zhalfirin-binds

[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.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Backing a book with mull

While pretty much any cloth supports the spine area of a binding the starched mull often used by bookbinders has a few specialties.

Unlike pretty much EVERY other material the mull is used with the warp thread across the spine, not parallel to it!

This is to further increase the stability of the spine construction and also helps with the book opening nicely. There are different qualities to be found with the open weave mull I use. The simplest one is: 1 warp | 1 weave thread the next stronger one: 2 warp | 1 weave thread and the strongest one (afaik) 3 warp | 1 weave thread

This allows the mull to be torn to size easily along the weave thread.

Now when I have mull all along the spine it can happen to 'peek' out under the endpapers after casing in and pasting down. To avoid that I cut the ends at a slight angle. It's really not much but that will hide the edges of the mull and give a clean look all around the endpapers.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Dated organizer to blank notebook

I'm re-filling organizers from 2023 for a friend with blank paper. The inner book is just made up from copy paper, perfect bound and cut to size. The covers were too pretty to throw away though. So I cleaned them out and removed all the things my friend didn't like. When taking the books apart, I accidentally got off too much of the board of one of them, which would have resulted in a very visible step. So I decided to fill it in with some cardboard, pressed it in and was done with the repairs there.

The other one had a front flap that never quite fit when there were too many additional notes tugged inside. So my friend asked to get rid of that. The flap was a 2 pieced thing consisting of a piece of board as wide as the book block was thick, to get a solid and firm front and the flap that had 2 magnets inside to keep the flap from dangling. I kept the board for covering the front and cut the rest off. The I peeled off the board of the front piece to get some spare paper to make turn ins. With this book that was pretty easily done. Whatever they used to glue the paper in place, id did not stick too well to the board.

[zhalfirin-binds]

French double core endband as described in Greenfield and Hille's 'Headbands: How to work them'

I'm not entirely sure I did them right. The endband I was introduced to as French double core a few years back had 2 cores, but somehow I ended up with 3. Despite leaving some room for improvement, I kind of like how it came out though and for the first (the other one is still waiting to be done) I'm happy. It worked way better than anticipated.

The start was a bit fiddly, but after a few tie downs it got better.

I used a 2 mm and a 1 mm leather string for cores and a 'working thread' (which is not what the thread being wrapped around the cores is called in the book, but a secret different thread that becomes the bead). Next time I go for a smoother thread though. The 2mm is a bit coarse and the silk catches on it. I guess that's why they usually use bâtonnets made from paper. They just don't have any rough parts for the thread to catch on.

Only the backside looks a bit like a mess, but then, no one is going to see that when I'm done.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Box making - the lid

I built the box with the lid meant to sit level with the outside walls of the box and figured, easiest to just use one sort of paper and get this quickly finished. But then I had the splendid idea 'What if the colours would alternate?'

Of course I'd have to use the cloth again then and there were some hindrances like, the lid was rather tight fitting at the corners already. so I could not have any thicker material like cloth there.

But also, the lid was so neatly sunken in, I didn't want it to stick out so the cloth needed to be sunken in to avoid that. I carved out a cloth thick layer from the both sides of the lid board just tiny bit more than the paper on box was wide to sink the cloth in.

gave it a quick dry fit (which it passed) and glued it in.

Naturally I realised right after I had everything glued in place and dry, that it would have been much smarter and easier to work with, to do the whole length...

Now I had to deal with a fucked up paper shape for the upside and really unneeded stretch in the direction where I could not afford it. I decided to role with what I had now and came up with this wonderful cover paper meant to just fit perfectly after I guestimated the length and the needed cut outs and worked with the tiniest overlap to the sides.

Surprisingly this was not my worst decision in bookbinding/box making and it worked better than expected. Not perfect, but still.

Out of 4 corners only 1 had a tiny gap!

Next up was something to lift the lid. I had a monkeys fist lying around that I made some time ago and decided to use that. It took a bit convincing to get the cords through the small, punched out hole in the lid and frayed the cords , like I'd do with a book sewn on cords so the rather thick thread would glue down as flat as possible.

Now all that was left was cutting a piece of paper to size for the inside, gluing down the frayed cords and the paper and let it all dry weighed down to avoid warping . In the top picture of the finished lid you can see how bad it warps while the paper is still damp, so behold the dry stack meant to convinces the board to dry out flat.

[zhalfirin-binds]

box making

Fixing minor issues

I had 2 issues with this box.

For one the length of the paper was hard to calculate and I'm not much for calculating anyway, so I ended up with uneven edges. Which is not a big thing, but it annoyed me.

Since I worked with a coated book cloth (which is always pretty forgiving) the fix for that was simple enough. I took the width of larger edges with one of those 2 pointed compasses,

and used that to mark the cut line on the completely dried out paper.

Now all I had to do was to peel away the paper and clean the cloth a bit.

The other was board flashing through where I had cut the corners a tat too short.

I just dabbed some paint into the gap, wiped the excess paint on the cloth of and now it's pretty much invisible

[zhalfirin-binds]

Paper can stretch a lot.

I keep forgetting how much that can be and working with elephant hide paper is good at reminding me.

Above you see dry paper on left, dampened paper on the right, you can clearly see the difference in height

Below you see: on one side dampened paper on the left (note how its curling up, I moistened the other side too and waited until it relaxed again), dampened paper on the right

Below both papers are dampened and have relaxed, they are not the same height

This also shows another reason why one should pay attention of grain direction in endpapers really well, I think. If the paper stretches out front, as it does with grain direction parallel to the spine, that stretch is not much of a problem.

If it spreads towards head and tail, it sort of fans out and creates a weird waviness in the endpaper.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Covering a box with inset lid (lid is still missing though) (BE WARNED: This is not a beginner friendly version with smaller bits and more time to work before glue dries)

After cutting everything mostly to size, I started out covering the bottom and the narrow sides.

Then I cut free the corners of the bottom and covered the edges around the bottom

There's not much to those bottom corners though. No jig, no complicated maths to do, I just took my scissors and snipped off the corner. The only thing to be careful about is, not to snip too close the corner, if there's a tiny bit of cloth left it's perfect.

The finicky part was when I got the upper edges when I had to do the turn-ins. I forgot that I would have to adjust my cutting for that inner step part and hadn't dry-run it before. Well, there was no dry run possible now since the cloth was all glued up already and I had to remember quickly.

It worked well enough though. Next to go in was the bottom piece. I picked a coated cloth because I wanted something sturdy and durable that can be wiped down (much less stressing about glue stains that way!)

I pre-cut the bottom piece just a liiiittle too large, so the corners would run up the sides a bit. Usually I'd do it a bit different, but in this case I will have paper go down all the way to the bottom, so I decided it was okay to cut it this close.

Now I went to cover the walls. I used something called elephant hide paper (in direct translation). It was, and in parts still is, commonly used for library bindings because it's pretty sturdy, can be cleaned with a damp cloth, is somewhat water resistant and doesn't look grubby quickly.

If one gets to use it, I think it's also nice to work with because, unlike other papers, it doesn't tear quickly either. There is just one thing one needs to keep in mind. It's a thirsty paper, best to dampen it before using or it will curl up terribly and might even get glue on the show-side due to that curling.

It also stretches quite a bit so that needs to be expected too. On the upside, once moistened one can do a fitting test, see if it's cut short enough and adjust, if need be. It won't stretch any further with glue applied and it's still sturdy enough for creasing for example.

I started with the narrow sides again and this time had a proper overlap to the side walls to have the corners covered and no board flashing through. Last parts were the long sides which were glued in one piece from inside out. Starting at the very bottom inside the box, working in the step and then have the paper run down on the outside to end a few mm short of the edge.

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - The Grief of Stones (nothing special about the process, so i have no pictures of that)

Only a shot of my somewhat rumpled backing. (I did not do my best job there, but well, it is what is now.)

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - The Murderbot Diaries

Just picked colours to go with the leather and the endpapers. No special step involved aside from sewing endbands on a loose core. (I usually cheat and prepare glue on cores to sew around, if you don't know what I mean, I have a post with pictures of what they can look like here).

[zhalfirin-binds]

Making bâtonnets from paper is a great way to get sturdy and easy to handle cores for endbands. It takes a little practice to get them even but is actually quite easy and really handy.

Best thing is, you don't need to keep different core sizes at hand you just make them as thick or thin as fitting for the book.

(also check out the great work of the source: ibookbinding)

Source

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - Mumins wundersame Inselabenteuer

cleaning out turn in's

I'm often not overly precise with my turn in's. I keel them rather large, because I tend to get skew and I'd rather clean them up later, than cutting it too close when casing in. I don't know what happened to have the front this large, but since it was already covered in glue I went with it as it was and just cut it back once it was dry.

I used to do that while the paper was still wet and it can be done, but the paper always tended to tear and did not come off cleanly so, if I have the time to wait, I do just that and work on the dry paper. I cut the turn in back and if there are overlaps to the other turn ins, I peel them up gently as to not lift the other paper. The board always suffers a bit from that and gets all rough and sometimes has loose bits then.

The loose bits I pull off the roughened parts can be smoothed down with a bone folder so the different texture does not show through thinner papers.

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - clamshell box of my binding of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Preparing the boards

There was a lot of meticulous cutting involved. I tried to be as precise as possible and kept all the cut parts because I figured one of the difficult things might be to get all the long and slender parts on the case without getting any skew. So I glued one piece and used cut out parts for spacing.

I feel like the spaced design with black and white spaces (the ones to go and the ones to keep for this design) have appeal too though. So that might be an idea for another design.

One thing I learned with this design was. Check if you have a paper that works with what you're planning. I could have gone with one plain colour, but I wanted a pattern that kind of worked with the paper that was already on the book as well as sort of reflect the inside.

Turned out many did not... especially with the marbled papers it was often hard to discern the title.

[zhalfirin-binds]

Clamshell box for my bind Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Parts I messed up (and mostly fixed)

I really love how the clamshell box turned out, still there are a few parts I messed up.

On the first cut I was stupid. I had marked up my paper, taken care I the colours where I wanted them to be... and then I cut off the turn in of the very first onlay T_T

I solved this by covering the edge with the cut off piece. At least it had the same colouring and as long as you don't look at the edge from below it's not really visible.

Next up I cut one pieve holding it the wrong way around. When I cut out the H I didn't pay enough attention to the way I held the paper. Turned out the more greenish side pointed now to the right instead to the left. Perhaps no one but me would have noticed, but it bothered me to no end. This could have been no trouble at all.... but of course I chose to make the H not completely symmetric so it was.

I chose to turn the piece around and tape the cut of part to where it should be before gluing it on. You can still see it, but you need to go flaw hunting. (The slightly crooked cut of the upper part of the H is much more obvious imo)

Like with the position of the line that serves as part of the k and the y. I wanted it to look like in the first picture. The line ending with the tip of the k wedge and the upper tip of the y wedge... but I forgot I did this on purpose and like an idiot I've hot stamped a line into the cloth that could not be hidden anymore. So the position in the second picture is what I have now.

Also I slipped and left a bonefolder mark. I still hope that might just smoothen out a bit over time (not sure that will happen, but I can still hope!)

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - The Crown of the Summer Court

case construction (long post under the cut, see the finished bind here)

Did I ever mention I hate sanding? Well, I did a lot of sanding for this bind. Sadly I forgot to take pictures of all the steps, but I'll try my best to fill in the gaps.

The series of steps jumps a bit back and forth and feels reversed at times, because I needed different measurements to do different step on another part of the bind.

Basically I started like I always do, with the spine stiffener and a piece of paper to gather the case before covering. Only this time there was a bit more to think about. I knew I wanted a thaumatrope on the case and it should not be a dangly bit, but still removable. Also it should not stick out too much (preferably not at all to avoid damage to the thaumatrope). To achieve that I planned on using a magnet and sink one into the board and sandwich the other between card board on the thaumatrope. So part of the board thickness was simply dictated by the thickness of the magnet. I was in luck to have some really thin neodymium magnets and still the boards ended up ~3mm, which is massive for an A7 sized book.

The case is made of 2 different kinds of board, one solid 2,5mm the other layered to make a cut out easier.

Here you can see the different levels of the front board . A thinner base with an inset magnet, covered by cardboard so the magnet will not show through (maybe that is doable by working the inset neater but I have not managed that so far so I went for the additional cardboard) On top a thinner grey board to accommodate for the thaumatrope, so it would not stick out (too much).

The small ledge was cut back later when I trimmed the boards to fit the book block.

I also sanded the edges to a bevel so they would not look as massive as they actually are.

To get smooth paste downs I also sanded the paper used to connect the boards. Which later proved unnecessary, because I decided to glue in more cardboard to even out the cork veneer, which is comparably bulky and left too much of a step for my liking.

Next up was covering the front and back board with a nice base paper. Naturally I had nothing I liked. I considered the same paper as the endpapers.

I tried the front...

... and backside

While I think both are actually okay, neither made me really happy. Eventually I set out to make paste papers. The idea was to get something with earthy colours in the 'root' area, a yellowish colour in the trunk height and some leafy green in the upper part.

Lesson learned in this session: - patterns are harder than you imagine them to be - getting colours right is harder than you imagine it to be - size matters! if you have just a small area to show some colour shift. use paper only a little larger than needed to get all the colours you want/need on it.

The winner was some fooling around when I had actually given up on my idea and a sunrise/sunset pair of papers turned out nicely. I checked with the patter I cut for the cork veneer and it fit surprisingly well.

I was a little worried for the paper to tear in the recessed area. but it was trouble at all to work the paper in there. Still to keep the edges crisp I cut the cut out circle a tiny bit smaller and put it back in the recessed area to let the paper dry with a weight on top.

By the way, the papers have not been waxed! Since I wanted to glue another layer on top and most of the paper would be covered again, I didn't want to seal the surface.

Next step was preparing the cork veneer with the cut outs. I had started with some scribbles on paper and simply used those to trace on the paper backside of the cork paper. To not get confused I had marked front and back before drawing anything and hatched the areas that were to cut away.

The gluing it self was easy on the spine and then I realised, that I could not just cover the front in glue and lay down the veneer because I'd never manage to just apply glue to the parts where the cork was meant to be. So working one side after the other I dabbed the glue on to the veneer in midair while holding it up. It works, but I really can't recommend that.

The turn-ins were easy after that though. For the second bind I applied glue to the whole of the cork paper. Which wasn't much better to be honest. With all the tiny bits and pieces I had glue pressing out to the front and smearing a bit to the cork. Fortunately the material is rather forgiving to glue stains though.

Last I leveled out the inside of the case with cardboard. This time I remembered to bevel the cardboard on the hinge side to soften the step there!