Handbound Book

Step 9 Finish Up

Your book should now look like a book. The last remaining step is to cover the unsightly interior of the front and back cover. In addition to finishing off the book and making it look more attractive, pasting endsheets also increases the strength of your book, because it acts as a final reinforcement to draw the cover to the spine. If you were making a blank book, using the first and last pages of the book as your endsheets (and perhaps then covering them with a nice decorative paper to finish them off) would add the most additional strength, since those pages are actually stitched and glued to the spine.

But since your first and last pages actually contain content (including the important TOC on the first page), you'll want to use paper specific to this task. I decided to use MAKE's original wraparound cover as my endsheet for the front cover board. Its thick stock works well for extra support and looks quite nice. I simply trimmed it to fit (leaving a the same distance to the each edge of the book and pasted the back of the wraparound cover to the front cover board. Allow glue to run into the spine of the wraparound cover, because you'll want to use that area to cover the point where the cover meets the spine and extend into the front page by about 1/4". This grips the endsheet to the book block to add reinforcement to the spine.

You'll need to cover the back cover board in the same way. Since I'd already stripped the cover from MAKE: Volume 2 (my next bookbinding project), I went ahead and used that for my back cover (guess I'll need to be more creative with picking my endsheets when I bind Volume 2), trimming off the unwanted back cover ad, but leaving enough room to allow the 1/4" spine area to cover the gutter and connect the endsheet to the final page.

Put fresh pieces of wax paper between the covers and the book block, and set under heavy weights to dry overnight. You'll wake up to a copy of MAKE that will last forever, as well as look unique and serve you well.

As you can see, as promised, the finished book lies flat, perfect for following an article's instructions while working on a project like this one.

Now, on to Volume 2 ...

Comments

[Dave_in_deal]

Hi Brian im new to the book making scene and have got a 500 page (1000 printed pages) that i am binding. this is the only DIY instruction i have found that shows loose pages. could you post or email me a bit more detail on arranging the loose (500 pages) and how you glue them to make the signatures. it will be most appreceated. Dave

[BrianSawyer]

Hi Dave, I think the tutorial is as clear on this point as I could possibly make it. Good luck. Brian

[TobeDesign]

Hi Brian, Quality web page by the way, great having well thought out accessable instructions. I'm new to this Book making lark and was wondering if I could put a couple of questions to you. You know when a book is tightly bound and the pages don't want to stay open, they kind of sping shut, is there a names for that kind of book binding? Or is that something left to the professionals? Much thanks, Tobe

[BrianSawyer]

Hi Tobe, Do you mean "perfect binding," where the pages are glued directly to the spine (as mentioned briefly in this Instructable)? That kind of binding is less structurally sound, but it's more easily automated. Hand binding is usually worthwhile for many reasons, aesthetic and practical, but I'd leave perfect binding to your neighborhood print shop. Thanks, Brian

[BrianSawyer]

If you're still interested, I just stumbled up on pretty good tutorial on DIY perfect binding.