Thursday 25 May 2023

More Bookbinding Shenanigans

 

I've been experimenting with cloth-binding a book I put together recently, printed from Chaosium's 99 cent DTRPG PDF of their Basic Roleplaying book.

A couple of significant issues in cloth-binding are keeping the cloth stable while it's being glued (i.e. not distorting or stretching the weave) and preventing glue from oozing through it.

This stuff, Heat-n-Bond UltraHold provides an easy fix for both those issues. It's an iron-on adhesive film, which can be ironed on to the fabric, and then with its backing sheet removed, the fabric is ironed on to a paper backing — I just used some brown paper I had lying around.


The paper keeps the fabric stable, and provides a good gluing surface. It also stiffens the fabric, making it easy to trim and fold into place.

I've used an offcut of batik-patterned cotton for this one. Linen would be better, but this should serve the purpose for as long as I'm around.

Now, if I could just find the patterned paper I was going to use for endpapers. It must be around here somewhere.


Later on...

I didn't find the paper I had planned to use for the endpapers, so I went and got some other paper, which looks fine I think.

Regrettably, I didn't think ahead when I was gluing and sewing up the text block. I should have added an extra blank page front and back for the endpapers to glue to. In the end I just glued them into the inside covers. Maybe next time I'll remember.

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