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

Books, the Making Of: Part Two

Did you know we have a book out? We do. You can find it at Rediscovered Bookshop and A Novel Adventure (not yet available online, we're working on it, promise.) Part two on the adventures of book binding. Last time I talked about how the casing is made. The other really major part of a book, and more important, is the signature. Which isn't quite right either.

Bites From The Orchard: Bridges is what would be called a single signature book. Which is a nice way of saying that it only has one block of pages. What are you talking about? I hear someone saying?

Okay, let's go back and revisit Ulysses S. Grant (and I'll point out that some of these steps do not apply, as Bites From The Orchard is a single signature). It is approximately 300 pages long, and looking at it, has twenty different signatures. Each signature is a pile of pages folded in half. So, Ulysses has twenty of these. Each signature then only consists of four sheets of paper, and each sheet of paper actually holds four pages (incidentally, this is why if you tear out one page, you'll almost always have another page wanting to fall out).

Before I go on, I'm going to jump to a composition book, which happens to be a single signature book, and they lie to you! (at least the Top Flight I have on my desk does.) They say 100 sheets, but if you open it up, exactly in half, you'll notice some thread holding the whole thing together, and that it's actually 50 sheets, for those 200 pages. Anyway, give one of the pages a tear, the first page works really well for this. You'll then find that the back page also wants to fall out!

Enough of that though, we have a pile of twenty signatures now, and that can't be called a book, they're all loose and falling all over the place. Here's where we actually get into binding. Each one of those signatures needs holes in it. A lot of them. Remember in Part One when I mentioned that Ulysses has six lengths of cord stiffening the spine? Here's how that comes into play.

For each and every signature, in the fold, we punch holes, all in the exact same spot for each signature. If Ulysses was using the cord for the signatures (I'll explain that next, I promise!), and let us assume that it does, it would need at least twelve holes in each signature.

So, through those holes, we now take a length of (no, not the cord) thread! Linen by preference. We stack all of our recently holey signatures in a device called a sewing frame. The sewing frame holds the six cords we mentioned earlier nice and tight, and in proper alignment--the signatures holes lining up one on either side of each cord. Then? We stitch each of the cords onto the bottom signature, carry over the stitch into the second signature, and so on and so fourth up all twenty of them. You see, the stitching holds each separate signature together, while the cord holes all the signatures to each other. And no, I will not describe the stitches, if you are that curious, there are books for that sort of thing (and I'm not good enough at writing to accurately give you a picture of what is going on, but let's not tell anyone that).

I did say it wasn't very likely these were part of the signatures though, didn't I? Well, almost certainly they're not. At some point (I don't know an actual date) using cord to bind books fell out of style in favor of ribbon. People still expected those ridges on the spine though. They were attractive. If they weren't there, people would have thought the product was of an inferior quality, and what publishing house wants that? None! So, instead they glued the cord to the inside of the casing, and then pressed the leather around them to give them shape.

We now have a stack of twenty signatures, stitched and bound by cord. We have a beautiful casing, carefully made so every corner and edge is perfect. How do they come together? You see parts I haven't mentioned yet? You promised us a part 3? All are true! And all our next week.

- Sam

Books, the Making Of: Part One

As I hope you know, we are putting out a book (you remember that whole contest thing, right?), and are planning another (open submission this time, more information at the website). If you don't know, either we've been remiss in our duty, or, well, probably we've been remiss in our duty. So to fix that: we're putting out a book!

That's only sort of what I want to talk about though. Since we're hand binding these books (they're quite attractive), I thought it might be fun to talk about the process by which a book is built. So many of us who love writing dream of, some day, being in a book. To have our writing transformed in that magical process from manuscript to book. The very idea thrills us. But, do you know how they're made? Did you know there are names for the different parts of the book?

A paperback, of course, is boring; perfect bound (the pages are just glued together at the back) and wrapped in a cover. Yawn. No artistry to it at all. A hard bound book though has more parts and pieces than you can shake a stick at, but there are two main parts to it, the casing, and the signature(s).

Now watch as I try to explain in an entertaining way what a casing is, and how it's made! Actually, it's just that, it's a case that wraps around the signature. What, that didn't make things clear? Okay, let's try this. The part of a hard bound book that's hard? That's the casing. Actually, the hard part are the boards.

Let's try again. The cover? The hard part? The spine? Those are all parts of the casing. Confusing? Alright, let's start from the cover. I'm going to use a copy of Ulysses S. Grant from 1868 that I happen to have in my hands (because it's pretty, closer to my desk, and the process is virtually identical), and explain in detail, very briefly, what goes into the making of the casing.

So, we start with a lovely piece of dark, chocolate brown leather (beautifully debossed in this case), and we lay it out on our workstation. On top of that, we glue the boards (the actual hard part, its sort of a really heavy card stock) There are two of these, well, sometimes there's a third making up the spine, but this book is a bit different.

Have I bored you yet? Thought so. I'll just keep going anyway. In the case of this book, the spine is stiffened not with board, but with six lengths of cord, measured roughly equally distant from each other (actually, these are possibly part of the signature, not taking the book apart, more in part two). We take all this, and fold (and glue) the excess leather over the top of the boards, so that now it's all a nice, neat little package.

We're done now, right? Not yet. Let's pretend we did use board for the spine. There's one more thing we need to do. We have to round the spine! Yup, pretty boring. It's accomplished with, lacking the proper name, a wooden jig with a round wells, and a nicely rounded stick (highly technical terms here) which gently, rounds the board that makes up the spine (more on this in part 3).

Did I forget anything? Probably. But that's all for now.