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:
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
