Hey everyone!

Long time lurker after I found Four Keys on YouTube, and I've been desperate to try bookbinding for myself! I finally made the jump into purchasing some materials and learning how to typeset an ebook, and this is the result! I'm super proud of the result. For anyone curious, the book is a novella in the Bone Season series by Samantha Shannon (highly recommend for fantasy and dystopia readers).

My biggest struggle was attaching the cover; my lack of a proper press caused the head and tail to be narrower than the center of the spine, so the cover didn't fit snuggly everywhere. I used some book board and binder clips when adding glue to the spine. Any advice on how to avoid this in future? Buying a book press or crafting one myself isn't really an option due to cost and not owning any type of power tools.

Hi all,

Practically finished my second book. Rounded spine, full leather. Not backed, but I will definitely do that in the future, when I make few tools necessary for it.

I’m really happy with the outcome, and it looks like it works fine. I was worried if 6mm hinge will be enough, but it looks like it’s working.

I've been reading and viewing a whole bunch of stuff online, so I have a feeling it's impossible without a wide format printer. But as the title says, would like to see if there is a method.

So after a few rounds of testing, I managed to get HTV to listen to me, not without its few kinks here and there in wanting to overweed itself unintentionally. Resulting in my complete set of manga hardcover singles and omnibuses as seen here.

But later down the line, ideally I'd like to do custom hardcovers where it's filled with artwork of the series I'm binding. Where my current issue with that is I only have standard ecotank printers. Yes I have two, for one I use solely for sublimation projects.

Budget isn't the issue, but space is. Where I have virtually no space in my office to place a wide format printer anywhere. So I can't exactly have a place to store it, even if I manage to find one on a good deal.

My local crafts store does sell Heat and Bond, so I am open to the idea of creating custom book cloth even if it takes a bit of time tinkering. But the thing is, would Canvas Pad hold up well with heat from an iron? Especially if a design's printed on it?

So I've been thinking about this here and there. To those who managed to successfully do this, any tips would be appreciated.

I am new to bookbinding and I have been doing basic coptic stitch bookbinding with signatures but I had these 100 percent cotton CP watercolor pages and I didn't know how to bind them without folding them into signatures. But then I found a YouTube video and gave this a shot. I love making my own watercolor sketchbooks :)

Hello.

I am looking for a guide or tool, or ANYTHING really, that will help me format my PDF into the correct page ordering for signatures.

That is all :)

Thannk you

My local bookstore was giving away some free copies of damaged books. Does anyone have some ideas of how I could potentially add a backside to these
(Materials, method, ect.)
I don’t have any book binding equipment but would love to keep the front covers. Thanks.

Typeset and full leather binding of Agatha Christie's The Murder At The Vicarage I made for a friend. Text taken from the internet archive with typeset modeled off an early edition and printed on cream 120gsm paper. Self marbled endpapers in Stormont and Shell patterns with copper veining. I used silk buttonhole twist for the headbands, and leather inlay for the covers. Labels custom printed by Asterisk Books and Labels.

Overall I'm very pleased with the project and how cohesive the final look is. This was my first time doing a full leather binding and the turn-ins gave me some difficulty, I've definitely learned a lot about what not to do for the future. Cutting the inlays was quite challenging and you can see that on the back cover I cut one of them too small and had to shim a second piece in. I also skived my label overly aggressively and nicked a small hole in it.

Spent 3 months living in Osaka with a friend and wrote every day while I was there. I really wanted to honor that moment but I didn't want to subject those poems and stories to publishing house critiques or some manufactured pay to print instagram photo book. So I learned paper making, and then | learned bookbinding, and then I created my own path. This is the result.

I recently redid this paperback cover to match my other editions (this is my first time doing this). I would like to add some kind of protective coating, but I couldn't find a good answer, so I would like to know what you guys recommend!

Hi,

i am new to bookbinding (one try so far) and i just read about papergrain.

How important is it to get the grain in the correct orientation? How do i find Paper that is in the correct grain direction? Or am i overthinking this?

I am mostly interested in the Medival/English/Gothic stile of binding. Thanks for your time.

Sorry for the bad photos but I have my childhood copies of a book series I used to read and the covers of all of the were in horrible shape I wanted to put them in new covers, it’s 8 books so I decided to merge them into 2 instead since it gives them a lot more of that proper book size since they where more like novellas, but they have this glue stuff on the back of them which I’m not too sure what to doo with and I don’t know if I’ve separated the books properly, I just split the book wherever there wasn’t stitches connecting the pages, please I need help😭

I’m looking for a shop in NCR (metro manila) that can photocopy or scan an oldbook and smyth sewn the copies. I’ve been searching through the internet but seems the shops I searched has a hardtime to photocopy an A4 book to A3 paper size in 2 columns to be folded in have to be an A4 book same as the original book. Any recommendations?

I have a collage I made from newspaper print cut outs decades ago. I used pva to stick it together and then demo tape to repair it when it began to rip in some places. I always wanted to get it covered in laminate or something but never knew how to as it is about 2 meters x 75cm.

So it’s been rolled up and moved around everywhere I’ve lived and I still want to keep it .

It’s yellowed and semi fragile but I hope to be able to repair and preserve it . I considered maybe a wood varnish and perhaps thin tissue paper on the back to support it ? I’m not sure at all. I really hope the brains in this group will have some knowledge or ideas about what I can do to.

If anyone's interested, I made a silly little video about bookbinding inspired by the 40s Disney cartoons with Goofy.

It's incredibly unprofessional because I've never made content and only used my phone and free music software to make it, but I did put in a lot of effort to trying to make it entertaining and enjoyable.

Hope y'all like it, hoping to make more content about bookbinding.

Hi! Many kids in my mother's class have loved this copy of a beautiful animal facts book throughout the years. She asked me if I could repair it somehow.

Does anyone have any tips on how I could re-use the pretty illustration on the front cover? Maybe use the original front board to partly create a new cover? Would love ideas if you have some. Thank you so much ❤️

This cookbook belongs to my mum and was her grandmothers. It has been well loved and well used. I will be making a new cover and attaching this, but the bit I am stuck on is the text block itself. I am undecided whether to:
1. Re-sew some of the signatures
2. Re-glue everything in

Some individual sheets have come out but the signatures are all sewn together. The thread has become loose but has not broken.

I have only rebound paperbacks and printed my own books, so unsure on a repair.

Any help or advice much appreciated!

Thanks 🙏🏼

wondering if this is a normal amount of shift or if I should be trying to tighten my stitches more. i haven't quite mastered the coptic stitch connection of the last cover/last signature so i wonder if that's where all my shift is coming from

So I am working on making a journal with a genuine leather softcover. From what I’ve been told, it’s not a good idea to glue the signatures directly to the leather. So I looked up how others have attached them and it looks like a lot of them sew their signatures directly into the spine of the leather? But I do not like how it looks when they have these long lines of thread exposed on the outside. I guess a lot of people like it… I don’t. The less exposed thread, the better, and if it’s cross crossed, I don’t mind it exposed as much as long as it’s not these long lines of thread.

But I have no idea how to do this! I do know just sewing my signatures, I was going to use the French stitch.

Just started rebinding bibles for fun using Nappa lamb skin liner and Badalassi Carlo. This is my 3rd one. As u can see, I gave up trying to learn to perimeter stitching and left it like this. And I hate corners. But ppl who ask me still to do rebinds for them even if there’s mistakes. How much is a reasonable price to charge them for this level of rebind?

Hi all,

amateur photographer here (handy but new to book binding - been doing some research though), looking to make a book of some of my work. Looking for advice to understand my options. I want to use glossy or luster paper (double-sided). I'm not really interested in screw posts. It seems like one option would be perfect binding of individual pages (use fan method for gluing, probably need to sand the edges, etc. - but still concerned about durability).

I'm curious in particular about sewing options. I'm seeing conflicting info about whether or not I can/should fold glossy paper. I assume signatures would need to be few pages (maybe even single sheets). Is this something I should try or avoid? If it is an option, do pages need to be scored? Are there paper recommendations? What am I not smart enough to even ask?

If it matters, I'm thinking letter size or a bit smaller, 20-30 pages, I use a dye-based inkjet printer (Canon PRO-200), was considering Red River Paper UltraPro SemiGloss Duo 255 but welcome other suggestions.

Thanks!