Bookbinding

[3DStudent]

Hello all, I've been looking at bookbinding techniques. I have a couple of e-books that I want to print hard copies of and this seemed like a good idea. I'm thinking about either making signatures with thread, or just gluing them all individually cut onto cardstock, nothing really fancy.This site shows how to do the latter. Here is a good page on how to sew.

This video shows how to print a booklet for binding, but the program leaves a watermark on the first page. And finally this video shows how to do it with just the glue and individually cut pages, perfect binding I think it's called.

So if I decide to make the books I will be following these examples. I've had a book printed at an office supply store, but they weren't able to make it on book size paper, so did it at standard paper size. It was also about $30 for around 500 pages and a plastic cover, so I think even with making the jig I could do it for cheaper after a few books are made.

 

[Elly Kay]

In the "Caricature of Love" thread, it was expressed that there was an interest in binding into books some of the PDFs that were being offered on the forum. I'm glad to see a fellow bookbinder has begun a thread here so I'll just add my thoughts to this thread. The following is some basic information for those who may not be familiar with bookbinding.

I've done some bookbinding before, Japanese, hardbound and paperback binding. For the purposes of PDF-to-book I would recommend either using paperback or hardbound binding because of the amount of pages required.

First of all, what I've done in the past is take all the text from the PDF and transfer it to a document in NeoOffice (open source word editing program for Mac) which has a Brochure printing option. This is a really time consuming task and requires a lot of editing. The purpose of this is to make sure that when you go to print off your book that it will print imposed, 2 pages on the front and 2 pages on the back.

I format my document so that the pages are 13.97cm in width and 21.59cm in height. Top and bottom margins measure 2cm and 3cm respectively. I use a 2.6cm margin for the inside and a 2cm margin for the outside and set up my pages so to that the will be mirrored. The body of the text is Justified.

I've tried some freeware programs that will impose a PDF document but, have not much success, so I've been doing it manually. I'm sure there is a variety of freeware imposition programs available on the web. I have mainly used a duplex printer to print, so I can't say much about the process without one, other than it IS possible to print signatures with a single sided printer (see links).

Take a look at any hard bound books you may have. If you look closely at the spine of the book you will see that there are a number of smaller booklets. Signature printing for books is not in linear order (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). For example, if you were to print a signature with 8 pages of the book, you will have pages 1 & 8 on the back of the first sheet of paper and pages 2 & 7 on the front. The second sheet of paper will have pages 3 & 6 on the back and 4 & 5 on the front.

Once the signatures have been arranged they are then stitched together. The backboard which will serve as the cover is prepared and the entirety of the signatures is then glued to the spine. Preparing the backboard is an art in itself with the selection of backing papers, book cloth and self-designed dust jackets.

With paperback or perfect bound book covers I would recommend finding a large sheet of card stock (maybe 11x14) that is glossy on one side and matte on the other. You could design your image to be printed and have it printed at a print shop. I don't know if home printers would handle the weight of card stock needed for paperback books. When designing the cover you will have to take into account the dimensions of the front and back of the book as well as the dimensions of the spine. After printing, the card stock can be cut down to the necessary dimensions. I've tried this on my own with little success. My printer kept wanting to add margins to the image, thus resizing it and it didn't appreciate the card stock weight (was dented in the printing process).

Here are some resources I've found to add:

Imposition, Single and Duplex Printing in OpenOffice
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2008/03/printing-two-si.html

Grain of paper, punching signatures with awl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrHi-NhO4GI

Paperback binding
(Nevermind what he says about using Gorilla Glue, I've used PVA and it works fine for paperback and hard-bound)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbK0mQyj930

Hardbound book process
http://www.csparks.com/Bookbinding/index.xhtml

Ceropegia's Youtube channel- lots of video's on binding hard-bound books
http://www.youtube.com/user/Ceropegia

I'll add some more links as I find them!

 

[Elly Kay]

Hey 3D Student,

I just checked the "Caricature of Love" thread and realized that it was you who wrote about starting a thread on bookbinding. Now we're on the same page! :P

 

[3DStudent]

I have made the jig for a perfect bound book. I just need to print out the book now and see how it goes. And I also will need to cut the paper to 5.5" x 8.5" at some office shop, because I don't think I'll be able to get it perfectly lined up if I did it with scissors.

 

[bngenoh]

Now this is absolutely amazing because I have printed out in pdf form alot of gurdieff, ouspensky and I was hauling them around thinking if I ever messed up the page order I would be screwed, but with this I can fix that. Thank you very much for starting this. This is definitely of practical value to the work.

 

[3DStudent]

Ok I haven't posted this, but about a month ago I completed my first book. I used 32 pound paper for the pages and it was too thick. A 300 page book was thicker than regular 300 page books. Perhaps 24 pound paper would be better.

Also the cover was 67 pound card stock. This seemed thinner than retail books. But maybe it was because they put a laminated layer on theirs. The corners very easily bent and frayed on the cover.

So overall it was of course readable. But it was very stiff, like the pages didn't bend when you opened it, so it was like turning stiff pages of wood instead of flexible paper :P.

I plan to make some more, maybe with 24 pound paper for a thinner book. The cover doesn't really matter to me. And you could probably paste it into a hard cardboard backing for a hardcover anyways.

 

[Rabelais]

Perhaps you could take a picture of your work and post it. I would like to see it. I owned and operated a nightclub in the basement of an old building in the 70s. The upper floor was a book bindery operated by a fellow who still practiced the lost art. He custom made mostly large ledgers with some ancient industrial sized equipment. They were leather bound, embossed and gold leafed... beautiful works of art. Ever since then I have been fascinated with book binding. Today's glued together paperbacks leave much to be desired for aesthetics, but they are affordable.

It would be really nice to have a limited edition of Laura's work bound this way on premium paper.

 

[3DStudent]

Well, it's not pretty, just a functional piece. :P

The pages are quite stiff with the cover frayed a bit.

The spine is a little bent forming a concave side.

The pages aren't equal because the guy at Staples couldn't cut them in one try with a mechanical cutter. The paper was too thick I'm thinking.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

The spine is a little bent forming a concave side.

One thing that I've found helps with this problem is if you prefold (or score) the cover before gluing. That way the spine edges end up being more uniform.

The pages aren't equal because the guy at Staples couldn't cut them in one try with a mechanical cutter. The paper was too thick I'm thinking.

Two ways to solve this: cut the pages in smaller groups, then put them all together; or find a mechanical cutter, preferably an electric one with a clamp that holds the pages in place, so you can make multiple cuts without ending up with differently sized sheets). You can then also trim off the uneven page edges, leaving one straight edge on the end of the pages.

Other than that, it looks good!