Friday, August 29, 2008

Adventures in case binding.

AUGHHH. What a frustrating morning.

Here's the problem. I can do coptic binding all day long, I can longstitch like crazy, but case binding... I always have issues with case binding. I can never figure out how to structure the spine. When I have my cover boards cut, and I have the hard spine piece cut, I always have problems deciding how to glue them to the card that makes up the spine hinge. So I don't have the right amount or shape of space for the book block. Then when I glue the book block into the case, I end up with a book that either won't fully close, or won't open all the way. It's a real bummer to have a beautiful book put together, with leather covers and hand-sewn headbands, sanded paper edges and snakeskin leather quarter binding - to then have the whole book be a throw-away. Curses! So frustrating.

I never have these issues when I don't use that third piece of bookboard for the hard spine. And I can't seem to get the right French groove going when I use a hard spine piece. I'll have to post up some photos so you all might be able to help me figure out what I'm doing wrong.

4 comments:

Kiley said...

I'm no help to you- I make all my case bound books with a piece of card stock for the spine.

My only thought has to do with the space between your spine piece and your board pieces. The man I learned to bind from taught us by using square metal rods to get the right space between our spine piece and the boards. They might be a 1/4" I'll try to remember to measure them later.

Iris said...

That's what I think too. It's got to be something about the space between the covers and the spine piece. Or the placement - I've seen techniques where all three pieces are on the same side of the card, some where the spine piece is on the outside, some where it's on the inside... I guess I'll just have to play around with it.

Anonymous said...

Hi Iris

There are some useful videos on You Tube that might help you. This is part 4 of 6 and features the spine area
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZTXeghn-F8&feature=related

Well worth a look.

Billie

AlexWhite said...

With our trust lenders, you can see Cash Advance No Credit Check all the terms you will sign for on your lender’s website with transparency and have an electronic copy of your signed contract for Quick Easy Guaranteed Cash Advance Online future reference or use.