Binding books- Part 5: Putting it all together

Welcome to the end of this series telling you how to make a hardcover book.  We are on the home stretch now- by the end of this tutorial you should have a finished book in your hand.

So what you need today is:

• Your finished textblock, decorated with headbands and a bookmark if you choose (see part 2 and 3)
• Your finished cover (see part 4)
• Some newspaper and scrap paper (to absorb glue moisture and to protect your textblock
• Glue (I use acid free PVA)
• Two pieces of nice paper the same size as you printed your book on for the endpapers (A4 in my case)
• Some baking paper or some plastic- this is to form a waterproof barrier to prevent moisture passing into your textblock when gluing the cover on, causing your paper to wrinkle
• Heavy books for weighing things down

The first step is to protect your textblock from glue moisture wrinkling your pages.  What I do is use a piece of baking paper that sits between the last page of the text block and the fabric you backed your text block with.  It will also prevent the paper from sticking to the cover.

Baking paper between the layer you wish to glue and the layer you wish to protect (your text block) will prevent moisture from wrinkling pages.

Your book is to sit with the back of the textblock aligned with the edge of the coverboard.  Place glue where the fabric from the text block sits.  (A variation in binding you could do if you have a spare blank page at the start and end of the book would be to glue the entire page including fabric down.  If you were doing this you would want to place the baking paper between the last and second last page).

Glue on the inside back cover where the fabric of the text block will sit

 Place the text block down, ensuring the baking paper is in place and place weights on the text block.  Leave to dry.

Text block glued down- note the back of the text block is aligned with the edge of the back cover.

Once it is dry, you have a choice- you can glue the spine to the back of the text block or leave it.  If you have headbands on and choose to not glue the spine, you might like to glue a strip of paper to neaten things up a little (have the paper a bit shorter than the spine so it covers the scrap material and the spine but not the coloured threads).  If you choose to glue the spine to the text block, put a thin coat of glue on the spine of the cover at the same time as when you glue the front of the cover down.

The front cover is glued the same way as the back.  Place glue where the fabric will go and close the cover so it makes contact with the text block.  Again, the back of the text block should align with the edge of the cover board.  If gluing the spine, press down along the spine to ensure contact is made.  Place weights on your book and allow everything to dry.

The front cover is glued the same way as the back- this is what the inside of your cover should look like once the fabric is glued down.

 If you used a sewn binding, glue the textblock bands down separately over the fabric.

Once the fabric is glued down, glue your bands down on top of the fabric.

You're nearly done!  All that you have left is to do is to add some endpapers to the inside covers to hide that fabric and make it pretty.  Take your endpaper and fold it in half.  Put glue on the inside of the cover and glue the endpaper in place (it's a good idea to put newspaper ontop of this paper to absorb that moisture).  Place a weight onto your book and leave to dry.

Open up your book and turn to the page where you see the textblock and the endpaper.  You'll probably see a bit of the fabric binding and cover at the seamline.  To hide this, place a thin line of glue on the first page of the book (the textblock's first page).  This should be only 5mm wide or so.  Once the length of the page has the glue carefully close the book, ensuring that the endpaper folds and sits straight with the text of the book.  Put some scrap paper in between the first and second page of the book to absorb any excess moisture.  Again put weights on the book and leave to dry.

Bit hard to see, but this is the page glued, ready to close to stick the endpaper (purple) onto the edge of the textblock (white)

Do the same thing to glue the endpaper in to the other end of the book.  And... you're done!  You've just made your book.  If you choose, you might want to add something on the cover or spine- below is the Discworld Stamp Yearbook I made a few years ago for the first year of Discworld stamps.  For this book I printed out a label for the front and used a gold pen to label the spine.  I plan on doing the same for the volume I've just made once the glue dries.

Here's one I prepared earlier..

That's all there is to it.  I'll post pictures of the other books when the book dries.  And please let me know if you use these instructions!  I'd love to see your results and it would be nice to know if this was helpful for you.  Leave a comment or drop me an email.