
Bookbinding: A Tutorial (1995) - jstrieb
http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~jones/book/
======
andrewwharton
I started getting into book binding as there's a lot of stuff online that I
want to collect into volumes for future preservation and reference, and then I
discovered that there's book binding[1] and then there's bookbinding[2].

The rabbit hole runs deep and there's a long tradition of craftsmanship that I
really hope is being passed along and not lost.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av_rU-
yOPd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av_rU-yOPd4) [2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtJK_fcrLlY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtJK_fcrLlY)

~~~
noufalibrahim
There's quite an active community as far as I know. It intersects with the
calligraphy practitioners. Here's a journal that discusses it which is still
actively published [http://www.johnnealbooks.com/prod_detail_list/Bound-and-
Lett...](http://www.johnnealbooks.com/prod_detail_list/Bound-and-Lettered)

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mgiannopoulos
A lovely example of super-fast-loading 1995 webpage. Pure content. No garbage.
We should find a way to get back to that.

~~~
Double_a_92
It would just need a bit of CSS to make it look modern without making it
slower.

~~~
mallaidh
Why does it need to look "modern?" If it's not broken, why try fixing it?

~~~
542458
At very least there are some modernizations you could do for text legibility.
Screens are bigger now, and today lines of text that run the entire width of
the page are unnecessarily difficult to read. Similarly, with more screen
real-estate you could pump up that font-size and line spacing a bit.

~~~
mallaidh
I'm having none of these problems, it's more legible than all of the
"modernized" websites I've seen. Reasonable serif font, pure black text, pure
white background. More legible than any posts on here, with the choice of gray
text for certain things.

~~~
542458
Here's why I feel the lines should be shorter:

[https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-
readability](https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability)

And the font bigger:

[https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/16-pixels-body-
copy...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/16-pixels-body-copy-
anything-less-costly-mistake/)

~~~
mallaidh
Now for smashing magazine to change their font colors to #000, for
legibility's sake.

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MichailP
Now this is an ideal crowd and topic to ask a question that is niggling me for
a long time. What paper could you use with regular laser printers to get
professionally looking printed book? The regular A4 is just too thick, and
books printed this way look clumsy.

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meebob
In my experience, the paper weight doesn't matter all too much for whether the
book feels "professional"\- what I find makes a real difference is in how well
you trim the book
([http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~jones/book/trim.html](http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~jones/book/trim.html))
and the quality of the materials used for the cover- no matter how nicely you
bind a book, if you choose a too-flimsy material for the cover, it'll feel
homemade.

~~~
wizardforhire
Absolutely! I bought a heavy duty paper cutter off eBay for less than $100.
Just search for heavy duty paper cutter or guillotine paper cutter. They have
a huge clamp and mine came with an extra blade. One of the best investments
I've ever made.

~~~
EvanAnderson
Came here to say the same thing. I printed and bound a couple of books using
the very instructions from this site back in the early 2000's. I tried to trim
one of the books myself with the "chisel method" and I was displeased with how
it turned out. The one that I had a buddy cut with a guillotine paper cutter
at his workplace was much, much more pleasing.

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Yetanfou
Back in the late 80's and 90's I used to download programming manuals from BBS
file hosts (using a self-built 300bps modem, patience being a virtue) which I
then printed out on a dot matrix printer (Panasonic KX-P1080 on a C64, later
modified with an EPROM from a KX-P1081 to be compatible with the PC clone I
got my hands on). The printer used chain-fed paper which I first fed through
one way to print the odd pages after which I swapped it around to print the
odd ones. After that I took of the chain-feed edges, separated the sheets,
made a cover (first on the C64, later on that clone using Harvard Graphics - I
had modified a Hercules-compatible graphics card to double the vertical
resolution, 720 * 768 pixels of green on black...) and finally - which is the
relation to this article - combined the whole stack together into a book.

I did not bind these books though, instead using a press I made from some
2*4's, threaded stock, washers and nuts and a piece of heavy plywood. I put
the whole stack into the press, clamped them tightly together at the back end
(just above the 'binding', doused the edge in PVA wood glue and overlaid the
back with a strip cut from some old jeans. This way I ended up with a whole
shelf of blue-jeans-bound books. It might not have been as classy as a 'bound'
book but it certainly had style...

~~~
noufalibrahim
This sounds very interesting. Do you have any pictures of these books or your
press? I'd be very interested in seeing them.

~~~
Yetanfou
I still have the books hidden away in a box in the barn. The press did not
survive the onslaught of ages or rather the need for its constituent parts, it
has been recycled. Of course this all took place in a time when photography
was still analogue and there was no venue to easily show this type of project
to the world at large, i.e. no pictures were taken.

Alas.

~~~
noufalibrahim
Alas indeed. :(

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sago
This is an finicky method, imho, and it was hard to explain clearly. If you
can follow some of those sewing diagrams, purely from the picture, I'm
impressed! Unfortunately a lot of older bookbinding resources assume quite a
level of craft. I've been trying to learn (leather) Italian bindings recently,
and it is difficult to find the right help.

Much easier, to start out with, if you want to create a multi signature
binding (i.e. multiple groups of paper sewn together) is what's called a case
binding. There you make the book block and the cover separately. Which makes
it much easier to get a good final effect (at the cost of some longevity - it
will outlast you, but perhaps not your grandchildren). Here is a very simple
example that doesn't assume many tools[0][1].

She does the simplest thing possible to sew the signatures together. It won't
look as good or be as secure as it should be, but will work. Here's a video
showing how it 'should' be done[2]

I've been bookbinding for about 10 years, as a hobby. I started with a weekend
residential course. It's good to start with practical input, I think. I had an
old Dover manual of bookbinding for a few years before that, and didn't get
very far.

(Also, craft bookbinding on HN! Things I never expected I'd see...)

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGQ5P8QVHSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGQ5P8QVHSg)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av_rU-
yOPd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av_rU-yOPd4)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBxZp8PJF2o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBxZp8PJF2o)

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ggambetta
I've had good success with a completely amateur method I learned from my dad
(who was anything but a bookbinder):

1\. With a saw, cut vertical slits along the "spine", 1 or 2 cm apart, and
just 2 or 3 mm deep (that's roughly 1/2" and 1/10" respectively, for the
metric challenged).

2\. Take some dental floss. Make a knot on one end, jam it in one of the end
slits.

3\. Run the dental floss alternatively up and down through the slits, in a
S-like pattern. When you get to the end of the spine, run the thread again
towards the other end, covering each slit again but in the opposite direction.
After this, each slit has two bits of thread, and each cover and back segment
between the slits is covered once. Secure the thread with another knot.

4\. Apply carpenter's glue on the spine. Spread it so it covers the spine and
thread fully.

This proves to be incredibly sturdy, and usable even in thick books, although
for these it becomes difficult to keep open in the middle, as the spine is a
bit stiff.

~~~
jackhack
>2 or 3 mm deep (that's roughly 1/2" and 1/10" respectively, for the metric
challenged).

2mm is much, much smaller than a half inch. a half-inch is closest to 12mm.

Millimeters (mm) Inches (") (decimal) Inches (") (fraction)

2 mm 0.0787 ″ 5/64 ″

3 mm 0.1181 ″ 1/8 ″

~~~
ggambetta
Yep, sorry I wasn't clear enough. By "respectively" I meant that the first
measurement I mentioned (1-2 cm) was equivalent to 1/2", and the second one
(2-3 mm) was equivalent to the second one (1/10").

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n_t
What a surprise to see my teacher's home page on HN. Also, totally no surprise
that he gets limelight not for his CS stuff but bookbinding :D

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jacobush
I once say a video tutorial, 80s I think, from the US Navy IIRC, on book
binding, manuals and such. It was _great_.

I think it was on the Madame Trash Heap, A.K.A. YouTube.

Anyone have any searching clues? I'd like to see it again.

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cjg
I used "Hand Bookbinding" by Aldren Watson to learn how to bind a book.

I learnt because I wanted to rebind "The Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose
because the original paperback that I has was just too thick. I ended up with
a three volume set.

The Penrose book came with signatures glued into the "paper" cover, so I
didn't have to make them. But many paperbacks come "perfect bound" where each
page is a single sheet and glued individually to the cover, which makes
rebinding more challenging.

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JasonFruit
I love bookbinding. It's not too hard, you can be creative and still get a
solid book if you have the basics right, and it's not an expensive hobby. I
found W.J. Eden Crane's Bookbinding for Amateurs, free from Google Books, a
good resource, as well as a number of modern books:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=oxhRZ_l3kGcC&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=oxhRZ_l3kGcC&printsec=frontcover)

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snowpanda
Should go along well with this:
[https://diybookscanner.org](https://diybookscanner.org)

Be sure to check out the forum, lots of information.

~~~
justinpombrio
Or this book scanner, which I saw at a Makerfair:
[http://copybooks.childrenofmay.org/](http://copybooks.childrenofmay.org/)

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spicymaki
Thanks for posting this!

