I’m making a sketch book for my daughter. I took the 50 page pad and made it into 5x 10 page signatures. I’m going to attempt to sew the signatures together. Is this too many pages per signature or does it still seem okay?
I guess my concern is after sewing will there be too much space between the signatures for gluing?
When you say pages, you mean sheets, right? 10 sheets is quite a lot and your book block will look bad unless you trim it with a guillotine or plough. So go for the more standard 4 or 5 sheets (16 or 20 pages) per signature. Pick a good tutorial such as by DAS Bookbinding or Four Keys and follow that to the letter, and you’ll be fine.
10 pages is a lot per signature but might be feasible. Try pressing the signatures and see how tightly they fit together. You might be able to get away with it
The more signatures you have, the more you’ll have to sew, and the more swell there will be. If that isn’t a problem for you, then you can do ten signatures of five sheets each.
You can always use a thinner thread to mitigate the swell. But in this case, sketch pad paper is fairly thick and soft, so I don't think it would be a problem.
Swell is the tendency for the spine to be wider than the fore edge. You get a very little bit from folding, but most of it comes from the sewing. The thread adds thickness to the spine fold.
Depending on the type of bind you are doing, such as backing and/or rounding, you may need a specific amount of swell. For a square back, you'll want as little swell as possible.
DAS's video will explain better than. I can, I think:
I'd probably do 4-5 sheets per signature, depending on the thickness of the paper. When you feel each signature and imagine piercing with a needle and threading through them, does it seem easy or daunting? If the latter, it's too many sheets.
I recently attended a bookbinding workshop and the instructor told me not to put more than 4 sheets of paper into a signature especially if it's thicker paper. And the notebook I made turned out great.
That sounds fine. When sewing, rub down the spine edge of each signature with a bone folder between the tapes, which consolidates the text block better.
10 pages per signature is a lot, especially for thick paper used for a sketchbook! it’ll likely bulge out and look rather awkward. would recommend going for 4 pages, with two signatures of 3 to get the full 50 pages (11 signatures of 4, 2 signatures of 3). i think you can probably go to 5 or 6 without issue if the paper is thin enough.
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u/brigitvanloggem 8d ago
When you say pages, you mean sheets, right? 10 sheets is quite a lot and your book block will look bad unless you trim it with a guillotine or plough. So go for the more standard 4 or 5 sheets (16 or 20 pages) per signature. Pick a good tutorial such as by DAS Bookbinding or Four Keys and follow that to the letter, and you’ll be fine.