Best products from r/bookbinding

There are zero reasons not to start with printer paper. I'd even say raid the recycle bin next to a shared printer for your first couple of books, so you can trash them without guilt.

That starter kit is more than I would spend on those things, but it does look pretty nice.

Check the art store on campus (or whichever art store does the campus supply) for awls and bone folders, you'll probably get a discount. I used a used-up gift card for my first folder, though.

Pretty much the only thing I'd spend money on initially is the awl. Excel has a very reasonable price for a very good one. Even that's not necessary, but the hand-cramp savings are worth it in my estimation.

For bookboard, you can use the back of sketchbooks as openparenthesis suggested, check the art store for free chipboards, use cereal boxes, etc. Once you get to the point where you want to spend money on this, keep an eye out for Grafix brand chipboard. It's super cheap and good quality.

For needles and thread, check the local quilting/fabric/craft store for embroidery needles and cotton embroidery thread/floss. The needles should have an eye that is as narrow as the shaft of the needle and short, and thicker needles will do better (slightly thinner than your awl, basically). Linen thread is very nice, but not worth investing in unless you're making archival quality stuff.

For cutting, get yourself a utility knife and replacement blades, or a snap off knife. I still use my utility knife for most of my cuts, even with a guillotine in the mix. Also get a cutting surface, even if it's super cheap it's better than paying damages on campus furniture!

In general, your best bang for the buck will be the following:

• Dickblick.com for art supplies
  
  
• Books by Hand for bookbinding specific materials
  
  
• Excel for hand tools (Xacto is so overpriced for knives, avoid!)
  
  At college, talk to your librarians! Many university libraries still practice hand binding. Also check the stacks for books about bookbinding. You're going to be in an ideal place to get going, take full advantage of your resources.
  
  Also, come back and show us your stuff!

Hi everyone! I recently decided that bookbinding is something I want to try out, as I'm kind of a bibliophile and always dreamed of being able to do something like this, but never really considered how until now. I bound a small Coptic Stitch notebook with scraps of yarn, cloth, cardboard, and printer paper. It's pretty poor quality, but it is functional, and I'm immensely proud of my first attempt. However, I'd like to work with more than just scraps. I'm in the market for some tools and materials, though I'm going to college soon and have a lifetime's worth of expenses near ahead of me. I've piddled around Amazon for a while, and I've found a starter kit that seems to work out nicely. If anyone could vouch for that, that'd be nice, and if it's a no go any recommendations help!

A couple other questions:

Is there anywhere I can get materials and tools affordably, and do you have any tips for saving money on these things?

Is printer paper fine for simple projects right now, or are there outstanding reasons I shouldn't get used to working with it?

I'm not dirt poor, thank God and God willing, but I need to be conscientious on how I spend my money (textbooks being the most major expense in my future). Thank you all!

Not sure if this is quite what you want but it might help. I have the same issue with my printer+paper. The paper is a high gloss inkjet paper and any handling will cause it to smear pretty easily. So I coat it in this stuff. Does a great job of making a protective layer. Two thin coats is usually good. The only downside is it leaves a somewhat tacky feel. It's not that bad but perhaps do a test print+coat before hand to see what you think.

Edit: Also it will change the colours a bit. Kinda like that look when something is wet and everything is just a bit darker. Not much, but enough to notice.

After I wrote the post below, I thought maybe it would make sense to ask first: what is your budget? Then people could chime in on "If I had $x, I would spend it on [these things]" to give you even more info.

When I started, I used a thumbtack to punch holes and a cheapo sewing kit to stitch. It worked well enough to get started.

In the beginning I splurged on a kit from the art department at the college where I was a student (not an art student). Looking back I think I could have been more frugal.

The things I would spend money on:

• Bone folder or similar tool (you don't have to go fancy, but it's a nice tool to have for folding papers). Here's a $3 option. But honestly, I started by using my fingernail or a letter opener.
  
• Paper Trimmer. I still use an $18 one from an office supply store to trim my pages.
  
  Stuff I think you could skip:
  
  When I started, I didn't have a proper cutting mat. I just used the cardboard backing from whatever sketchpad I was using for paper, or some other scrap of cardboard. It wasn't ideal, but it was a cheap and easy workaround as I learned.
  
  Glue is pretty inexpensive, even the "good stuff" (I put it in quotes, because preferences certainly vary).
  
  The board you use for the covers can be anything from acid free bookboard to cheap cardstock or even empty cereal boxes.
  
  So all in all I think you could get away with spending as little as $0 if you have stuff around the house or office or if you want to dive in, you could spend quite a bit.

This, in the absence of an on-line edition of Edith Diehl's seminal work "Bookbinding: Its Background and Technique", is an excellent survey of the state of traditional binding as it stood ca 1910, in the US, France, and the UK.

Some of the techniques may no longer be advised, but this is a decent free, readable, illustrated introduction to hand bookbinding, if somewhat oversimplified.

I wince at the sawing of the backs, but it was common then, and certainly common now... And the book is no guarantee of success, given that there's no replacement for instruction and practice under the direction of someone who knows what they are doing. But it's still a good overview.

Even Edith Diehl, who does go into many subtleties, glosses over things. This just glosses a bit more. Still, it's a good start-to-finish overview.

EDIT: formatting

If you can find some nice, thin leather (2mm thick at most), that might be a great gift!

I'm a hobbyist bookbinder and I just got given a really beautiful book of paper. It's one of the most thoughtful gifts I've had in a really long time! It's a book full of high quality gift paper that you can pull out that's perfect for making book covers or inlay sheets.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BARCELONA-TILES-creative-Vol-36-Wrapping/dp/9460090486

I'm looking bind some journals similar to the moleskine softcover journal (ok tbh they're a copycat except I want to use goatskin leather and add have more pages) and would like to invest in a corner rounder so I have nice clean corners. These are what i'm currently looking at:

• [Akiles Diamond Cutter] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004F1S9C6/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1)
  and
  
• [Tamerica RCC-110] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HS0HNJG/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1)
  but wanted to see if anyone has experience with either of these or better suggestions as to if these would accomplish what i'm hoping to do.
  
  Thanks in advance for the help!

If you're making Japanese books, find a copy of Kojiro Ikegami's book. It's a great resource in English. There's a ton of stuff on how to do things properly there.

And I'll second Canis_lupus' suggestion on a sturdier awl. For things like these bindings and punching through things like board, they come in really useful. I like the #4 awl from Talas for a stuff like that.

And if you're not skilled with power tools, look into getting a good hand drill. Just make sure you steer clear of the crappy fiskars one with the plastic body.

Check the links in the side panel. Some good resources there. Other than that I can recommend some good text books but nothing will ever compare to a course.

There is a lot of stuff that is extremely difficult to describe but simple to demonstrate. Look for local bookbinders guilds or society courses. Not sure where you live so can't recommend any.

Unfortunately I haven't found any youtube stuff that really demonstrates everything you will need to know. There are some good tutorials on specific bits but none overall.

As far as books go I highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/Thames-Hudson-Binding-Manuals-Paperback/dp/0500680116

I got a copy for $10au on ebay. Fantastic information on all types of binding and the skills required. I would suggest starting with a cloth bound case binding and working up from there.

Good luck

Is this a valuable/sentimental piece? If you're worried about truly preserving it, there is probably much more perment solutions than I'm going to suggest. This will be suitable if you just want to "refresh" the leather though.

Pick up some Leather balm with atom wax. It's pretty cheap, it softens/moisturizes leather (hopefully stopping some of the flaking) and the atom wax helps with a layer of minor sealing (helping against the dye smearing). This is something you can do to help maintain pretty much any leather items you own, and sometimes it can "refresh" leather items that have started to crack like this.

However, this treatment is not truly something to restore your journal, only something to help slow down what's already happening. Depending on how dry/cracked it is already, adding leather balm may just wipe away the cracked leather pieces. If this is valuable/highly sentimental, you may want to take it to a book restorer/conservator for their professional opinion.

My time to shine! I've spent the last year or so exploring this.

You need to print with pigment-based inks, which are more expensive than the more common dye-based inks. Epson's DuraBrite inks are (supposedly) rated to last up to 105 years without fading (page 5), and are water resistant. So I bought an Epson Workforce series printer, which has since been replaced by an updated model. I love it because it does automatic double-sided printing (it prints one side, then sucks the paper back in and prints the other for you), so I set my signatures before I go to bed and when I wake up I have a nice stack ready for folding.

However, printing a novel with official Epson inks will be wildly expensive (I know -- I've tried) because A. the cartridges are small, B. the cartridges are pricey, and C. Epson's printers use color inks even when printing black and white, so you'll easily burn through a whole set of carts to produce one book. I reluctantly switched to InkOwl's Premium Pigmented inks to save money, and they seem okay so far. Also, don't trust printer manufacturers' estimated print volume for their ink cartridges -- not because they're going to lie to you, but because their estimates follow the ISO spec for testing print yields, which use documents that look nothing like a printed page of text -- so you'll burn through ink much faster than they project you will. Their test assumes you'll be doing typical consumer/business printing, like reports with pie charts, etc.

I'm also too cheap to go for 100% cotton paper, and I consider Mohawk Superfine to be pretty good. /u/stitch-e points out that if you're going to fold the sheets (like I do), you need short-grain paper, but to get that you'd have to buy the big sheets and cut your own... and I don't have the room or equipment to do that. So I buy white eggshell 24lb Mohawk Superfine in 8.5x11 reams and fold them against the grain. It looks and feels like a "real" book as far as I and others can tell.

Apart from that, I use archival Davey board for the covers, pure cotton thread, linen, and mull for the spine, and PVA Jade glue to hold it all together. I think it's as close to archival as someone can get without investing heavily in specialized equipment and supplies.

https://www.talasonline.com/Methyl-Cellulose

https://www.hollanders.com/index.php/methyl-cell-3-ounces.html

https://www.hollanders.com/index.php/methyl-cell-8-ounces.html

When you buy it it comes in a powder, so you'll need to make the glue yourself. There are multiple ways to do it, but here's what I do.

Take 4 tsp. of the MC Powder and pour it into your bottle. I use a 16 oz. condiment bottle. Then you fill up the bottle halfway with hot water, shake the stuff a little bit, and let it stand for ten minutes or so. After that you can fill the rest of the bottle with cold water, shake it again, and let it stand for 24 hours. I've found that, ideally the MC should be kept in an area between 70 and 75 degrees F, but as long as it isn't in extreme temperatures it should be fine. The warmer the room the less viscous the mixture is. After the 24 hours have elapsed you should be good to go. The consistency should be kind of like hair gel, but again the temperature affects the viscosity.

I use Methyl Cellulose for two things mainly.

1): I use this by itself for helping me remove old spine reinforcement (mull, extra reinforcing paper, etc.) so I can replace it. I basically take a tiny amount of MC and spread it over the materials I need to remove, wait about a minute so it isn't too wet to work with, and then gently scrape off the materials with a painter's knife (these aren't sharp and so I don't have much risk of cutting the sigs or thread). I do this a bunch of times until enough material is off.

2): I also use this in a 2-1 PVA to MC mix (so 2 parts PVA, 1 part MC) when I'm gluing over large surfaces and I need a bit more time to make sure everything's lined up properly. Usually I add some PVA separately just because the mix doesn't have enough tack for me.

I printed the pages out on my home inkjet printer using this paper : https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001I8ZY7M/ref=yo_ii_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1 This paper absorbs the ink well with minimal smudging. It has a nice quality feel and look. After gluing them down however, they're prone to wrinkle, so set some heavy weight on them while they dry. And apply the glue lightly, too much is no good. If ya have any more questions, happy to assist.

I'm sure he'd appreciate a gift like that, I mean who wouldn't? :)

I'm also in northeast Oklahoma, and I just buy my PVA off Amazon. It's pretty cheap considering it goes a long way.

If you need somewhere local, I've had good results with helmars acid free glue, found at hobby lobby. It's way more expensive than the stuff I get off Amazon though, so if you're going to be using a lot of it and want to save money, I'd suggest getting PVA from Amazon.

Hobby lobby and Amazon links below:

http://www.hobbylobby.com/Scrapbook-Paper-Crafts/Glues-Adhesives/Liquid/4-23-Ounce-Acid-Free-Glue/p/26973

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Hand-Neutral-PVA-Adhesive/dp/B0025TZ26Q

I got the border and the sun on the front cover from this book, the peacock on the front and the fairy on the back I found on Pinterest (currently the board that I have them pinned to is private, so I can't share the links, but I think I searched for coloring pages).

I traced them onto tracing paper, then turned the paper over and used a soft lead pencil to trace the design (backwards) on the back of the paper. Then I placed the tracing paper, soft lead side down on the brown craft paper for the cover, and went over the design again with a regular pencil, which transferred the soft lead from the back of the tracing paper to the craft paper. Then I went over it (again.....) with a pen or marker depending on how thick I wanted the lines. There are ways I probably could have skipped a step - like if I didn't mind having the design "backwards", or of I had the ability to print the designs mirrored (or directly onto the craft paper) I could have just started by tracing with the soft lead pencil and saved myself a tracing.

Once it was drawn, I crumpled the paper a couple of times, rubbed over it with the side of a brown crayon, then ironed it - it almost came out to be too small to fit - the crumpling shrunk it a lot more than I thought it would (half an inch of both length and width).

Here's a fairly simple walkthrough of the process I've watched before on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF4t4nktOwc

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There are some non-obvious tips here, especially regarding temperature:

http://cool.conservation-us.org/don/dt/dt0366.html

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But if the goal is simply to work with stamps and impress designs, it's a matter of planning out your design on paper, building up a good collection of stamps. For example, in this video he uses only five stamps and a fillet (the rolling tool which creates a line).

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https://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/special/exhibitions/cover-to-cover/hand-tooling/

This website is also a good introduction to the art.

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https://www.amazon.com/Bookbinding-Classic-Arts-Crafts-Manual/dp/0486440397

This book has a fair amount of instruction.

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I'd say that this is something that with a few stamps and a stove, the only real issue is practice.

Yes I used parchment paper between the iron and the vinyl carrier sheet, and the HTV I used (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CTS8QDG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ufaaCb9ZMVGDC) only needs 7-10 seconds of pressing. My iron was set between wool and cotton, and it didn't damage the leather at all. :)

Not sure what level bookbinder your partner is, but all bookbinding books by Keith Smith are stellar: Books without Paste or Glue https://www.amazon.com/dp/0963768263/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_W2.yzb5HWAXSB :)

Ah, yeah. I'm in America, so can't help you there. The best advice I can give for board is just to look in craft stores that have a paper craft section for scrapbooking, etc. Scrapbooking tends to overlap a lot with what we do so I find my best supplies in that section.

As for glue, you want a pH neutral PVA. This you might have to order online. There are some big craft stores that carry it, but only if they have an actual bookbinding section, this glue isn't really used in scrapbooking. "PVA" confused me at first, b/c PVA is actually an entire category of glues that includes Elmer's etc, but you'll know it when you find it- the bottle actually says on the label PVA. Here's an example.