- What up everyone, Martina here and today we're making a
black leather bound grimoire. Just a quick disclaimer
to all our subscribers before we get into today's video. I just wanna say that I know there's been a lot of book binding lately, but we are working on a couple of LED and electronic projects, so don't worry we haven't stopped doing that. Now let's get into today's project. For this grimoire, I am using thick, A3
sized sketchbook paper and I had to start with
separating the sheets. In total I ended up using 96 out of the 100 sheets that I had. Then I could move on to
folding them in half. I always try to spend a few seconds extra to make sure the corners
line up perfectly. When is folded once I
go over the fold again with a bone folder to make
sure it's properly flat. I just gotta do that 96 more times. The next step is to make the signatures which are basically just a
little stack of between four and eight pages, I'm
using four pieces of paper in each signature, which gives
me a total of 24 signatures. With all of them stack together, I pop them in the book press
that Hansie recently restored and left them there for a couple of hours. In the evening I could continue with sewing the signatures together, but first I had to prepare
the holes a long the spine. Previously I have used a awl to punch every hole individually, but now I prefer using a coping saw to make all the holes
way more efficiently. I suggest a clamp to make the signatures stick
together while doing this. Also I don't have a jig to
fasten the pages vertically, so I simply held it in
place with my knees. I'm sewing the pages to some twine or a jute cord at four points which will create four
ridges along the spine once it's covered with leather. I won't go into detail on
the exact sewing method here as I've covered that
in the previous video. But I will put a link to
that video somewhere here on the screen if you wanna check it out. Once I was done stitching
I could release the cord from our makeshift chair jig. At this point I covered the
spine with some white PVA glue, which in my case is just regular
wood glue and let it dry. This is to make it a bit
more rigid for the next steps and as many of you noticed
in the spellbook I made, there will be a lot of
glue from here on now. As this is going to be a dark grimoire, I decided to keep the end pages black. They're made of quite thick cardstock and this is important
because thinner cardstock will really wormp from the
dampness of glue later on when attaching them to the book covers. Now the stitched together block of paper is called a text block and what
I do with it next is hammer it with a rubber mallet to
give the spine a nice curb. I'll just flip it over and
over and keep hammering it until the shape is round enough. Oh and by the way I just
wanna remind you that as usual you can find the
links to all the tools and all the materials
down in the description. With this book I wanted
to experiment a bit so I decided to add three
satin marker ribbons in two shades of gray. I measured the length that would stick out about three centimeters or
so at the end of the book and a few extra centimeters to
glue the ribbon to the spine. At the visible end I cut
the tail into a V shape and to avoid fraying of
the ribbon in the future, I quickly pushed it into
the flame of a candle so as to melt the edge
slightly and seal it off. All right time to sew the headbands. I'll use black and
purple embroidery thread as they'll match the leather and the amethyst stone on the cover. The way to do this is to first
cut two lengths of thread and tie them together
with a knot at one end and add two needles at the opposite ends. Then I can punch a hole with one needle through the middle of the first signature and insert the needle
into it from the outside. Pull the thread through
and insert the needle into the same hole again,
the same way to make a loop. Inside this loop I'm placing
a piece of leather cord that is a bit longer than the spine and the I will tightened
the loop around it. Next I'm grabbing that purple thread and running it under the leather cord and then around the
loop I just made, twice. Now I can begin to wrap the
thread around the cords two or more times and keep
it in place like this while I bring the black thread in. The first time I'm bringing
in the black thread, I'll have to loop it twice
underneath the leather cord in the same way I just did. Then I can wrap it around the cord twice and keep it in place
like so with one finger. Next I'll grab my purple thread again and saw that into the center
of the most suiting signature. Making sure it overlaps the black thread and locks it in place. Then I'll wrap the thread
around the cord twice again and bring the black thread
over the purple one. I only saw through the
signatures with the purple thread and never the marker ribbons. When I reach the end I'll bring
both threads to the outside and tie them together in a knot. I'll cut off the excess cords and seal everything off with some glue. Now that everything I need is attached and sewn on to the spine
I can cover everything with a fitting piece of linen cloth that I rub in place with a bone folder. And as you might have expected there will be glue underneath and on top of this layer. I'll just leave that for a few hours and grab some cups of
coffee while it dries off. When I got back the glue
had dried completely and it was time to
attach the cover boards. Usually you'll use
thick cardstock for this but I like my books thick
and heavy and rigid. So I prefer to use a type
of wooden fiberboard instead that's three millimeters thick. I'm drilling four holes at a angle into the cover for each of the cords. When I've inserted the cords
into the holes I fray them to give them more
surface area for the glue and to make them stay more flat. To protect the paper on
the inside of the book from the ton of glue I'm about to add, I'm laying a little stack
of paper between them to soak in the dampness as
well as some parchment paper to avoid making the glue
stick to anything else. When closing the book I make sure to push the cover down towards the spine. On the outside I'm adding
more glue and parchment paper, and then repeat the whole
thing on the other side and finally pop it back
into the book press, and leave it to dry for a few more hours. As part of the cover design, I wanted to try something
I've never done before. I think it's called embossing,
when parts of the design are raised to create different
levels and more depth. I made a paper template first and figured I could just
use the left over cardboard from the sketchbooks that
I had already emptied. I glued two and two shapes
together to make them thicker and made sure it was centered on the cover, glued it on to it and back into the book press it goes. In comparison to last time,
I'm using more suitable leather to cover the book today. It's a lot thinner about
.3 or .5 millimeter thick black dyed leather, so it should be a lot easier to work with. As it's a whole skin its
got very uneven edges so I just chop off the excess on one side before gluing it onto the spine. And making sure not to
add glue at the very top and bottom of the spine as
I'm going to fold it in here later to make the edge a bit nicer. Again I'm using my book
press as a makeshift jig to wrap some cord around the
ridges while the glue dries and this is to make
them protrude properly. When the glue had dried I
trimmed off the excess leather along all the edges and glued
the leather to the cover. I used a bone folder to smooth it out and squeeze out any air bubbles and my goodness it was satisfying to make those embossed rectangles protrude. At every corner I cut off more leather so I can fold the edges in and attach them with contact glue. Next I'm attaching this corner protectors. They wrap nicely around the corners and they've got edges that are bent in that will penetrate the wood board covers when hammering them in
place with a mallet. To add a nice contrast
to the black leather, I decided to make some
golden lines on the front, back and spine of the book. I did this by first marking
the lines with pencil, then I'll paint the lines
with something called a leaf primer, that has to sit and dry for at least 20 minutes before applying the leaf metal. I went with gold for this one. The leaf metal then
has to dry for 24 hours before covering it with coding varnish and when brushing off the gold it really went flying everywhere. So, if you're planning to do this, prepare for a gold glitter
all over the place. The centerpiece will
consist of a amethyst stone lying on top of a leather belt with a rather peculiar diamond shape. I cut it out first, punched
all the holes I needed for double cap rivets and buckles later on and then stained it with some
extra black leather stain. Afterwards I used my burnishing
tool that I just got, to burnish the edges with wax. To make this belt blend in a bit better, I added some golden
lines on this piece too. For some reason I lost
the footage of me coating the leaf metal with varnish but it's pretty basic just a thin brush and paint over the same lines of gold. A couple of places around the covers I wanted to add some double cap rivets and so I used a hole punch and
then drill to make the holes, and then I could hammer them in place. After doing some testing
with different types of glue two components quickepoxy
turned out to the best at attaching stuff to leather. So, I used that attach the amethyst stone to a oval fillagree and to glue the remaining
ornaments to the cover. And lastly, all I had to do was to rub the black leather belt with some wax, and this grimoire is complete. I will probably put this book up for sale. So, if you're interested
I'll leave a link in the pin comments and in
the video description. For more behind the scenes
content make sure to check out our Instagram @thenerdforge. I wanna thank you all for watching, if you enjoy these types
of projects make sure to click subscribe so that I
can see you in the next video. Thanks for watching and I'll see you soon. Bye.
Thanks for the video that was really interesting to watch. Awesome end product too. I want to bind books...