My Third Adventure in Bookbinding

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This is now my third book from Roz Stendahl's Online Simple Round Back Spine Bookbinding class.  I tried to make this one as much from memory and understanding the process as possible, I spent a lot of time making a new tear diagram for myself since I changed papers from the Guttenberg 130gsm2 we used in the class. This book is made with Nideggen which I could only get locally in 22x30 sheets, and that required a different paper tearing plan and a different size book.

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Once I figured out the whole tearing, folding and grain thing I did actually have a better understanding, but realize that this is something that I will need to look carefully at each time since I find it somewhat confusing still.  I have a better grasp of the tearing, and sewing procedure than I thought I did and was able to go through that process pretty quickly and easily with only short reviews of certain videos.  My paper tearing skills have improved by 75% I'd say, as there are only a few sheets with some ragged edges. This is due in part to a new bone folder from Friskar which is smaller and thinner than my Lineco one, and partly due to using more pressure when folding. 

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I think the round spine is looking good and I seem to have the process and technique of rounding the spine board figured out.

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Constructing the case is still pretty challenging. Since I had to change sizes I couldn't follow the class instructions for size at this point and I ended up have to re-cut my book boards and spine three times until they were finally the correct size. Don't even ask, just stupid mistakes on my part, and some anxiety about them being too short and not wanting to be unhappy with the final product. 

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On the bright side I did make this entire book in one day and that's progress!!  I also had a ball selecting decorative papers for the book covers, all of which were on sale 40% off at Jerry's on Friday.  I did limit myself to just two pieces since I was buying a ton of other stuff and I wasn't sure how easy or not it would be to work with. Turns out it's easy to work with.

Glue management is still an issue and you can see that I  still got some small bits of glue on the black book cloth. Not worried about that just a little annoyed, because I was trying to be so careful !  

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So, I'm hooked on the magic of bookbinding. The next big thing will be to find a way to cut the book boards with a cutter of some type. I need to do that because my hands will never hold up to the task of manually cutting the boards done repeatedly. Obviously, I won't be getting a giant table size book shears but I feel like there must be something out there that's table top size but able to handle cutting through book board.

I'm looking forward to getting to know the two papers I've used, the Guttenberg laid 130gsm2 and the Nideggen.  I have more test sketches on the Guttenberg which I will show in a separate post. I haven't even begun to explore the Nideggan but it feels wonderful and looks intriguing.  Stay tuned, more adventures to come.