.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Happy Edible Book Day everyone!

Again I took part in @renegadeguild's Edible Book Day event and proudly present my Book Suzette. I had a lot of fun making it and then dousing it in alcohol to set it on fire.

This whole book is made from crêpe the 'cover' with the crêpe-flower inlays. The 'pages' glued together with more crêpe batter. Only the text is cut from carrots an then baked into the batter (which worked a lot better once I cut the whole letters from one piece instead of cutting thin stripes and trying to to assemble them in the skillet while the batter was not yet baked through but yet solid enough to keep the letters from floating away)

[zhalfirin-binds]

ANBU-Legacy 3.1 & 3.2 trouble-shooting

Those look neat, don't they?

I had to fix them a bit to get there because naturally something went wrong in the last steps. The first and major accident is not photo documented because, well, I panicked and went straight to 'fix-it-mode'. When I hot stamped the title I managed not to notice I had the titling height misaligned. So the title was waaaay too far at the bottom. Which could have been a feature... if it wasn't a book in the middle of the series. I considered a few options: a) keeping it and titling the second book the same way to somehow make it a feature again, BUT, and that's a but I'm happy about, the ANBU Legacy writers are not done yet! So it would be 2 books in a series of x-many.

b) leaving it until I've cased in and then cut the title out and replace it with another piece of titled cloth that now gets the correct height.

c) gluing a titled piece of cloth on top.

I kind of went with (c) or a variation of it. Since I hadn't cased in yet, I added a piece of cloth over the whole length and width of the spine stiffener. Set back from the hinge, just enough to avoid it getting scuffed loose by normal use, and long enough to do turn in the ends. This worked actually pretty well. It is visible, but not at first glance.

The only issue was due to the coated book cloth. Since it's coated it is great to clean and wipe off, this also makes it hard to get something to stick to it though. I had an air pocket on the the glued on piece of cloth. That was a easy fix though. I lifted the cloth ever so slightly and pushed some more glue under and pressed it down again before I left if for the night so I could not mess it up again. (Below you can see the air pocket before it was glued down again. It's that part on the spine where the light catches a bit and goes all the way down to the tail of the book.)

The second was, of course, in the other book. Because we can't have one good copy and one that needed a bit fixing. I must have gotten a bit of glue between the endpapers when I cased in. Luckily I used chiyogami and learned the hard way, that it has a bit of a coating tat will make it stick together if pressed hard enough. So I had a piece of waste paper in between paste down and fly leaf and only had some of the waste paper stick to the paste down. Since I only press the book for a few seconds when casing in and always check the endpapers right after pressing, I noticed quickly what happened and only a bit of the waste paper got stuck. I left it to dry and decided it blended in well enough with the pattern that any attempt to save it would probably make it stand out more. So I just scrapped off the loose bits with a knife gently and left it.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Refilling an old notebook case with a new inner book

I got this notebook with the inner book cut out already from a friend with the request to make a new inner book for it.

First of all I went to prepare the case. Which meant to take out the old endpapers, or what remained of it anyway, to check how big the inner book has to be to cover up any possible marks from the former endpapers and get rid of the pocket that way never in use anyway. I also get rid of the cardstock they used for endpapers to avoid warping from gluing in another set of endpapers on top of the old.

In the process I also peeled off the top layer of the board as well, which was not intended but not a bother either. Once I was done I smoothed down the boards again with a bonefolder and they were smooth enough to not show marks through the new endpapers later on.

For the inner book I know it's going to be a notebook so I went for a double fan binding. Instead of gluing it up with a rounded spine, as the case demands, I went for a straight spine first for ease of working after the glue had set enough to not be sticky any more I trimmed the edges to the final size and rounded the spine.

For rounding it's much the same as rounding a sewn book. One wacks the spine area gently with the flat side of a hammer until it gets a rounded spine on one side, then flips the book over and works the other side. I usually have to repeat this a few to get a nice shape.

I did a quick fitting test before going on, but after ll looked fine I went on.

Then I add another layer of glue, some mull and put it back between boards and under weight to dry completely before adding endbands and an oxford hollow.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Making paper endbands

Sometimes I just want quick endbands instead of sewing them, but I don't have anything that quite fits. In those cases I make endbands from cloth or paper (the procedure for both is exactly the same).

I usually use cut offs and scrap pieces and don't care too much for grain direction there. One could argue that grain direction parallel to the core is best, because it's easier to wrap the paper around the core. But one can just as well argue that the grain should be parallel to the spine to make it easier to attach the endbands to the book block and have them bend with correct grain direction when opening and closing the book. For narrow spines it probably does not make much of a difference, but I can imagine how the 'parallel to the spine' version is more durable and likely to stick to the book in thicker books when there is more motion in the spine and the endbands.

Here I just cut a piece of my thickest sewing linnen, a 10/3 linnen thread, to size a bit longer than the paper was wide. (What thread I use for core largely depends on how hefty the book is.) I used scraps so I didn't bother to cut the paper down, but if I had I'd still see that it's larger the the book is wide so I can cut it back in the end and make them fit perfectly without trouble. I covered only half of the paper in glue, placed the thread on the glue and folded it over light.

At this point the thread is often somewhat curved so I gently pull it straight and work it into the typical endband shape with a bonefolder. How much glue is needed depends a little. In case the glue is rather dry it can be a bit difficult to work it neatly into the fold with no air pockets left. If there is a lot of glue the thread will be more or less swimming in it. The problem with too much glue is that it takes up too much space in the fold and to get the paper worked around the core the glue needs to be pushed out at the ends left and right. Which can take a moment and often causes a bit of a mess.

Once the paper endbands are made they only needs a bit drying. To keep them in shape I wedge them between finnboard (any sturdy board with a clean edge will do though) and let it dry weighed down.

When they are dry enough I curve them a bit with a bone folder. Just curve them a little bit so they follow the shape of the spine (if used on a rounded book like I did here). Then I glue them on, and let them dry. It's not shown here, but I let the book sit on a board or at the edge of the table so there is no pressure on the endbands while the glue is drying.

After the glued one endbands have dried completely the last part is to cut the excess parts clean off. I find this easiest to do with scissors and rest the broad and flat side of the scissors on the book block. before cutting. That way there's no chance to accidentally snip off or cut into the endpapers.

And that's pretty much it. Now one can dab a bit of colour on the edge of the core to hide the different colour, but it's often not necessary because they fit so neatly, the core doesn't show at all.

[zhalfirin-binds]

wip square antiprism box

A last one on how to assemble the lid (for a change I did not forget to take pictures... mostly).

This time I wanted the lid to fit as seamless as possible to the box.

These boxes have a bit variety in how they come together though. At least they do when I make them and I never get them to be really all symmetrical. So I marked one corner and made my adjustments from there to make the lid fit to the box. Same was for the other other pieces. All pieces I had to assemble got marked too before making any adjustments in order to make them fit together in the end.

Next, after cutting a slit into the center of the lid was to prepare the recessed area for the handle. I went for leather again for ease of use (and cleanability... ).

All parts covered and ready to assemble I had to redraw some of my markings because they got cut away or covered up. A thing I was not happy with in the previous boxes was how I positioned the outer and the inset part of the lid and then had to move them in order to get both parts pressed together. Each time they shifted a little bit and didn't fit as neatly as I had wanted them to.

So this time I tried a different way. I cut some thick scrap paper a little less wide (only 1mm less!) as the box was high. Then I rolled it up in a wide roll and used that to support the inset part while gluing the outer lid on top. This is sturdy enough to put some weight on top until the glue starts to stick. I went for 2 smaller ones for initial pressure. That also allowed for a bit of room to not squish the lug. Once it had dried a bit I took the lid carefully off and added another weight, just for good measure and let dry completely.

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - Herbst im Mumintal

Finally I got around to do the last moomins book (moominvalley in november). It took me forever to decide on a leather and cover art but at last the leather is pared and on.

The darker parts in the picture above are from where I pressed the moist leather down with thick iron rulers (like 5mm thick!). I like to do that instead of paring to press down the edge of the leather (tbh a combination of paring and pressing down would probably give an even smoother result, but it's not a fine binding and this will do nicely) another up of this method is, that, if the rulers have been placed carefully, they create a nice guide of where to put the cover papers.

Before hot stamping the title I evened out the backside of the spine stiffener. This doesn't need to be done, but I don't like how the spine curves otherwise and I also wasn't sure if my title stamping would fall on the edge of the turn in. If it did, it ended me up with uneven pressure and could possibly ruin the stamping. To prevent that I picked a thin piece of cardboard the thickness of the leather cut it about 1mm more narrow than the spine stiffener (to avoid a visible edge on the covered spine in case there was the smallest bit of skew). I also cut the piece to even out a bit longer. so it covered a bit of the leather turn ins. I do that to cut the leather away and have a perfect fit for the cardboard piece to even out the leather. It's just way easier to cut the leather straight along the inset piece than trying to cut the inset piece the exact shape of the leather.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Details of my bind of L'Esprit de L'Escalier

This was a rather quick and fun bind of a different take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice by Catherynne M. Valente. In this one Orpheus succeeds to bring Eurydice back to the land of the living.

I like how the covers turned out. It's just the title over and over again and in hindsight I like the backside a little better than the front (naturally).

The technique for both sides was stamping the title with brass letters and heated blocking press wherever I felt like it. I tried it blind tooled first, but that barely showed so I went for a white foil instead If you look closely you can see that one cover has been tooled first white then black and the other first black and then white. Both has nice effects, but I find the black over white is easier to read. Another thing I'd do differently the next time is the time when I hot stamp. This time I had the case completely finished. Tooling would have been a lot easier (and adjustable) if I had tooled that cardboard ahead, cut it to size and glued on after that.

Another thing that I noticed is that the boards warp slightly. Out of the 2 options it could warp, this is the favourable one. I'd still rather have it not warp at all. I know the one-sided pasting of (end) papers causes it, but I'm not yet sure how to oppose it. Perhaps the sequence of what is glued to what makes a difference. I shall mark down what exactly I did the next time. Perhaps working from the inside out and letting each of the layers stretch and relax before laminating them on might work.

Speaking of layers. I like how that worked out a lot. 3 layers of board, grey-blue-grey, perhaps red would have been a better choice, seeing how that pops out, but I didn't have a nice red the same shade as the cloth (just as I did not have a blue the shade of the blue board) and I wanted something blue again to take up the colouring of the chapter headers.

For the chapter headers I picked up the idea of steps, first I thought stairs. Following the many pictures of the myth that show Orpheus and Eurydice on their way out of the Underworld. This story is more about how both grow apart though, so I went for a picture to reflect that.

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - l'esprit de l'escalier

I recently had a chat with some others from the renegade server about the appeal of grey board and how it can be a choice.

So I wanted to do a simple case. No cloth or paper on the cover, but then I thought, that might be a bit bland so I decided to do a layered board from grey and coloured cardstock.

I prepared both boards at once because it's simpler to cut them to size once they are glued than line them up perfectly to fit. In advance I decided for overlap of the cloth piece from the spine and and cut the blue board more narrow than the grey to make room for that overlap.

I did a test fit and marked up the hinge gap before cutting the cloth back (I had kept it a bit longer for that very purpose) below oyu can see the test fitting and and both sides of the board.

To have it easier I added glue to the the board side and glued in the spine piece. The glue stain on the blue board doesn't matter at all, since it's going to be covered up anyway.

The third layer was added last. Then I gave the boards a quick press and weighed it down to dry.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Square antiprism box

Another box another lid

This time I did not put it in a press and just weighed it down thoroughly!

I went with less build up on the lid. Just the lid, the insert part in a different colour, the handle and piece of paper for decoration.

I often struggle with aligning these decorations nicely. This time I thought of marking them up properly and more importantly, on the sides that I can see when gluing everything down!

The square frame was easy enough. I just drew a cross to get the middle of all the corners marked. I marked the middle of each side on the inside of the lid too and applied glue sparsely to the square frame before gluing it down and doing the tiny turn ins. I took care that at least the tips of the frame would be covered by he inside part of the lid.

While the upper part of the lid dried. I prepared the cut out on the lower part. I had the upper lid slit before covering it, set the handle (this time I went for leather right away) and marked the position on the lower part. Then I carved out roughly the shape of the leather pieces that would go in between the two boards.

For assembly I pulled the leather through the upper lid, made sure it fit the cut out. glued it down first on the upper lid and then I glued up and positioned the inset part of the lid in the box. I used a piece of corrugated board cut to height so the inset part would stick just a little out (no pictures of that sadly) put the upper lid on top and waited for a short moment so the glue would start to stick. Once I could remove the lid without getting the inset part too much out of alignment I put weights on top of the lid part to press the sides down and make the edges of inset part adhere to the upper part without a gap.

To be honest? I start to see why the person I saw making these boxes the first time at, makes such oversized lids. It's just easier to get the inset part right (or at least if its a tiny bit off, that doesn't really stand out).

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - square antiprism box

Part II messing up and saving The lid

This one needed saving, badly.

(I forgot to take pictures of all the steps, but I'll share what I have and try my best to fill in the gaps)

All went too well. After cutting and checking the pieces I covered them in cloth and paper, cut the slits and cleaned the excess material off.

I ended up leaving the third square on top out, but there's another one under the visible construction in the pic below, that goes into the box to fasten the lid.

I did a dry fit of the lid band I made from the same cloth I used to cover the box to mark how much room I'd need to sink in the cloth. It's 3 layers of cloth so the band is sturdy and quite thick. Just sandwiching it between the 2 boards would end me up with either a weird bump in the lid or one side of the edges not being glued tot he rest of the lid properly. Since the board is thick it doesn't need to be too neat and I just took out enough material to sink in the cloth ends.

Then I gathered it all and had the fabulous idea of giving it a quick press... Turned out there was too much glue/ too much space for the glue to press through/ too much pressure and I got glue seepage from hell.

The paper was more forgiving about the glue than I could have hoped (yay, for this lokta paper), the cloth was not forgiving at all though.

I tried to clean the glue off, but I didn't really have any success. At all. Eventually I decided to cover it up with a small scrap piece of leather.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Square antiprism box

Part I

(many thanks @queercus-books for finding out what that shape is called XD)

Over a year ago I saw this particular kind of box on the bookbinders fair in Leiden (NL). After having been recently reminded of them, I decided to give it a go and try to reverse engineer them from the pictures I found here (check out her other boxes, they are gorgeous!).

After staring at the original boxes for a bit, it was obvious they were not covered on the inside after gathering them. The pattern was visible in one consecutive pattern. It told me that a) the board was laminate with the patterned paper while still flat and b) the box was made from one piece, not single pieces glued together. For that the corners and edges needed to be scratched, but not cut through.

What stumped me in the beginning was what angle to pick for the walls. Naturally the base of each triangle had to be as long as the sides of the squares it connected to, but a too pointy angle at the tip resulted in long boxes that looked rather twisted than having that bulbous look I was looking for.

The solution (after some more staring and a few more paper models) was 'right angles'! Any square piece of board can be made into this box by marking out the center square and have the walls point away in right angles.

Next I cut away the parts that won't be needed (to make sure I don't cut one of the side walls off, I crossed them out). The net of polyhedrons for this box could look different than this and still give me this shape, but with the way the paper pattern is was not visibly interrupted I'm confident this is the net the Dutch bookbinder has used. (It also wastes the least material)

Now it was scratching the other lines just enough so they would bend nicely, but not get too weak to hold the structure and test assemble. Shallow cuts and test bending every now and then helps to get there (also a metal ruler to keep carving the same line)

Cutting the board half way through ended me up with those gaps though. I''m not sure how much they would show if I dressed them just like that, but I decided to not take the risk and reinforced them with a white paper just in case.

The white paper is really just a white strip of paper long enough to go all around the box and a bit wider than one of the triangles is high so I could have an overlap and reinforcement to the bottom too. Part of why I did this was also to see if covering the body would work as I thought it would. With the angled planes the strip of paper bends up and and down, but in the end it's still one straight strip of paper.

I let it dry a bit before adding another layer, this time with the patterned paper and turn in's on top and bottom. In hindsight I could have cut the turn ins to the inside at an wider angle to avoid them reaching onto the better visible part, but then. this is the first time I made this box so I take that as a lesson learned.

Now all it needs is a base and a lid and I'm done.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Details of my bind of A princess of Mars

Since I kept making small mistakes. Starting with the wrong printing format, then forgetting to adjust the sewing so I could trim (I did not plan for margins quite as large as they are... ). The backing turned a bit wonky too. So I decided I'd try some new things on this book.

I wanted to use the interference colours I have with a different base coat. They come out best with a black or dark ground colouring. Before I used oak gall ink, because that was what I had (and I love to watch the magic happen when it turns from translucent blue to black), but iron, in whatever form, is the last thing you want in a book because it will rust and damage the paper over time.

So I did some testing with a few different inks to check for effect and smudging and eventually switched to a china ink.

The one I got has a really nice black with a slight gloss to it. That should have tipped me off, but I kept going and just painted the edge with the interference colour acrylic ink just to watch how it gathered in the lowest part (I did the front edge with the curve first) and took forever to dry. Trying to help that with a hair dryer only needed me up with a pattern of tiny ripples. When I opened the book I could see the paint had been too thick in some parts and flaked off a bit. I diluted and kept painting, with way better results, eventually, but it's still not completely even on the front edge (the picture here is the 3. or 4. result... I was just tired to keep going at that point). The top and bottom edge look fine though.

Covering the case was a bit of an adventure too for a few reasons. I wanted to avoid and gaps... but first I failed to accurately estimate the stretch of my different papers then I forgot to consider the overlap and figuring out which part should overlap which was a challenge. I went of the green layer that wraps all around the case as top layer so it could cover all pointy edge I had not covered yet. The pointy bits are always the most likely to take damage or get loose. So I had that taken care off. I still have a small spot on the backside that's not the layer it's supposed to be, but it blends in well enough with the other colours.

Another thing that I did not think of was, when I cut the onlays was how overlapping would impact the shape. the yellow was supposed to be a nice slanting hill in the foreground... well, I would have had to keep that in mind for the overlapping toplayer.

I also thought about titling the cover and even got as far as test titling with copper, gold, creme, red and brown (the line between creme and brown, that's red, I know it's turned invisible, bu it is there). None of the results made me overly happy though so I skipped it.

Last thing, but I'm not sure whether it's a mark of the construction or the hinge is too small, the backing not sufficient, is the opening angle of the covers. It opens alright, but when I push the cover a bit down it drags the text block along and it looks like there's too much tension on it to me. I'll have to see for my next binds if I can optimise that.

I liked the spread out design enough to make it a picture for my wall ^^

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP A princess of Mars

The case I had this bind on my table for almost a year, but it's coming to an end now.

After I came up with a design and the picked my papers I cut the design to size for a case sized template.

Then I cut the template down to the different onlays and the middle sections from the paper I want to use. Luckily I remembered to draw on the backside of the paper and also to turn the template around so I'd end up with the design I wanted and not a mirrored version. It really didn't matter that much here which side was front and which was back. More importantly the templates need all to be in the same orientation in order to fit together in the end.

One of my main worries are still the paper onlays in the hinges, more than one layer of them too. I'll see how they hold up to reading. I hope by pressing in the hinges with pressing boards those layers will hold firm enough.

I started with the cloth parts to have the seams covered and maybe avoid cutting it too close and end up with open cloth edges or strangely straight lines in the case. Those two cloths are almost the same thickness so they even each other out wonderfully

When I started gluing on the paper onlays, I aimed to have as few sharp edges open as possible. The idea was to start with the outer areas and have them each overlapped a bit by the neighbouring layer (In hindsight I should have started a bit lower, but well, I did not).

Another difficulty I ran into was the hinges. My boards are about 2,4mm thick, not an issue per se (except for one paper was really not into sticking to the board) but apparently working the paper down and over the spine, messed with the angle and lengths and I had to adjust the onlays to not end up with uncovered board.

I did not consider that I'd need a slightly different approach to avoid 'steps' in the design. when I drew this all up it was all flowing one field into another. It's not quite like that now that I finished. I think perhaps drawing on the front might have been a better choice after all, cut the mark away along the line where there is no overlap and leave the mark where there is overlap to know where you want to glue. I think that would be my approach should I do something similar again.

Of course, despite leaving room for overlap I ended up with a gap. I blame paper grain and unreasonable stretching or lack of it for this. It's not too obvious though and doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would.