Bookbinding Practice

As the pace has started to pick up on the Book of the Erinyes project I decided it was time to get some much-needed bookbinding practice.

I’d sewn together a collection of blank signatures a week-or-so ago and tipped on the endpapers, but I was feeling somewhat nervous about the case binding.

Today I took the plunge and put together my first case binding, and attached it to the signatures to produce a finished book.

I was fairly pleased with the results — although the edges of the pages are very uneven from where I’d had to cut them with a knife since I don’t have a guillotine or a plough for trimming the pages properly.

I’ve been teaching myself bookbinding, and there have been three books which have been a great help:

• Hand Bookbinding — A Manual of Instruction by Aldren A. Watson, Dover Publications Inc.
• Handmade Bookbinding Techniques by Josep Cambras, A & C Black.
• The Bookbinding Handbook by Sue Doggett, Search Press.

I’d recommend all of these three books to anyone thinking of teaching themselves hand bookbinding.

The Handmade Books DVD from Shepherds was also an invaluable help — although the books mentioned above are excellent, watching the techniques being demonstrated lets you fully understand the process.

So my first book is bound and I’ve learnt a lot about all the necessary techniques that I can use on the Book of the Erinyes. I’ve got at least a couple of months until the text and photographs for the Book of the Erinyes will be ready, so I’m going to do a few more practice pieces using blank paper over the coming weeks.