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The Basic Binding of Books: A Tutorial
Page 6 of 8
All done. Cut off excess embroidery thread. Also trim cord to within 1/8 inch on either side. This can be trimmed more precisely later with a razor blade. Touch a bit of glue on the ends to keep embroidery thread from unraveling.
Commit to a cover material, either fabric or paper, and lay face down. Place your cover boards across the back of your material and trace. You want the gap between the spine and cover boards to be approximately the thickness of two boards. Then, using your cover boards as a pattern, measure and mark 1/2 inch around each side. This will give us enough excess for turnover. Cut out your material.
Now we attach our signatures to the cover boards, and at this stage it will begin to resemble a *real* book! From this point forward we will use a lot of wax paper, so it is easier to cut a whole stack of sheets to size, slightly larger than your cover, and have those within easy reach. With your book pages face up in front of you, place two sheets of wax paper beneath the mull but above the tapes. Spread glue across the mull, working it well down into the weave. Remove the top sheet of wax paper and discard.
Carefully align and press the cover board onto the mull. Stagger the cover boards about 1/8 inch from the spine. This allows our book to open and close freely without scraping against the spine board, and give us an overhang along the right hand edge to match the overhang along the top and bottom.
You can open the book cover to check if the mull is in place, and if so use a rubbing cloth to stick the mull firmly down and work out any wrinkles or air bubbles. Leave the second sheet of wax paper in place to keep glue from sticking to your pages. Flip the book over and attach the back board in the same way. Place under weights for about 1/2 an hour.
Here I use a handy dandy gigantic book on China, which is very heavy.
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