in school we tried to be fancy and found a recipe for book binding glue online and got all the ingredients like glycerin and so forth, mixed it up and made our books with it. It worked, sort of… until a few days later when the glue turned from nice and soft to rock hard and all the pages would come out as soon as you turned a page and the glue cracked…. lesson learned
Noah, that’s what I was thinking at the end too! “Nooooo, the parqueeeet!”
I’ll be building this jig in the next week or two and creating some very silly books.
I work in a printshop, so I can easily hybridize this into more of a manufacturing process! For instance, a high-powered guillotine cutter can perform 3-sided trimming that can clean off any gluey edges from the book, and craft the “true finish” look that you see with paperbacks.
The only thing I could add to this process is something from professional bookbinding: notching the inside pages with a file to create a channel for more glue to sit in. This adds a ton of strength to the binding, though takes some practice – if the notch is too deep, too much glue goes in and the pages may not be as happy about opening fully.
Oh, perfect binding? Pages will detach and be flying around in no time…
I remember we had a saddle stitch / full hard-cover bookbinding course in college in addition to Typography. It was by far the most stressful yet the most rewarding class of my BFA.
I have to admit that as a bookbinder I’m a bit horrified by the idea of using an epoxy or a rubber cement.
Personally I would recommend a flexible PVA instead if possible. (Which can be obtained through most art stores or online through Talas among other bookbinding resources.)
A similar style of binding is the double fan binding which gets a bit more glue so is more durable than a standard perfect binding. –
Swissmiss is an online garden Tina Roth Eisenberg started in 2005 and has lovingly tended to ever since.
Besides swissmiss, Tina founded and runs TeuxDeux, CreativeMornings and her Brooklyn based co-working community Friends Work Here. (She also started Tattly which was recently adopted by BIC)
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awesome.
in school we tried to be fancy and found a recipe for book binding glue online and got all the ingredients like glycerin and so forth, mixed it up and made our books with it. It worked, sort of… until a few days later when the glue turned from nice and soft to rock hard and all the pages would come out as soon as you turned a page and the glue cracked…. lesson learned
Aug 6th, 2010 / 11:55 am
This is just wonderful. I always asked myself what kind of glue should I use for these matters, now I know and I thank you so very much!!!!
Aug 6th, 2010 / 1:16 pm
X-acto knife on the parquet floor makes me cringe…
But I like that jig.
Aug 6th, 2010 / 1:30 pm
Noah, that’s what I was thinking at the end too! “Nooooo, the parqueeeet!”
I’ll be building this jig in the next week or two and creating some very silly books.
I work in a printshop, so I can easily hybridize this into more of a manufacturing process! For instance, a high-powered guillotine cutter can perform 3-sided trimming that can clean off any gluey edges from the book, and craft the “true finish” look that you see with paperbacks.
The only thing I could add to this process is something from professional bookbinding: notching the inside pages with a file to create a channel for more glue to sit in. This adds a ton of strength to the binding, though takes some practice – if the notch is too deep, too much glue goes in and the pages may not be as happy about opening fully.
Aug 7th, 2010 / 9:49 am
Oh, perfect binding? Pages will detach and be flying around in no time…
I remember we had a saddle stitch / full hard-cover bookbinding course in college in addition to Typography. It was by far the most stressful yet the most rewarding class of my BFA.
Ah.. the magic of books…
Aug 9th, 2010 / 4:29 pm
I have to admit that as a bookbinder I’m a bit horrified by the idea of using an epoxy or a rubber cement.
Personally I would recommend a flexible PVA instead if possible. (Which can be obtained through most art stores or online through Talas among other bookbinding resources.)
A similar style of binding is the double fan binding which gets a bit more glue so is more durable than a standard perfect binding. –
http://www.temperproductions.com/Fan-gluing%20Press/video.html
http://www.greenchairpress.com/blog/?page_id=613
Aug 10th, 2010 / 8:40 pm