Beginning_Bookbinding.pdf

Beginning Bookbinding

Atlantia University

February 3, A.S. XLI

Instructor: Lady Aneira Gwilt (mka Nancy Hulan; hulan@verizon.net)

Woodcut, Hans Sachs, 1568. Reprinted from Marks (1998).

The figure in back is sewing quires onto cords using a sewing frame,

and the figure in the foreground is using a plow to trim page edges.

Materials

Paper:

I use Bienfang Calligraphic Parchment Paper. Any nice paper will do.

Use vellum if you wish and if you can afford it.

Sewing thread:

Linen bookbinding thread is best, but any heavyweight thread, such as hand

quilting or upholstery thread, will work.

Sewing supports:

Medium-weight cord (I use hemp cord) or leather thongs

Adhesives:

Modern: PVA, otherwise known as Elmer’s Glue-All

Period: Wheat paste (for leather covers) and hide glue

Boards:

Modern: Davey board, aka binder’s board (or any heavy, dense cardboard)

Period: Hard wood, such as oak or beech

Embroidery thread (for endbands)

Waxed paper (lots of it!)

Heavy cloth or leather

Tools:

Awl, or thick needle mounted in a wood block

Exacto knife or mat-cutting knife

Needles: long shaft, large eyes

Vise, Black & Decker Workmate, or other squeezing device

Hammer, flat-head screwdriver

Ruler, pencil

Old paintbrushes

Scissors

Steps

Planning & Page Layout

Except for ledgers and other books designed to be written in, medieval books

were always written and illuminated before binding. If you make an error, it is much

easier to redo a few pages than to rebind a book! However, this means you need to

carefully plan your book before beginning any work. How much text do you have? How

many miniatures do you want to do? What dimensions do you want the final book to be?

Before go any further, you will need to select your paper (or vellum or papyrus).

Modern paper that is commercially manufactured will have a grain—the direction of the

fibers. All materials for your book (paper, Davey board or wood boards) must have the

direction of the grain parallel to the spine. Otherwise, your pages will not lay flat and

your covers will warp in strange directions.

To determine the grain, cut a square piece of your paper and bend it. It will be

harder to bend against the grain. Do not assume that the grain will run in the long

direction of the cut sheets—the paper I use, Bienfang Calligraphic Parchment, has the

grain running along the short (8.5-inch) direction.

Next, you need to determine what size quires (how many pages to the quire) and

how many quires you need.

What are quires? In books, pages are grouped into sections before being bound.

Look closely at the top of the spine in any hard-bound book and you should be able to see

the sections. In medieval England, these sections were called quires ; in publishing today,

they are called signatures . These sections are made of sheets of paper folded in half at

least once. The number of pages in each section can vary, but it is always divisible by 4.

A typical number is 16.

For our purposes, it is easiest to fold sheets of paper in half only once, and use

multiple sheets of paper to make our quires. For thick books, four sheets folded in half (to

make eight leaves, or sixteen pages) make a good size quire; for smaller books, two

sheets per quire are fine. Cut your paper to the size you want each sheet (which will be

two leaves, remember), taking into consideration the grain direction.

Now fold the sheets into quires and number the pages . When doing the

calligraphy and illumination, your sheets will get all out of order, and the page numbers

are essential to sorting everything out.

Leave the first two leaves (four pages) of the first quire and the second two leaves

of the last quire blank. We will use these leaves in the endpapering process. Start your

text/illumination on the third leaf (sixth page).

A word about paints: whether you use gouache, acrylic, egg tempura, or

something else, experiment with your paints and paper to see how they respond to slight

moisture and heavy pressure, both of which they will be exposed to during binding.

Sewing the Quires

After all your artwork is finished, it’s time to sew the quires together. Sewing

styles varied by geographic region and time period. In the gothic period, quires were

sewn onto supports, either leather thongs or cord.

Decide how many cords you want on the spine. Three or four are usually fine, no

closer than an inch apart. You will need to punch holes through the folds of your quires

where the cords will be attached, and you will need two additional sets of holes within a

half inch or so of each end of the spine. So if you use four cords, you’ll need six holes.

The cords should be spaced evenly from each other, but grouped slightly toward the top

end of the spine (by a half inch or so).

For this project: The length of the paper at the spine is 8.5 inches. Mark holes at

0.5, 1.75, 3.5, 5.25, 7.0, and 8.0 inches.

Notice that the holes are slightly asymmetric. This ensures that you won’t

mistakenly sew a quire on upside down. (There’s no safeguard against sewing quires out

of order though!)

Mark the locations on the outside fold of the outside sheet of each quire. Line

your quires up next to each other to ensure that the marks all line up. Use an awl or a

thick needle set into a block of wood for a handle to punch the holes through an entire

quire at a time.

If you are using an improvised sewing frame, set the nails to the distances

corresponding to your cords and loop your cords over them. Your cords should be at least

10 inches long or more, depending on the thickness of your book.

Arrange your quires in order, and start with the final quire of the book. Place only

the final quire on the sewing frame. The top of the pages is to your left, the bottom of the

pages is to your right, and the fold is facing you. Make a small loop knot in the end of

your thread, and pull it from the outside to the inside of the fold. Leave only the knot on

the outside of the fold; you may want to put another piece of thread inside the loop so it

doesn’t pull through the hole in the quire.

Your needle should exit out the next hole in the quire. Loop the thread around the

cord hanging in front of the hole, and send the needle back through that same hole.

Repeat the process for each hole. At the final hole (where there is no cord), set the next

quire on top of the first and send the needle through the hole of the next quire. Repeat the

process in the reverse direction for the second quire.

Reprinted from Lhotka (2000).

When you reach the end of the second quire, use a kettle stitch (also called a chain

stitch ) to pick up the loop of thread you started with at the beginning of the first quire.

Then add the third quire, put the needle in the first hole of the third quire, and keep going.

Reprinted from Banister (1975).

When you have sewn all the quires, tie off the thread and remove the cords from

your sewing frame. Congratulations! You now have a text block .

Trimming the Pages

If your page edges are reasonably even and you like the way they look, don’t trim

them. Skip this step altogether.

Trimming can be done now, after the spine has been shaped, or after the boards

are attached. You can mix and match as you like; it’s even possible to trim the pages after

boards have been attached.

In early period, a drawknife would have been used to trim page edges. The plow

was introduced in late period. It’s an expensive piece of equipment but great fun to play

with. The quick and dirty way to trim edges is to clamp the text block in a vise or

something similar and use a belt sander to sand the edges down. Be sure to wrap the text

block in extra sheets of paper to protect it from the clamp. Be careful not to let the edges

of the paper get too hot; the heat can react with the size used in the paper manufacturing

process and can fuse the paper together.

NOTE: Whenever you put pressure on your book, insert sheets of waxed paper

between all the leaves. Otherwise the paint you used may end up sticking the leaves

together or transferring to the opposite page.

Rounding and Backing the Spine

In late period, binders began to shape the spines of their books. This shaping

process enables the covers to sit better against the text block and results in an elegantly

shaped spine. It also prevents the spine from caving in under the weight of the text block

over time.

To round the spine, shift the quires of your book so that the folds of the middle

quires stick out slightly more than the outside quires. (Be sure to insert waxed paper

between the leaves before you start this process.) When you have a nice curve, carefully

insert the quires into your vise or clamp. Leave about an eighth or quarter inch of the

spine protruding from the clamp. The spine should be facing up.

To back the spine, take a hammer with a smooth, slightly rounded face and gently

tap the spine in an outward sliding motion. Start at the center quires and slide the hammer

off the outside quires, forcing the quires to fold over one another. Do not hit hard, do not

hit directly downward, and do not hit the cords (which might cause the stitching to

break). Take the flat of a flathead screwdriver or a ruler and smush the quires near the

cords that the hammer can’t reach.

Reprinted from Banister (1975).

When you are finished, the spine should have a mushroom shape. Next, take some

PVA glue or hide glue with some glycerin added (for flexibility) and spread a thin layer

over the whole spine, except for the rows of holes that have the kettle stitches. You’ll

reuse these holes if you choose to sew on endbands rather than glue them on. Let the

spine dry thoroughly.

Endbands

In modern hardback books, endbands are the decorative bits stuck on at the head

and tail of the spine. In period, when most book boards were made of wood, endbands

helped support the covers, and they also provided some protection for the page edges.

They were usually made of whatever material was used for the sewing supports and were

sewn directly to the text block either as part of the main sewing process or as a separate

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