#bookbinding tutorials

[stlartsupply]

I made this zine last year to teach Japanese stab binding. It's a technique that every artist should know—with just a few tools, it's so easy to bind your own sketchbook or to make a physical version of your art/writing/etc. Download the PDF version (with bonus photos & tips!)

[spockandawe]

Who wants to make a peller box?

Guess what! I finally gathered my pages of scribbled notes, my camera of haphazard in-progress pictures, and finally compiled a set of instructions for making one of these bad boys!

And not only that, but I've got two versions of this baby. I like mixing and matching my unit families because sometimes 1/32 inch sparks joy and sometimes 14 mm is just so convenient, but especially since all of my chipboard comes in english thicknesses, here's a version of the process for my fellow imperial units weirdos:

And here's one for the sensible folks of the world, raised on a base-ten system rather than dividing everything in half and then in half and then in half-- I won't subject you to inches, when there's a workaround, but I was tempted! Have your localized version of the story and have fun with it:

Mad credit of course goes to Hugo Peller, who developed these things in the first place, but also to Jack Fetterer, who preserved a set of notes from a 1990 class, which, as far as I can tell, are the most complete set of instructions available online. But I'm an engineer, I couldn't be satisfied there, I had bludgeon it into a system of equations, sorted by usage and material. And I also go into some of the hiccups I ran into trying to follow those class instructions, like being a green amateur at leatherwork, or not having the equipment to saw plywood boards in my apartment. These instructions still do make some unfair assumptions about the base knowledge level of anyone who wants to give this a try, like using bookcloth rather than plain cloth, but I may try to loop back and adjust that soon.

I can't claim any kind of expertise in this type of work, but I beat my head against an interesting problem, and it's time to share what I got out of it! And, secret goal, I want to help more people make more cool things, and maybe improve on my process in ways I can absorb and chew on in the future. Save my work, change it, I dare anyone who sees this to improve it!! I want it to be better. Credit would be cool, and of course the actual experts I leveraged for this deserve all the credit in the world, but that's not my priority. I want the world to have more exciting things in it, and I want more people to have exciting skills. Go forth and go nuts!!

[lindstromm]

Simplified Bookbinding Tutorials

Usually in bookbinding, you format the text into signatures, print them, fold them, sew the signatures together before casing them into a book. Sewn signatures look like this:

I don't do well sewing signatures, so I found a way to publish books that doesn't involve sewing. In the Simplified Bookbinding method, you print the text front and back on loose sheets of paper and then glue the loose sheets together. A glued text block looks like this:

Gluing loose pages instead of sewing signatures changes/simplifies the formatting, creation of the textblock, and the headbands. You also don’t need the sewing supplies, so it’s cheaper and faster.

To see books I've made with this simplified process, click here, here and here.

I thought some of you on Tumblr might appreciate a "bookbinding for beginners" post. You can use this as an introduction to classic bookbinding, or just keep bookbinding with this simplified method. I’ve put out a series of tutorials on Simplified Bookbinding. Here’s the list and links all in one place.

General posts about the bookbinding process:

Simplified Bookbinding: How to Make a Cheap First Book.

Simplified Bookbinding: Buy Good Glue

Simplified Bookbinding: Cutting Tools

There are four steps to creating a book, with more specialized posts.

1. Format the text and print it.

Simplified Bookbinding: Font and Text Ornaments

2. Create the text block.

Simplified Bookbinding: Headbands

3. Create the case

Simplified Bookbinding: Cardstock Covers

Simplified Bookbinding: Spine Text

4. Attach the case to the text block

Details about this step are in the posts on creating the entire book, and the one about glue.

[moonfeatherquill]

Make a pamphlet

Tons of people are realizing that you can make books at home, a fact that totally floored me two years ago when I found out about it. Is that you? You should make a pamphlet!

Sometimes, people show up to the bookbinding community and ask something like, “I would like to bind a 100,000-word fan fiction into an heirloom object/gift. Where do I start?” You should start by making a pamphlet.

I think some of them don’t like hearing that, and I think I understand why. They are not approaching bookbinding as a hobby to learn and explore; they want a DIY project that will result in An Object. But this isn’t like when I painted my shutters, and all I needed was a paint sprayer, some fasteners, a chisel, and YouTube to get me going. For most folks, it’s more like if you wanted to design and build a shed from scratch, and you’d never held a saw. Why not draw up and make a little firewood shelter out of cheap lumber first?

Why not make a pamphlet?

Now, if you are coming from a strong crafter background, and especially if you already do a lot of papercraft or chipboard box-making, you can admittedly skip the pamphlet phase. But should you?

Pamphlets are cheap! Quick! Fun! Pamphlets and other simple bindings let you play with tools, materials, and techniques without expending excessive time or precious materials. You probably have everything you need already. Bookbinding is a craft with dozens of best practices and rules of thumb and recommended materials, and each one is negotiable. If you truly understand the importance of a given recommendation or standard, you can decide how much it’s worth to you and your projects. If you’re a novice crafter, you’ll quickly figure out if this fussy paper-bending nonsense is enjoyable for you at all–without buying a bunch of tools you may not use again. If you’re experienced, you’ll have a quick win, get to play with new kinds of paper, and see how different materials work together.

And you can explore how to decorate books! 

So please, if you’re even curious about bookbinding, make a pamphlet.

I’ll even tell you how. With pictures!

[cheeseshredder]

finished the rebinding!!! i’m really happy with how this turned out, very excited to give it to my partner 🗣️🗣️🗣️‼️‼️‼️ original drawing + progress pictures below

[random-conspiracy]

FIGHT FOR THE ARTS AND CRAFTS!!!

FIGHT FOR THE LEGACY OF A CULTURE!!!

The book binders, the shoemakers, the secrets of fabric and wood. What will happen when all is automatized, what will happen if we grow far and far away from the things we use and do.

Fight to keep alive the legacy. The wisdom and knowledge macerated by generations. Someone has to carry the torch!

[in-collection]

Made a little infographic for the printing/binding process. Basically a synthetized and pictogrammized (lol) version of the existing tutorial. Mostly made to be included in the drive. It's a mystery how useful it is... but it was good practice and I think it's good to have it anyway.

[nocturnus33]

Hi there 😊 I have been wanting to learn book binding, but am not sure where to start. Do you have a recommendation? Thank you ❤️

Hello, of course. If you're interested in binding fanfics, I recommend the Renegade community. It's a group of nice and suportive people, that will help you along the way.

A good start for ficbinding from AO3 is How to make a book by @armoredsuperheavy

There many on line tutorials DAS Bookbinding at youtube is an incredible source for all kind of binding. You might like to start with a notebook or a single pamphlet.

As for the supplies, after spending a lot in this, I learn it is not necessary. You can start simple and small. Just 2 mm cardboard, homemade book cloth [Made with craft paper & cotton fabric], waxed thread, binder's glue [you can use homemade wheat paste] . As for the special tools: a ruler, a cutter, a punch awl (a cork with a nail), bone folder (knife for spreading butter), a thick needle and press (old books). After your first steps, and only if you like it and want to, you can spend more on tools and materials.

Most of all: Have fun and be open to make a lots of mistakes, is part of the fun.

[artemisiasthings]

bookbinding question: how did you format the pages so that they read in the correct order when stacked and folded into signatures?

Hi! I use Word to create my signatures and typeset them to read like a book. I followed amazing tutorials from Hana Bobb on TikTok - I'd really recommend looking at her content but here's the bare bones! (If you use other applications this probably won't be as helpful for you, I'm sorry!)

First things first, you need to get your word document set up. From the top ribbon, go to Layout, then select Margins > Custom Margins which will open a page setup popup window. Here are the page size, margins, and layout settings I use:

My margins are set based on US Letter sized paper. I find that they're not too big but allowed me to trim the foredges and don't eat up the text in the spine.

HOWEVER, if you're typesetting a really large fic, you're going to want to increase your side margins! For example, I am typesetting a tandem read of TRTTD/ATWT that is 900+ pages and my side margins are .65" to compensate for the deeper, rounded spine and the amount I'll have to trim off the foredge.

If you're uncertain if you like your margins, you can do test prints of the first signature to see how your margins end up looking.

Our page orientation is landscape because, although we want our individual pages to be portrait, each landscape page will have two portrait pages.

By setting the "multiple pages" setting to book fold, you will automatically print into signatures that you can then sew and glue into a book.

Sheets per booklet is really personal preference, just in mind that one sheet of paper is equal to FOUR book pages (two front and two back). So my 32 page booklets take 8 sheets of paper. Some people do 7, others do up to 10! It's harder to punch holes in 8+ pages of signatures, but easier to sew in my opinion.

From here, you can input your text! You can post the raw html from AO3 into the document which which bring over the text and general formatting, and you can format chapters, headings, title pages, etc. from there. This is a time consuming process but is really helpful when familiarizing yourself with how typesetting works. If you do go with this option, I'd again recommend Hana Bobb's detailed tutorials - she goes over incredible info for newbies and I wouldn't be half as good as I am without her guidance.

If you're not interested in deep diving on typesetting, you can do what I do now which is use a Word macro from the macro mommy herself - Blak Books Bindery.

She has some incredible macros which allow you to quickly and easily add text dividers, drop caps, and so much more to your typesets! The one I use the most is her "Raw-Text Formatting" macro which allows you to copy raw text directly from AO3 into the word document and turn it into a formatted typeset through computer magic. I usually just use this as a starting point and heavily adjust the aesthetics from there, but it saves so much time moving author notes, formatting chapters into sections, adding title and publishing pages, etc.

After your typeset is formatted how you want it, you can print it! I typically go into File > Print and select "Print to PDF."

This allows you to save the document as a PDF. You can print directly from Word but I haven't tried it since people say it really messes up the formatting.

Your finished typeset file should look something like this:

Just print this double sided with "flip on the short edge" selected, and start folding! Even if you're super confident about your typeset, I would highly recommend test printing your first signature on paper you don't care about. I've caught misaligned page numbers, margin issues, and other problems this way and saved myself the headache and reams of paper.

That's it! I hope this answered your question, I went probably went overboard but I'm not sure what knowledge you're working with so I wanted to be thorough. If you or anyone else has any other questions, feel free to reach out through asks or DMs!

[artycentral]

Kelly Turnbull (coelasquid)

Some people thought making sketchbooks out of garbage was a cool skill to have, so I am going to teach you how to do it if you also think digging through stranger’s recycling bins on the curb could be a fun distraction from all of the terrible things in the world.

[craftdiscoveries]

(via How to Make a Button Hole Stitch Binding - YouTube)

I came across this video quite randomly on YouTube, and I was immediately sucked in. This is such a well-done video showing very clear instructions from start to finish.

[spockandawe]

Another guestbook! I've never done one before just recently, but there were two on the line for this fall, haha. This one just went in the mail this morning, so I can now receive the blessed dopamine rush of posting!

This is a case where the couple wanted to create their own interior for the book. The title on it comes straight from them, and the volume begins with a fairy tale retelling of their relationship, which I think is just the SWEETEST idea. The guests will be able to sign after that, and then the rest of the space is for the couple to leave each other notes in the future.

I finally did made endpapers to beef this book up to make sure the endpapers were nice and sturdy, and it worked beautifully! I don't know why I struggled and gave up every other time I tried them, haha. This is another k118 for opening flat reasons, and ahh, even paper vellum feels delicious to handle, but vellum vellum is REALLY next tier. The endcaps are leather, matching the spine, and I'm stoked about how well I was able to shape the endcaps around them! Oh, and the cover is blue-black color shift duo bookcloth. I'm really pleased with how this whole project turned out!

[changeling-crafts]

A woven washi tape binding. It's done by taping each page to the next (pattern of: top-middle-bottom, spaces left over, until you run out of pages). It can be fiddly to attach the tape in the middle of the spine, I've found opening the book to get a better angle helps. If you don't have washi tape you can also use decorative paper and glue as an alternative.

[lazinesswrites]

I made a thing!

I’ve re-read Appassionato by chonideno about a million times now, and I still absolutely love it, so I decided it need to be a book I could put on my bookshelf.

I designed and cut the front cover myself, and followed a YouTube tutorial for Double Needle Coptic Stitch Bookbinding by Sea Lemon for the actual binding.

I copied the text from Ao3 and set it up for printing in Publisher, and decided to put the notes Magnus and Alec write for each other in as... notes. Pictures. Visual elements? I’m not sure what to call it, but you can see what I mean on the last picture.

[reliureetplussiaffinites]

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