Books, the Making Of: Part Three

I promise, after this one, I'll stop yammering on about making books. When I left off, though, we had a stack of bound signatures, and a stack of casings, and if I recall, we hadn't quite finished up those casings, had we? The spine needs to be rounded on hard bound books, and I've already pointed out the how of it. Let us take a moment on the why.

A hard bound book is an object that is intended to last. In fact, that's the real reason behind binding manuscripts in the first place. A bound manuscript of any sort lasts longer and is more durable than a stack of loose papers. If you'll look carefully at a hard bound book, you might notice that the pages extend behind the boards as they get to the spine of the book, leaving a small soft area between the boards and the spine, this is what allows the book to actually open.

Now, you'll notice, hopefully, a curve in the spine and the pages. When you open it, it will start to to flatten out. Here is the the reason for the spine bending. If you have the spine bent too little, the pages will flatten out with use, which can lead to the whole thing falling apart. If you didn't start with any curve then, the book would fall apart in fairly short order.

Okay, enough prattling on about that, I just needed to waste some time because there's really not that much more to go. In order to glue the signatures into the casing, you use a bit of cloth called mulling. It's rather like cheese cloth, but a bit of a heavier weave (hard not to be). This is usually glued onto the signatures around the spine and, about half an inch onto what is currently the front "page", but as we'll see, that'll never be noticed.

Now, if you're looking at an older book, this next one will be highly noticeable, but if not, you may just have to take my word for it. You open the cover, and you'll notice a paper that looks something like this. Sadly, newer books just use normal, boring paper, as marbled paper like this can be a bit expensive. Anyway, these are called end sheets, and are glued both to the signature, and the casing, to hide the ugly work of the binding behind it (the gluing of the cover to the boards, and the mulling on the signatures).

One last bit. Look at the top of the spine, and you'll notice a bit of fabric sticking up behind the pages, hugging the spine. That's ribbon. It's purely decorative, and glued, or stitched, onto the signatures.

Guess what? We've done all the interesting stuff now. Actually gluing the signatures into the casing? Yeah, it's just that. So that's all.

- Sam