"Men in Sheds" - The Bookbinder

you all right you guys I'll be good right and let me show you the book first of all so this is a copy of breakfast at tiffany's and this is from the folio Society so it's a nice copy a nice paper with nice illustrations and so on it's actually a kind of a big folded sheet paper basically so it's uncut but that actually makes it easier when we sew in it when I get the book the first thing I need to do is decide what the design is going to be so first thing is to read it which I've done and then the second thing is to try to take some inspiration from either what you've read or from the illustrations basically what I've decided to do is to take those colors and use those colors as kind of the inspiration for the calling of the binding itself so to the design what I came up with if that is something that an elder said which was Holly Golightly in the industry she's a bit like the light and the people around alike the moths circling the light who can't quite get to it necessarily but all sort of circle around it so that was actually the inspiration for design I've come up with the first thing I always do is just sketch loads of different pencil sketches and scribbles and things and I went through loads of loads of options and thoughts on that but what I've finally come up with is basically that the center point it won't actually be a circle it'd be a bright yellow sort of central spot and then it'll gradually fade out to brown representing the brownstone buildings that the senior setting and then you've got these ellipses sort of circling around the central bright spot representing the other characters and then as you can see what I've done is use the color stirrer to fill that in so that's the basic principle of the design now it's important to get that right first because it goes right back to the very beginning of what I'm about to do which is to start sewing the book when your soul rock you have to so in the end papers so these are the end papers that I produced yesterday and which sort of lead through from dark brown to a light brown to the sort of creamy white of the book itself so that's it that's now basically ready to ready to so so the first thing I need to do is put some holes in the fold so I know where it's going to be so this particular little jig that are makes a cracking little tool all will become clear because you probably think you want earth is he talking about the holes I'm going to go these marks I'm now going to put your hole in all of these and this ensures that the holes in exactly the right position and they go exactly through the center of the fold it's really because they this the sewing stage of it which is the next step is is your under bit I like more than anything actually it's finally really quite absorbing and relaxing you'll notice throughout this that aids concentration significantly can stick the tongue out the corner of your mouth so and I just need to punch the holes in the waste sheets are they waste sheets just to protect so same way she time at the end papers these are the own papers are set way sheets because there's a way sheet on the end which is it protects the book when it's been so but that will actually torn out later on okay now I need to make sure these are all in the right order and basically we've got these black marks that are on the spine of these books they're actually called the signatures which is resonating edges in these of angels but they're all in order you can see they've sort of form that line so that I know that everything there is is correct so we can now get round to serene after so are using this device which is a sewing frame and this basically simply is a device to hold the tapes in position while you sew around them and the tape is here to kind of it holds the pages together a bit with the sewing and but this is also what touches the book block to the board's so it's a very important part of the of the book structure I've got the four tapes in position which I'm going to be sewing around I've lined them up with the holes on the spine of the book and now I'm going to sew so who's over there this is a waxed linen thread that I'm using so the first place straightforward in office just in and out I'm going around be tread on the fur and doing around these tapes I've got an engraving somewhere from the fifteen hundreds and it's got a picture of a guy doing just this it's exactly the same narrow difference at all apartment factors using codes and Italy doesn't use braces fittings in order to hold them together the forwarding of the book as it's called which is this preliminary stage before you get to the decoration side of it is as important as the actual binding itself but trivia for you beat me the stitches at the end stopped on the bottom end of all the capital stitches no idea what you cannot take our idea while shell kettle stitches it simply wrote to tell us um sure let's finish off a double double stitch there we go soon you my brazzers I just check through it just to make sure things the right way up and appears to be in order yeah don't there we go so I'm just going to glue up the spine a little bit and just to hold all the sections in place whilst I trim them you use them two primary primary kinds of glue in bookbinding there's PVA which is a sort of surface glue really the other kind of glue is paste basically something like that actively a flower paste and indeed you use mixtures of the two as well I'm not being too much on here because I don't want it to be absolutely solid just enough to hold the sections in position there we go so we just leave that 10 minutes gonna have a cup of coffee or something and when we come back we'll be able to trim the edges and make it nice and square and flat and they're ready for moving on now it's your absolutely solid you say to get me to go through it okay so this process is called plowing and it's the traditional way of cutting a book desirable binders tend to do this rather than using guillotine this gives a very smooth very accurate cut so we do inserted a few pages at a time I can feel that the blade is sharp which is good right so the first thing I need to do now is having mock metal is to round the spine and which is just creating an initial and initial kind of shape to it rarely check the shape isn't going so I've got a little bit of round should be sufficient for what I'm eight now we'll cut it on to the the backing board which is you've got a little bit of double-sided tape to hold in position this needs to be quite accurate to ensure that the shoulders are even as the book won't be square that can go in the press what I'm going to do now is and buck the book I've already rounded it which is given it the sort of gentle rounded shape on the spine and I had to create the shoulders on it we just do that with a hammer so I'm just going to basically walk away this burn gently to start off with and start off using this edge of the hammer and you have to quite careful with this because you can pick your damage the paper I'm done it before it can wrinkle the pages a bit and typically at this stage so just a bit of a gentle shaping to start off with glancing blows just kind of forcing the edges over this metal strip lucky for nicely rounded shape with the shoulders nicely formed takes a little while to do it it's worth spending it so just cut this cloth to size it's a very thin very strong cloth called fray not then I just stops holding in shape it in place I'll take it out of the press once it's dried yeah ready for the next stage you might remember this is the the idea that I had for the design the first thing I tried was this the colors the info don't go what I talk to the line it's not clear even that there are ellipses there and also areas ways it's not exactly following a smooth curve you can really see it so having done that starts to do a similar kind of thing where the in full colors are going to go right up to the lines so I'm actually going to to to tool the the lines in other words user a brass heated tool and then I'm going to cut some very very thin slivers of black leather which will lay inside that that line that depression a little bit that's made by the tool so it'd be much more delicate the difficulty will still be getting it absolutely smooth on the curve I want to use almost as few colors as possible this is a another copy of the book that I was playing about with originally and you can see the illustrations and I'm trying to live some of those colors to use on the ellipses on the front cover so the visit there's a connection between the illustrations and the cover so that's what I'm aiming for so there's a lot of work still to do on that and but I've got quite a bit of time and can be playing about with that whilst um finishing off the actual what's called forwarding the beginning part of the process of burning the book so that's the first thing where it will cut it's me but we just need to sand it down and smooth as possible I just put a background on it's all it takes to start off with and that can just dry for a moment or two so what I'm going to do now is is sprinkle on some darker ink sprinklings of technique that's been used for centuries and bookbinding particularly whether it stops the color being so flat and just gives it a bit of a bit of lift you know yeah these now the next step is to put some gold some sprinkled gold leaf onto this but it needs to be able to stick to it so we use something called Blair and all I'm going to do is just sprinkle that so it's real gold leaf very very thin gold yeah and just through it's very gently first of all press it down through a thin piece of paper now when I take this off a lot of the gold will come off with it so I'm just going to apply a little wax so it's part of the process of applying wax which I'll do quite gently half of that will come off and this is where the gold what's left really starts to to stick in them the next stage then is to so be end band for design bindings you sell them in the traditional way so I'm going to be sewing them using 100% silk thread the trick we're doing it end band is getting the tension right put this court in position this is a bit where you put the speed up the filter if this light exit but that 15 minutes 20 minutes maybe I'm going to change colors Maps and that will comes over and I'm going to pick up the darker color so many clothes have you got to know three so everything was yeah may contain violence moments of mile Pole unfortunately got to let that dry which only gives us time to have a cup of coffee what a shame so the next step is lining the spine I'm just going to cut pieces to fit in between the the tapes just to solidify all these and also on the ends as well it's really important to get that spinal flap at some point we'll hear footsteps on the refill and the squirrels are there we've got from Nobita Bradham so I'm now going to do one more on top so we've lined the spine and we now need to mark up where the birds are going to go so what I'm going to do is is create some holes to lace these tapes through to mark with a pencil either side of the tapes and I need to create the holes very delicate operation holding a big big bear wood chisel and a hammer and you my woodworker leveled coming through and what I'm going to do is where the tapes go I'm going to remove a few laminations of card cutting down a little way so I'm just going to lift up a little bit of the card now nestled nicely in those little holes on the other side boat we need to do the same again it's a very very strong method of joining boards up this is lovely watching somebody were there thinking about this I don't feel like work endeavours don't we're doing it about six or seven years now what I'm going to do secure these bits first budget point some glue for weight on it mister hold it flat dry from it right so we've just got to recess these into the grooves you made earlier noisy chairs as flat as possible and a glue spread evenly and leave that for few minutes to dry turn over and do the same on the other side so before we put the next layer on here I just need to sand it down because although we've we've filled in between these bumps with universal boards there so just need to reduce that little bit you won't think bookbinding would build your muscles but I probably worried by the way you really feel it anyway right so now I need to make the holiday I'd like to just give it a bit of help informative shape just by curving it a bets initiative question and steaming the paper on top until you're happy with is quite quite thin craft paper as well there's a nice smooth surface for that the spar because when the leather goes on with any lots of books you'll really see it yeah it's once fine there's the holocron I'm ready for the leather refectory of toxic trimmed at the ends and so much will be later on but then that's the one of the key components of it so where are at is that we've got the book is good at boards on we've got the edge core in the end bands have been done the hollow is on so that's what he's focusing it yeah what's already needs to join now before I get sounding the edges the boards so this is the this is the little letter that's going to go onto the book as you can see a hairsprayed the background so it's yellow in the middle and sort of gradually going after this brown at the edges produced various pieces of thin leather again these have all been airbrushed sprayed with acrylic ink to give these colors so what this is going to be is called a back paired onlays which means that essentially gets stuck on to the leather but then later I'll turn it over and I'll sand it or pare it down so that essentially there's there's no lump it feels as flat as it can be basically doing the relevant donor these these black lines and this is also leather essentially what I do there is use a hot tool to create a line and then lay into that a piece of very thin leather we end up just with very thin strips like this which basically which basically then will go into the into the grooves and this is what we've got left to do today you can see I've done most of this the onlays have gone on the color done lays most of these have been positioned and so what I just have to do is take this very thin piece of leather and this is just going to go round into this line just here right so I just need to paste up this piece of leather this is a bit fiddly I mean take a little well the good thing about paste is it takes a while to dry so you've got time to manipulate the leather so just put it in kind of roughly first they've already made the the groove with a hot a simple hot tool trying to do without stretching it as well because I don't want and shrinking back or distorting securing it getting it in the right position so it looks like a continuous care with no lumps and bumps because it's still a little bit of a bump we're still proud of the surface a little bit what I'm going to do is press it because I want the bump to appear on the back on the under the back of on the reverse side so I can remove it so this has to be absolutely flat so the way I do that is to press it I'm going to use a piece of blotter because there might still be a little bit of glue I got some of this down which is basically non sticky stuff so that's the good side is on a very flat surface now the reason I've used a bit of blotting paper rather than straight off this for my craft is if I didn't do that the the shininess of the floor might potentially could transfer to the leather and I don't really want that one to retain a little bit of a grain I put a piece of foam on it the bone on the top now when I press that the good side is going to be against the very flat surface the top side is going to be in the phone so that it will all the foam will have the bumps to come through onto the reverse side so just give it I just leave it for a few seconds so the first thing to do is just check it's all flat yeah so the design there is now finished all the lines that I want are on there when this is on the book I will actually cut out a circle after there and I'll put put in another another piece of thinner leather so it'll be slightly recessed but I'm going to cover that with gold leaf so it will be this like a shiny Sun if you like right so that's basically finished but what I'll do is I will pare this down with my paring knife to remove any any lumps and bumps on the back it's still got tissue on the back here as well so am i I might leave a bit of it on in the middle no point kind of risking it it's just around the turnings around the joint on the spine those are the key areas where needs to be very flexible and we'll kind of see how it goes from there from the book as it is now the leather is completed essentially we go onto the book helps you turns in what you're left with is obviously a bump without a hole in the middle in order to make this nice we have to flatten that so there's an illustration of that and what we what I'm trying to do is create an inside of a board similar to this that's the plan and get my leather one turned in filled the doublers on cut the Sun out and essentially that'll be finished why is it called the blurs that's a very interesting question Graham I'm really glad you asked that go any other questions I have see no idea why the cobblers that could be your homework for the seat I was gonna say that could be your infinite minute answer okay I think that's pretty smart we can take it to be honest okay okay right well we've moved on a bit since last time and we have a finished book in its box so here we are breakfast at tiffany's the end-result open it up so you can see the whole binding there you can see all the different ellipse shapes that we've got on there and with the different colors in there and the black unlaid leather lines as well and then that central circle which I'll come back to in a moment and so the leather basically was back page which means he was sort of standard and spoke shaved on the back so that it became very flat after the UM lays had gone on and then applied to the book this doubler actually then went right into the joint often these joints are separate but in this case it it was actually form part of the blue blur so this leather went all the way and onto the joint and just onto the first page once that was on I've tooled here a little cat paw prints there is an impression of the only light impression with an impression of the cat prints on there as well if you don't know the story there is a cat which forms a reasonable reasonable integral part to the storing breakfast at tiffany's and then just really for decoration this is a real gold leaf which is applied on top of that in a sort of random kind of way and then this is go suede which was effectively just glued on to that page chides the end of the leather it's only thin so it doesn't add a lot of bulk to it but it's a really like printer print suede on the end paper it just gives it a bit of a no tack togs yeah tactile a bit of luxurious to is it's just really nice and we made the box with as well I'm going to show you the box foxes are important parts of this although in competition that are often fall parts of the competitive process and for a buyer you know they're an important part of what they're buying so these are made specifically to fit each book and so they have to be millimeter perfect it's lined with suede I've chosen a black broadcloth with a sort of brown edge again mimicking the colors that are included on the under design really and I as I say on this one usually for me I don't done only do this but I particularly liked this image from the book which basically just cut out and stuck under the the cover and then added a title to it because I think it says an awful lot about her and about the situation and it kind of sets the scene a little bit now the essential bit posed a bit of a problem my idea was to have in there solid gold piece maybe leather covered in gold leaf because it was Holly Golightly if that's representing here that she sort of shines out and which is why everybody's attracted to her now I tried that but for some reason it just didn't work it was actually quite flat it didn't have the impact that I wanted the inside of the recess round the edge the thickness of the leather I painted with black acrylic as well so there's a bit of a contrast the goal just didn't shine as I wanted it to and what we looked at doing was using a black background as you can see on there now there were two possibilities one was to use sprinkled gold which is what I've ended up using the other was to use sprinkled silver a bit like a diamond if you like there was the idea it gives a fine line between getting that contrast and in clashing and to me it just clashed a bit too much whereas with the gold on there the colors seem to seem to work really nicely and you've got the black background which means that you got a nice complement of the edge the the black edge to the the recess nicely and the the black lines and the gold still draws the eye still kind of sparkles a bit but it also links in with the yellows and Browns of the book but I please I'm pleased with it so well whether the judges will be remains to be so we will find out see why people pay for em yeah yeah actually when you when you understand them you know the word that goes into them the time involved and the materials and so on you start to recognize if it is a tumor yeah it is a piece of art that you buying actually unlike any art you might like it or you might not yeah just so it's subjective yeah as lovely thank you yeah so there's anything more that you want me to do for the video I did hmm might take a while hang away with scissors you

Channel: grobbo64

Views: 430,212

Keywords: Bookbinder, design, design bookbinder, shed, Book, Bindery, Hornsea, phatgrob, men in sheds, The Bookbinder, Forty-One/51, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly Golightly, Glenn Malkin, East Riding, Designer Bookbinders, Folio Society

Id: f96v8LRyblw

Length: 36min 27sec (2187 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2015