Bookbinding.

A short guide to how to make a book.

Introduction

The art of bookmaking has been a large part of the development of our society. Unfortunately, it has become somewhat of a lost art in recent years. This is rather a shame, since it is relatively straightforward.

This tutorial describes how to bind a book in a rather unusual way that is about half-way between perfect binding (the way that paperback novels are made) and case binding (the way hardcover books are made). Eventually I will work up the nerve to make a casebound book, and extend this to include that as well.

My first books are simply Microchip PIC micro datasheets. Making proper books cuts the paper count by a factor of 4, and makes them a lot harder to lose and more convenient to use.

Tools and Supplies

For basic bookbinding, you will need craft needles, a pair of pliers, and craft thread. The thread should be a heavy type, almost thick enough to be string. I have found that plain cotton weaving thread works very well. You will also need several other things, which are illustrated later.

Cotton weaving thread. This thread is the perfect diameter for sewing pages, and is available inexpensively at your local Walmart.

Cheap Walmart-special craft needles, and a pair of pliers.

Signatures

A stack of pages, grouped and folded into signatures.

The first, and often most complex part of putting together a book is arranging things into page groups called "signatures". A signature is a group of folded pages, printed in a special order to allow them to be folded together. A signature should have 4 sheets at minimum, or the thread will pull through. There is an upper limit to the thickness as well, or the spine will not glue correctly and the pages will be extremely difficult to punch. I have used 8 sheet signatures for this book. It seems to be a good size, I reccomend it.

The easiest size book for an average person to make is 5.5x8.5". This can be made by single letter-sized pages. The trick is to print two pages per side on both sides. The page order is also a little tricky. The first page and last page of a signature have to be printed on the first side of the first page. The second page and second-last page are printed on the other side. They have to be printed in groups of the page number. For 8-sheet signatures, this puts page 31 and 1 on the first side of the first sheet, and 2 and 30 on the other.

I use a couple scripts I made to do these manipulations on postscript files. Here are the sources to them (these are written for Linux, using several postscript utilities, including Ghostscript).

makesig

#!/bin/sh
pstops '32:31,0,1,30,29,2,3,28,27,4,5,\
	26,25,6,7,24,23,8,9,22,21,10,11,\
	20,19,12,13,18,17,14,15,16' \
	$1 $(basename $1 .ps).sig.ps

doubleup

#!/bin/sh
pstops -pletter \
	'2:0L@.7(21cm,0)+1L@.7(21cm,13.35cm)' \
	$1 $(basename $1 .ps).dbl.ps

split

#!/bin/sh
pstops 2:0 $1 $(basename $1 .ps).up.ps
pstops 2:-1 $1 $(basename $1 .ps).down.ps

A stack of signatures, with holes punched in the spine.

These scripts should be run in order. Just invoke them with the name of the input file (or, the output of the last stage). The first will reorder the pages into 32-page (8-sheet) signatures. The second will then put two pages onto a single sheet. The third will then split the pages into "up" and "down" sides.

After these scripts are done, you should have a pair of postscript files, one for the topsides, one for the bottoms. First, print the top sides. Then, flip the resulting pages over, reinsert them into the printer, and print the back sides. You should now have pages in the order they need to be.

Folding works best in groups of 4 sheets. Since the scripts produce 8-sheet signatures, this means you will actually be folding only half a signature. After recomposing the signature, you will have to pre-punch the holes in the spine.

!! Caution !!
Needles are very sharp, and you will be exerting a lot of pressure on them. Do not attempt to put pressure on the back of the needle with fingers while punching full signatures! Use pliers! Ensure that your fingers, or other body parts, are well clear of the exit zone of the needle! One of my books has a couple drops of blood in the spine from my own failure to observe these simple rules.

I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR PEOPLE HURTING THEMSELVES WHILE FOLLOWING (OR IGNORING) THESE INSTRUCTIONS.

I have found that the best way to accomplish this is with a sharp, tapered needle, gripped tightly in a pair of pliers. Choose one with a wide diameter to ensure the holes punched are wide enough that the thread will not rip the paper as it is threaded through. Preferrably, you should also have another needle handy for registration purposes.

It is very helpful at this stage to make a template before punching holes. This will ensure that all your signatures will have holes in reasonable places, and reduce your chance of error. To make a template, simply fold a sheet of letter-sized paper in half, and punch holes in the appropriate places. Since this is only a single sheet, you can hold the needle between your fingers. Remember, do not attempt this with full signatures.

Now that you have the template, insert it into the center of the folded signature and, while holding the needle carefully with pliers, insert the needle through the first hole in the template, leaving about 50% protruding. You will need to hold the paper near the exit-zone of the needle to accomplish this, but make sure to keep your fingers clear of the actual exit point. The first hole is the hardest. You should leave this needle in the hole, to ensure the signature is properly registered when you punch the remaining holes.

Now, finish by punching the holes in the signature. Repeat for the remaining signatures. You may have to add short one-sheet end sheets to the beginning and end of the book; the cover may end up fully or partially glued to the first page, so it is best to ensure that there is no text on it.

A stack of stitched signatures.

Sewing the signatures together is actually the easy part. Cut what you feel is an appropriate length of thread for a signature. Remember, it is easier at first to cut too much than to pull the stitches and restart. Thread the needle, and start pushing it through the holes in a simple linear hand-sewing pattern. The loose ends should be on the outside of the spine. Make sure the stitches are tight enough, but there is no reason to try to tie them off at the ends. You may find you need to pull the needle through the other side with the pliers if the thread gets stuck.

There is, of course, no reason to try to stitch the endsheets. Since an average endsheet in this method is only a single sheet of paper, doing so will almost certainly lead to torn pages.

A cover can be made easily with a single sheet of legal-sized cover stock. This may be a little tricky to find in stores, but any print shop will have some on hand. If you are lucky and only need a few sheets, they may just give you the sheets (I was lucky). You will have to experiment with positioning to place the text on the cover. Placing text on the spine itself is actually quite complex, requiring precise measurements, but I've managed it twice already. So can you. Write whatever you wish using your favorite vector graphics program (I used OpenOffice Draw) and print it out. Fold it once along the front flap of the cover. Folding the back flap is tricky, requiring an exact measurement of the book thickness, so it is best to wait until after the book is together to do this.

Glueing

The book, with the cover attached, in the book press. All ready to be glued!

Now you will have to assemble the signatures, in order, with endsheets and the front side of the cover.

For the next step, a book press is indispensable. Professional ones cost too much for hobby use, but one that is good enough is almost trivial to make. I personally took two scraps of 1/4" MDF, stacked them together, and drilled a 5/32" hole in either side. I then fitted a pair of 1/4" bolts with washers on either side. If I were to build it over again, I would use 1/2" MDF (1/4" is just slightly too flexible), a pair of lock-washers on the side of the bolt head, and wingnuts on the other side. Still, this one works just fine.

The one problem is that wood (including fibreboard) will leave marks on the cover, both from pressure and from composition. A simple way to relieve this problem is by wrapping a sheet of paper, lengthwise, over top and bottom of the press. This way, your cover never needs to touch anything but nice, clean white paper.

Lepage #6 Contact Cement, sitting next to the book, recently glued.

Now, clamp your signatures together in the bookpress. Try not to overtighten, or you may rupture the spine or pop the stitches. My press, made of 1/4" MDF, is too flexible to do either, but it is possible that the press itself might break if tightened too much. You should ensure, when clamping, that the signatures line up nicely, and that the cover fold lines up with the backs of the signatures. Remember, your book will only be as good as the alignment of the signatures.

Now comes the fun part. The spine has to be liberally smeared with contact cement, as does the part of the cover that will cover the spine. You should apply several coats to the spine, making sure to get plenty in the various nooks and crannies. Make sure the contact cement is dry (wait a up to 60 minutes for this) before you proceed to the next step. This is arguably one of the most critical parts of the whole process. You can make small adjustments before the first coat of glue dries, but after that, the shape is determined and cannot be changed.

When the glue is dry, you should be able to remove the book from the clamp without having the signatures fall apart. If this is not the case, then you either have not enough glue, not enough pressure on the spine while drying, or not enough drying time.

The back of the spine, while the glue is drying.

Contact cement ceases to be sticky to the touch when it is fully dry. Ensure that this is the case here, and that the glue is holding the signatures together. If the glue doesn't hold the signatures together properly, but the glue is already dry, you can still salvage the book by reclamping it, and adding another couple liberal coats of glue. The gaps between the signatures should be mostly full of glue.

When you are sure that the book is properly glued, carefully lift the cover back across the spine, making sure to align it properly. You only have one shot at this! Contact cement bonds instantly and permanently to another surface coated in contact cement. Press on the back of the cover, making sure that the glue on both the cover and spine makes good contact.

When the cover is well glued, make the back flap fold. This might be a little tricky to get accurate. If so, you may fold the back flap outward first, although in such a case you will need to re-clamp the book to fix the pressure in the spine.

The final product.

Ideally, at this point, you would plane the edge of the book level. This requires an accurately made book press and a book plane, neither of which I currently possess. I may eventually do this, though.

One of these days I will find a suitable material to make cases out of, and add to this section a tutorial on making a proper case-bound book. The next datasheet I have to bind will require this, so I'm looking into it.

All material on these pages is Copyright (c) Jennifer E. Elaan.