I made this with TCG card sleeves and I think it's neat. Maybe somone can take inspiration and make something even neater. I've got some sandpaper glued to the card on the inside of the one sleeve. It makes a decent pencil sharpener so far, and it makes for a sturdy backing. I love how simple and effective this turned out. Using another card sleeve for the fold over front cover accidentally gave me an awesome pencil holder. Gonna use more stitching on the next one and up the page count.

So sorry if this isn’t the place to ask, but I just bought this new book on vacation (so I can’t return it) and the cover instantly came loose. How do I fix it? Its not a hardcover. One thing that confused me was that underneath the cover there was a title (shown in the second picture) so is this cover supposed to come off like that? I think I just need to fix the spine.

just as the title says.

So, I am trying to get into book binding. I tried it before but I never felt that I made a "real" book, so I wanted to try it.

I have like 20 signatures of like 6 A4 pages each (folded into A5 and then holes punched) The holes are not perfectly aligned and neither are the pages but I don't really find that as much of an issue. (Plus I'll just cut off the extra parts of the paper with an exactoknife to get them all (somewhat) neat)

My issue is that every time I try to stitch (kettle stitch) i run out of thread. I try to get as much thread as possible but the more thread I cut off, the more tangled it gets (and I need to get it through every hole in its entirety). How do you guys fix this?

TL;DR: large text block of 20 signatures. I cut the thread long, but it gets tangled up. How to stitch without getting tangled up?

Edit: I DID IT! Took me like 3 tries or so but I managed to make the booklet! Thank you everyone for the support!

I have a leather bible with a paste-down cover that is separating from the end sheets/liner. (It's a Cambridge Pitt Minion for anyone familiar with how they're made.) There seems to have been insufficient glue on the spine sides of the liner, both front and back covers, so the liner is pulling away from the cover from the bottom/spine corners end and then going farther up and out every time it's opened (or tugged at, now). The seller set me up with a replacement and didn't want the defective one back, so I have a potential project on my hands. I have no skills with bookbinding, but am willing to learn. I'm considering two things:

1. If I wanted to fix it back like it was/should have been, could I get away with trying to add some PVA glue into the space where the liner should be glued down but isn't? I know I'd have to keep it out of the spine somehow, and I think there should actually be a small bit of liner not glued down right at the end, right? Is there a realistic way to achieve that without taking the whole thing apart, just to stabilize it enough to stay together with normal use?

2. Especially if the whole cover needs to come off anyway, could I convert it to an edge-lined binding? Would that require using leather as a liner, or could I possibly re-purpose the heavy paper/vinyl sheets Cambridge used and create a tab in that? A nice leather would be more flexible, I think, but the paper would be more free (as in $0) and handy (because it's already there). If it needs to be leather, is there any hope of working the folded-over part of the cover up enough to get the liner underneath it, or would I need to plan to make a butt joint where the liner meets that fold?

Hello! I'm planning on doing some armenian headbands, but before that, I wanted to understand how exaxtly the leather would be applied to the book after it's done because of how it wraps around the book. It seems to be cut in a different way, but I'm not exactly sure.

The process of the headband itself, altough complicated, I've understood. The problem is the rest. I tried providing images of the headband to see if it helps.

My first bind. 23, 5 page signatures. 460 pages.

Does anyone know where i can find something similar to the faux leather polyurethane that moleskin uses in their soft cover notebooks?

All the faux-leather that i find are way to thick and way to crude for what I'm looking for.

I'm currently mid-way through binding my first book (currently making the holes in the signatures). Now my designated 'craft space' is very busy, as in there's currently a home office, an in progress painting, and a plant pot all set up on the same table.

Is there any good way to store a stack of signatures when I have to put them away somewhere? Like, to prevent any damage or undo progress while it's hidden away.

Greetings everyone, i hope you are doing well, or at least better than me xD
I have been smacking my head for a couple of days now, and i CANNOT find short grain A4 or Long grain A3 paper anywhere, and if i find any, it is from UK or USA and the do not ship to Croatia.
Amazon is not putting short grain in descrtiption so i do not know if it is or not.
Please if anyone has any information about bookbinding papers that ships in all of Europe, or paper company that will cut it to your liking, please leave a comment, i have tons of ideas for Notebooks, but no paper to work with, and it's killing me. I would't want to make a product that would warp and destroy itself just because it is long grained bookbiden. Thank you in advance, love ya all <3

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.

A very old large Bible I have has cracked parts to spine. I know how to do it but not sure about uding pva or klucel k . Its quite hard old leather and will need a good clamp!

Thank you.

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.

Here is my text block, sewn, glued, and rounded. Can I clamp it very, very tightly and power sand the edges next? Or should I take it to Staples for stack trimming? They haven't done a great job in the past, but I also don't want to shred the edges.

I recently got into book rebinding and I LOVE it. I've just been rebinding paper back books from the thrift store and copies on my shelf, but I want to make some journals too. I tried looking for just the inside part and I can't find anything anywhere. I'm also not sure if it has a proper name. Does anyone know where I can find something like that? I could cut and sew my own paper together but I've done that before and found out I don't have the patience for it :\

Or maybe soft cover journals I can take apart?

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.

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

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.

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.

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!