Components and Cases

I've been a busy beaver this weekend.  This Wednesday is my self imposed deadline to have all of my book completed.  Friday I made lap components.  This comprises of a piece of Bristol board for the spine and Mohawk again for the part that gets glued to the book board.

gluing spine piece

placing spine piece onto Mohawk portion

Trim lap component

After completing these, I cut all the board 

down to the appropriate size.  On Saturday, 

I began case construction.  

What case looks like after attaching lap component

tearing the excess

Sanding what's left to have a smooth transition

Sanding outside of case to shape it to give it a nice finished look

Stack of finished cases


I have finished covering the cases but will blog about it tomorrow.

End Sheets and End Bands

This week was all about finishing the text block.  I had already attached the first lining of Japanese paper and now I was ready to  put on the 2nd spine lining of Mohawk 70lb. text weight paper.  This lining, unlike the first, is only as wide as the spine and the length goes from kettle stitch to kettle stitch.  These stitches are the first and last holes in the sewing pattern. They serve as a locking devise to keep the sections of the sewn book together.  I set up my standing press to be able to do 3 at a times.

Step 2: Attach spine lining

Step 1: Glue up spines

 

Step 3: Bone down lining very well so it adheres

To bone something is the book binding world is to press down with your bone folder, hence the term, to make sure what ever it is you are gluing together sticks. For spine linings it is very important that the linings are firmly adhered.  This is what forms the book into a solid form.  So as my binding professor likes to say, when you think you've boned it enough, do it some more. 

Bone folders are not necessarily made from the bone of an animal anymore.  For those who have a aversion to animal products you can purchase plastic ones.  The particular bone folder I'm using in this process is made of teflon.  A teflon folder is not used nor should it be for all jobs.  It is good for what I used it for and similar jobs along with scoring paper.  Different tools for different purposes.

The next step was to attach end bands that I had already made from a purple book cloth.  Here are a few pics of that process.

Cutting end band to size

End band is trimmed to stop at the top of the kettle stitch

Finished placement of endband

This week is all about case construction.  I will be making a lap component ( the center of the case that has the spine piece and joint area), cutting boards, etc.  More explanation to come shortly.

Consolidation

consolidate - verb
1. to form or cause to form into a solid mass or whole; unite or be united
2. to make or become stronger or more stable

These are definitions from The World English Dictionary and very appropriate for what happened to the books in the last two days.  Although my intent was to get this done in one day, I just couldn't. Using the paste makes everything slower due to slower drying time.   However, the end result is the same.  To make all of the signatures come together or form into a united whole and in turn it makes a stronger book.  Here are the steps.

Step one:  Jog text block at spine and head ensure that all is aligned

Step two:  Place book under a piece of book board and weights then use a triangle
 to check for alignmentboth at spine and head

Make sure you have supervision

Step three:  Paste up the spine to consolidate.  Making sure that paste completely gets into all areas.

Slow start but speeding up now!

Did you know that books are living and breathing things?  They are. I'll explain in a moment. I had a meeting with my professor a few weeks ago with my mock up.  She liked what she saw and told me to case it in.  Then to let it live at home for a week, then bring it up to the 5th floor and see what it would do.

All books have different elements in them.  Paper - machine made or handmade.  Adhesive - Animal, synthetic or grain i.e wheat/rice paste. Thread weight. Board construction, etc.  All of these make a difference to how the book reacts to humidity and temperature.  So taking a constructed book to different environments will help you see, literally, how it reacts.  Do the boards of the case bow in or out?  Warp?  Is the paper on correctly on the cover and folded correctly in the text block?  If not, then that too can affect its' performance.

Since I am using handmade paper for everything.  This is very important.  All that being said I, as far as I know, did everything right.  Including sizing my paper when I made it.  It did not do anything weird here at the house and last time I checked it at school, it looked good to.  I meet this Thursday with her again.

After I got that done.  I became lazy!!  Time began to slip away and my calendar was getting messed up do to my lack of doing.  So I lit a fire under my rear end and away I've gone.  Late last week I trimmed all sections, collated each book and punched the holes to sew.  Yesterday and today, I spent sewing all 50 books.  I'm doing a French Web sewing style.  I really like it.  I is fairly straight forward and looks pretty after it's done.  Of course, it will all be covered up once the next step is accomplished.  Here are pics of part of the process.

Sewing sections together

Boning down each section after sewing

You can kinda see the sewing form.

Mock-up test 1

In order to make the most perfect edition ever you need to make a mock-up of what you want it to look like at the end.  I set up an appointment with my thesis advisor, also my binding professor, this last Thursday.  I had taken sheets I considered "bad" and sewn a complete text block and made a case without it being covered to show her.  We had a good discussion about it.  She liked what she saw and made the suggestion that I cover it and leave it at home the majority of next week and then bring it in to school to see what is would do there?

What do you mean, "what it would do?".   Basically, the humidity or dryness of an environment can affect the book and how it behaves.  With using handmade paper, that can cause some issues.  The boards of the case can pull causing bowing up or in (cupping), drying time can be affected.  All kinds of things.  I know my house is more humid than the 5th floor of the library.  But - since all of the paper I have in my thesis is handmade, I don't think I'll have much issue.  Many times the problem stems from using a combination of machine made and handmade.

This morning I made wheat paste, a fun process of watching it boil in the microwave and stirring it down for about 5 minutes.  Then I covered the case with one of the "bad" cover papers.  Tonight I cased it in.  It's drying now.  I can't peek inside.  That would cause bad mojo.

Another important item is that I ordered the board for the cases and hope to receive it by the end of next week. And I sorted all the sheets so in the end I will have an edition of 50.

Here is what the book looks like as it's drying.  It's the thing under the two weights.  Also shows the stacks of each of the signatures for the book.  More later!!

What letterpress looks like in action and end result

I took a short movie of me printing last week.  It's really fascinating.  Just kidding.  It's actually quite slow and boring to watch but for the one printing, it requires full on concentration to make sure that everything is printing well.  The folio you are watching being printed is whats called a gate fold.  I thought it was going to be the most challenging but turned out to print real well.  The photo's are of the finished folio.

The most challenging one turned out to be one side of the second to last folio.  As you might remember, I am printing a copy of each persons response as a Thank You for participating.  I had 1/2 of a response on the base already aligned correctly and decided to go ahead and print the entire thing ( the entire response is printed on 2 different spreads).  I put is on and printed a proof.  Something did not look right.  At first I freaked out that I had printed it entirely wrong but then again upon further inspection, there had been a mistake in my editing.  Now I was faced with the dilemma of having to cut the plate apart with accuracy.  I ended up with 4 slim lines of text that I had to reconfigure to make the sentences from the remainder of the paragraph and then place the last part of the whole text beneath.  This is what it looked like in the bed of the press.  There was lots of breathe holding but I believe it worked out.

Printing is done!!

Just a short post but I wanted everyone to know that I'm done with printing the thesis.  I'll be posting pictures and talking about it more over the weekend.  I'm so excited and relieved this part is done.