I realized just a little while ago that I often jump in to help and sometimes make things worse. Since this is such a monumental event (Trump being elected), I felt like I should get my feet under me before shooting my mouth off again. So, I’m making things. It always grounds me a bit to have my hands on something.

I’m making some very small cased-in blank books. No page numbers, ruling, dots, or motif. Part of this is for economy, but mostly because my workhorse printer couldn’t be repaired any more. These’ll be nominally 4×6″ and 4×5″ with 160 pages (80 sheets) of 24lb Classic Crest paper. I plan to cover them with linen but we’ll see when we get there. Here are some photos of the work in progress:

photo showing the colophon of one of the 4x6 text blocks. The colophon is on the left, and the carmine colored endpaper to the right.
Colophon of 4×6 book block
spine, exposed, showing the stitching through a thin layer of kozo paper.
Applying kozo paper to the spine with PVA.
Pile of 4×6 book blocks with kozo applied to spines.
tub of clear water with two long strands of cotton twill tangled at the bottom.
Washing cotton twill for book marks.
The stencil.
Stenciled impression.
Touched up by hand.
After final heat setting.
Both formats ready for spine finishing. Last step in making the book block.

So far, it’s taken 9 hours over four days, which works out to about 45 minutes per book, plus about an hour to make the ribbon bookmarks. This is what I’d consider the halfway point.

Completed book blocks.
Cover boards cut to size
Cover boards shown with card connecting the two. This is what makes this a Bradel type case.
Glued together with proper spacing for spine and hinge.
Flip the case open and the book block should fit inside.
Raw case wrapped around the book block. It will need to be covered with cloth and the fit will become more precise.

There’s a lot of work behind these photos that I just didn’t have the patience to capture. First, the spines’ widths were measured and transferred to a piece of heavy card stock. Next, the desired board heights and widths were figured and then cut out. Finally, you can see the last step above, which is connecting the two boards with the heavy card, leaving the right amount of space for the spine and hinge.

2ea Natural, Santa Fe orange, Zenith yellow
4×6″ sized, 2ea black, Sphinx green, Meadow blue

Normally, I like to choose colors before I begin. In this case, I just needed to be working so I jumped in. I chose the fabrics from my existing stash and cut them to size. Making book cloth this way usually works out to about 15 to 20 minutes per piece (versus making a batch of one color and size, which can get it down to it as little as 10 minutes per piece).

Backing paper cut to size. Kozo paper/tissue.
Magenta Unryu paper, which will be painted with yellow to back the Santa Fe orange linen.
Other papers need to be colored to suit the fabrics they will back.
Papers set out to dry.
Papers set out to dry.

Need to let the backing papers dry at least 12 to 24 hours. With about 15 hours of work on these 12 small books, still not much more than halfway done. I’ll cook up the paste for making the book cloth and then hope it’ll last long enough to put the cloth on the covers. This is always a bit of a gamble.

The photos below show 6 TBS of rice starch being cooked (and stirred constantly) for about 45 minutes. I let it cool, then add a solution of CaOH to bring it to a pH of 7 or higher. As you can see in the 3rd photo, it’s just barely there.

A small pot with a milky white mixture of rice starch and water, resting on a stove burner.
A tub of gelatinous paste after cooking.
A comparison of a pH strip and the chart that allows one to interpret the results. The strip most closely matches the pH of 7.

Tomorrow, I’ll back the fabric with this paste and it’ll dry overnight. That means I won’t get back to the 12 little books until Saturday (2 days from now).

Just before I headed out to do some errands, I backed about half of the fabric. The basic steps are to prime the tinted kozo paper with paste, wet the fabric and place on a hard, flat surface. Make sure it is straight! Apply paste and spread evenly. I use a squeegee and press the paste through the fabric (not generally recommended, but this is what works for me). Then, gently drape the kozo onto the fabric and roll with a soft rubber brayer. Let the sloppy mess dry overnight, peel it off, and use it. Below are snaps of most of the steps.

Tools and materials laid out in preparation for backing fabric. Shown are a tub of paste, a squeegee, a putty knife, and multiple sheets of fabric and tinted kozo paper.
Most of the tools and materials used. Spreader, squeegee, paste, kozo tissue. Not shown, rubber brayer.
2 pieces of tinted kozo spread out and ready to be primed with a layer of paste.
Tinted kozo before priming with paste.
Kozo paper with a dollop of paste on it.
Applying the paste.
A putty knife spreading paste over a sheet of kozo paper.
Putty knife works quickly.
Sheets of kozo paper, wet with paste, hanging over some string while waiting for the next step.
Set aside while working on the fabric.
Fabric rectangles approximately the size needed for bookcloth, wet with water, smoothed and laid out on a piece of black ABS plastic sheet.
Fabric is wetted and spread on hard surface. I use large sheets of ABS plastic sheet.
A photo showing paste being spread across and into the fabric with a squeegee.
I hold the fabric down with the putty knife, while using the squeegee to spread the paste and push it into the fabric.
Make sure to straighten the weave of the fabric!
7 pieces of fabric with paper laid over them on a large black piece of plastic sheet.
Lay the primed (and still wet) kozo paper over the fabric
Using a rubber brayer to smooth and press the kozo and fabric together.
Repeating the process. Priming the kozo.
Spreading paste over the fabric.
A handheld roller going over the top of a piece of kozo paper wet with paste. Flattening it and pressing it into the fabric.
Pressing the kozo and fabric together
2 pieces of blue-green fabric with some blue tinted kozo paper on them. Still shiny with wet paste.
This is how it looks after I’ve gone over it with a roller.
Multiple pieces prepared and will be left to air dry overnight.

There is some experience to be had in doing this process, but obviously, it’s not that complex. I find that laying out each piece of fabric with the right amount of moisture and then straightening it carefully is important. After that, it needs to be realigned when adding paste and during the rolling. Pressing too hard will squeeze all the paste out and the paper won’t stick well to the fabric. Press too lightly and there may be lumps of paste or it could skew the paper relative to the fabric. Still, it’s not rocket science.

Although the covering is just a few discrete steps, it often consumes up to 40% of the total time to make a book! Also, I made some errors which forced some rework. But, despite that, I finished all 12 books. Here’s a quick photo summary of the covering, cleaning, and finishing/pressing. It’s a composite of several different covers.

Generous amount of paste, especially at any edge or crease.
I’m shooting to center the cover on the fabric with about 1″ border.
You can see how deeply I’ve worked the fabric into the spine hinge.
I use this metal rail (an old picture frame rail) to create a 20mm border.
Next, is corner trimming. It helps to take the bulk out of the finished corner, though another option would be to use all of that fabric as extra protection.
Top and bottom sides are folded over, first (“turned-in”)
That tiny piece is pinched in with the thumb and ensures the board doesn’t show.
Fully turned-in and ready for infill.

One of the last steps in making the case is to fill in that brown center portion with card stock that brings everything level with the fabric turn in aka “infill”. This creates a nice, flat, finished look when the endpapers are pasted down on top. If you use a thick enough endpaper, you can skip this step, but I do it on almost every book I make. I should probably reconsider that since I might be wasting materials.

After this, the case is done and ready for the book block to be “pasted down”. This is a tedious step (at least for me) so I have almost never gotten it on camera. I’d need another person to do that, and I work alone. It doesn’t take much time, maybe 6-15 minutes per book, but it involves a lot of juggling of waste paper, paste, cleaning, and pressing.

After the book is safely pasted down, I place it under weight to dry; usually overnight, and if I have patience, a couple days. Even after it’s dry and “finished” I like to keep them under pressure for 2-3 days. There’s a lot of natural movement in books that I hadn’t appreciated until after I started making them. Molding them under weights when they’re newly made goes a long way in influencing how they sit in the long term.

Water bottle and pen for scale. These are small books!

In total, this was 23 hours of work over 8 days. I got 12 out of the 12 books I started which is typical. This is all just practice…for the next batch. It was also a great opportunity to think carefully about how to respond to rising fascism.