Flush with my success in Bookbinding I, I enrolled in Bookbinding II. Some of us just don’t know how to get out of school. This project was more complicated: French stitch. More pages, more steps; linen tape and sewing weights.
Books have bodies: head, tail, fore-edge, spine
Folio = one sheet folded
Signature = two or more sheets folded together
Book block = the set of pages
The grain of the paper (cover board included) should all run in the same direction, always in line with the spine. When you make your sewing stations, avoid poking a hold in the dead center, the weakest part of a book.
All of these rules, the teacher told us, are so your book will last for hundreds of years.
Now that I know how to make these books, I need to figure out how to fill them. My handwriting isn’t much to write home about–or write home with, as those who have tried to decipher my missives might observe. I’m in between on the hand-made/machine-made front: can I persuade my printer to work with fancy paper, if I want to bind a story into a book? How much paper will I waste, how much patience?
I type the words “know how” as if a single foray conferred expertise. I did just fine following the teacher’s gentle instructions. Everything he said made perfect sense. I took notes; I took pictures. But starting again from scratch at home won’t be the same.
It’s not a regulation book weight: I used the toy iron (fully authentic–heat up the inner iron weight on your own woodstove!) my mother played with as a child. I don’t think she ironed with it any more than I did, but there’s something delightful in its would-be functionality: it’s real, even if it’s a tool for a chore I’d rather avoid. Its intricacies make sense.
As do the book’s. The neat (or almost neat) blue X’s only frame the linen tapes. The wings are glued to the Davey board. The glue, drying on one side of the cover, has offset the glue on the other; warping and counter-warping, the boards have settled back into balance, back to flat.