Rajiv Surendra’s Bookbinding Guide for Beginners | Intro to Bookbinding

hi i'm rajiv and i am a calligrapher and a chalk artist but at home in my spare time i like to do a lot of other things including book binding these are a couple of books i made and today i'm going to show you how you two can try this at home [Music] i love an actual book i love holding it i love reading from it i love knowing how far in the book i am i just i don't have one of those ipods i do have an ipod to me a book is something that is valuable because it's actually something that contains knowledge in between these covers there is wisdom and you can learn something you can come back to it and relearn it and that's why to me a book is something that's almost religious in its nature to be able to make your own book takes one's love of books to the next level so i would just like to tell you about the incentive that made me learn how to bind books i'm just gonna dive right in i'm just gonna share a little story with you okay [Music] sometimes agnes sometimes agnes by rajiv surendra sometimes agnes text and watercolor illustrations by rajiv surendra you can't put your name in there enough [Music] i am a large fluffy pussycat i am called agnes [Music] i am cared for by a small gentle and quiet man called bernardo he is a hipster with a bike he says is brick red it is brown actually we live in brooklyn sometimes he takes his camera and leaves for a long time i am alone i do not mind [Music] sometimes [Music] i like to go out but not all the way outside bernardo opens the door to let me out [Music] i love him sometimes i jump and i run and i play with the sushi magnet on the refrigerator door [Music] sometimes the end [Music] so this idea came to me while i was on my bike and i was laughing out loud thinking of making a book about bernardo and agnes and then i came home and thought why not why not just why not just do it why not just dive in i assumed that i would spend about a week on this but after the first little illustration which took about two or three days um the whole book ended up taking about three months to make so this is the original that's the original book that i made i take my watercolor supplies and i take this paper out around the city with me to coffee shops and i'd sit outside and i'd pull up his instagram and then just paint a picture it was so much fun i treated it as like a leisure activity but you know the funny thing is that when i was done i didn't want to give it to bernardo uh it was it was so precious to me that i just thought oh boy like i made this for my friend and now i want to keep it so that was my incentive to learn how to bind books and it was so much fun it was so much fun making a book and then being able to actually hold it in your hands and and to know that you made this you actually made a book a hardbound book so today i would like to show you how to do this the most important part of a handmade book to me is the paper the paper that makes up the pages that's the life of the book when i made this book i was very conscious that i would be painting on the pages with watercolor so i made sure that i picked a paper that would hold up to all that moisture that i'd be putting on the page so it was watercolor paper but i also wanted to be conscious of the weight of that paper i didn't want this book to be very thick and clunky i wanted it to be small and delicate [Music] the sheets of paper that i have here are all papers that make me drool because they are so beautiful they are made the old way they are all cotton papers so if if they're not 100 cotton they have a quantity of cotton rag in them and they're just so nice to work with i have this really thick handmade watercolor paper it comes in these large sheets and because it was handmade look at the edges the edges are uneven they have little bits of uh paper pulp sticking out it was part of the process of them being made by hand the paper that you choose will just inspire you while you're making your book once you've chosen the paper the next decision that you're going to have to make is how big do you want your finished book you might want a square book you might want a long narrow book that's the great thing about making a book yourself is that you can create kind of odd sized books with weird proportions based on the specific use maybe you want a book that fits into a suit jacket pocket on the inside so you want something long and narrow another way of sizing your book is actually determining the size of the page based on the original sheet of paper and how many times you can divide it into smaller pieces this paper is longer this way so i'm going to start by dividing this in half this way think about it the book's going to open like this the pages are going to close like this so you're going to have to cut your paper to double the width of a single page because they're going to be folded together so think about the size of the page and then double the width of it now remember that one of the beautiful aspects of this paper is the hand finished kind of irregular edge up here right so let's think about this i'm going to have edges of my book that are these sort of scraggly uneven edges do i want some of the edges to be like this and some of the edges to be straight because if i use an x-acto knife and cut this paper some of the edges of the pages are going to be straight my answer is no i don't i would ideally like all the edges to be kind of wavy and wonky considering that this paper is probably not square and it's not perfectly straight on the edges this book is going to be a little cattywampus and that's a good thing so let's embrace that where that comes into play here is how i actually divide this sheet of paper i'm not going to cut it with scissors or a knife i'm going to tear it so i'm going to find the center point of this let's measure across so i'm going to make a mark a light mark a small mark i'm going to do one in the middle and at the bottom i'm going to put the ruler down at the top anchor it in place find the mark in the middle and now you have to do this carefully but you also have to do it confidently if you hesitate you can make weird little bumps on here so be bold shift the paper the ruler should be anchored above the cut and below it it should be anchored well it shouldn't be sitting like this because that's not good and when you go to tear it away you can end up tearing it all over here and you'd lose one whole page of your book so anchor and continue there this edge is going to be a lot more harmonious in the finished book than a straight cut edge now fold it in half take your time doing this because this is not square those edges are not going to line up perfectly and i'm not doing a hard crease over here you just want a light crease okay and rip now i have two sheets so let's experiment a little bit and let's see if i fold this in half this seems like still it's a little too big for me i think i'm going to divide the paper once more so that my sheets are going to be this big and when they're folded that size will be the finished size of the book so every sheet is going to be folded in half this way and now you can put a hard crease on this to do that we use one of my absolute favorite tools in my toolbox the bone folder that you use for this type of thing so this is a hard crease bone folder going over that hard crease so i'm just going to go ahead and rip all of my paper into this size until no paper remains so the next thing we're going to do we're going to arrange these folded papers into what are called signatures a book is made up of sections that are pre-folded and then those sections are sewn together so this is a single page right i could arrange all of the pages of the book like this but that's not really going to give the book a lot of strength if i stack them together like this then i sew through these two pages at a time and the overall book ends up being stronger let's see what it looks like if i put three on here yeah i can do that but now here's the problem once i keep stacking look at how the edges start to protrude outward so if i did four you'll really see it look see now this thing is jutting out if this paper was very thin yeah i'd be able to put four or five ten together if it's really thin but because this is so thick the max that i'm gonna put together for each signature is two so i'm gonna take my pages and arrange them in stacks of two really kind of push them in together now this is the first moment when it starts to become thrilling because it starts to look like a book like you can hold it like this and say this is going to be my book and it's already really nice um you don't have to do that but once you have your signatures kind of arrange them neatly so that the spine from now on we're going to refer to this closed side as the spine of the book so just arrange your signatures so that the tips of the spine they all kind of line up it's more important that those are flush than worrying about this side next step we're going to find the center point of this spine now i'm going to mark one inch increments on either side of that mark all the way going up and down the spine now i'm going to take this little ruler i'm going to hold it perpendicular to that mark and mark the point along all the signatures now we have all of our signatures marked and those marks are going to be holes through which we're going to sew so so to sew we need a sewing box so from our sewing box we need a needle which is in the pin cushion we need an awl look at this nice little awl and we need some beeswax holy mary beeswax [Music] and most importantly we need some thread i like to use linen thread for this linen thread is very strong you want something that's not thick like this that's too thick something that's thinner i think i'm going to use this and because i have a variety of colors i'm going to hold them up to my paper and see what will sort of blend in the most oh look at that nice match since we have it we're going to use this but you know what if you want to use a contrasting color like look at this lovely green thread silk that would also be nice as a contrast and you would see little bits of it in the book when you open up the book but today i'm just going to use this ivory thread next step we are going to sew these signatures together and i'm going to begin by threading my needle get a length of thread that's manageable it's going to be doubled over but generally speaking you want your finished length of thread to be from your clavicle to the end of where your arm can extend and technically it's because you're doing this that if it's any longer than that then you have to re-pull it so this is always a good length of thread double it cut it wax it [Music] [Music] you wax the thread to make it stronger to also consolidate the cloth fibers and to prevent it from knotting up sometimes when you sew you'll pull the needle through and it'll start to tangle and become naughty naughty uh the beeswax prevents that from happening so it's it is essential to this process wax the thread from one end to the other and then thread your needle [Music] match the ends and give it a double knot so you want to keep the signatures in the same order if you start to move them around sometimes the signatures can shift and when you sew them into place the marks will be kind of off and the book will be a little wonky it's not the end of the world but if you can keep them organized in the same order try to do that start with the first signature open it up to reveal these points we're going to take our awl and we're going to poke a hole through here now listen to this when you poke a hole through here it's going through the center of the back you want it to come out through the center on the inside if you put this down like this and you just stick the all through i've done this before sometimes it comes through like the side of the page on the inside that's not good you want it to come through the very middle so to help you fold the paper against itself and then put the all in sort of at an angle like that and you see the awl will come out through the center on the inside so take your time when you're doing this because it does pay off to to do it properly and check as you're going you'll get the knack of it sewing the signatures together we start on the outside at the very bottom we put the needle through the hole comes out through the middle we go through this hole on the inside come out through the back and continue to the end you also have to pull the thread to keep it taut and tight another thing you don't want to pull it too much because i've done this before too you end up ripping the paper the thread cuts through the paper and rips it so there is a middle ground here that you'll just learn from experience now when i get to the end i'm going to be on the inside here right so this is what the outside looks like there is a loop here a loop here a loop here on the inside i have this coming out i'm going to take the needle and i'm going to go through this hole and come to the outside and now on the outside i'm going to go through the next hole so what we're doing is we're creating stitching on both sides completely down the spine and when we get to the end here we have to go through that first hole we have to go past that knot so just push that knot slightly out of the way put the needle through coming through the inside and when we're on the inside we're going to tie a knot this is just on this first signature securing the thread firmly in place take your needle put it back through that hole come out through the back and now we're going to pull so that this knot disappears and comes out the back you have to pull gently you'll hear a little pop you hear that the knot came out now we're ready to sew the first signature to the next one i'm going to line this up take the needle and thread put it through that bottom hole bring it out through the inside hole go out and now we're going to do something different so pay close attention we take this thread we put it through [Music] this side of the previous loop up through this side so we're latching on to that previous loop all right give it a little pull and now we're gonna go through the same hole that we came out of in that second signature we're gonna go from the outside to the inside see we went out through there we looped around the previous signature and we're coming out through here and now if you pull this this little latch has attached this one to the previous one sometimes it's better to just shut up and to let you watch so that your brain can absorb it without all this gabbering about you know what i mean to just watch [Music] when we come to the end of the second signature we're going to be on the outside we're going to go under the first signature's loop and we're ready to attach the next signature the third signature pick it up from here open it up punch your holes carefully attaching the third signature requires one more variation of this technique we go through the hole from outside to the inside from the inside to the outside now watch this carefully where do we go from here do we go under here and around no you're gonna put the needle in between the space of the two first signatures it's going to go out the other side around that first stitch [Music] and then it's going to go through that same hole again of the third signature where do we go we go in between one and two put it on the other side of that stitch [Music] see it's catching on to that original stitch and then back through the hole from the third signature so from now on all the signatures we attach after the third one are going to go between the space of the previous two signatures so if your thread's short you don't have to worry you can attach a new piece of thread the way you do that is you make a knot always on the inside put the needle back through that hole and gently pull this knot to the outside cut this thread a little leave a little tail and re-thread your needle we're going to put it through the same hole that we came out of we continue where we left off [Music] and now on signature number three you can see that we have a continual line of stitching on the inside so we're ready for the next signature which will get punched and will sew through the same way attaching between two and three [Music] we've come out of the last hole of the last signature you put the needle in between this the previous two signatures latching on to that knot as we've been doing and we make a knot make a double knot and then cut this off with a little bit of a tail now we're ready to glue the spine i don't have a book binding bench i don't have a book binding press i don't have a place where you can essentially and ideally clamp things together but you figure it out i open my drawer and i take out some of the compartments that i use for storage in here i take the book that needs to be clamped i put it along the edge of the drawer raise it up a little bit so that it's not flush with the drawer but a little above the drawer i get a little piece of wood and put it on the other side and then i get my clamps and i clamp the spine in place using the drawer the reason why i have this piece of wood here is because i'm really going to tighten that clamp and if i did it right against the book this little part would leave the impression of a circle in the paper which i don't want the reason why you need to clamp it is you want these signatures to be like that you want them to be pressed together nicely and now we're ready to glue the spine i'm using archival quality pva glue just make sure that when you're buying your glue that it says that on the label that it's archival quality it fills in the spaces between the signatures and you don't really want it to drip over the edges so be careful with this those little tails of the thread those can be blended in and glue down this first layer of glue will take about half an hour to an hour to dry when it's dry to the touch and it's no longer tacky you're going to apply another layer of glue so two full layers of pva glue keep this in the clamp let it dry completely and then we're ready to proceed to the next step which is reinforcing the spine so our spine has been glued that second layer has dried it is now clear our next step is to attach the headband on very fine handmade books the headband is actually sewn to the signatures by hand thread is kind of embroidered around a little tiny cardboard strip very delicate work but most books today that are mass-produced have this pre-made headband attached to the spine you're going to cut a piece that's slightly wider than the spine cut two pieces and these little bits there's a good side and a bad side to the headband the good side is going to go down at the top of the spine and you're going to pull it so that it anchors itself to the very top of the book with a little bit of glue have you ever had a really old book a hardcover book fall apart on you where the covers actually fall off well if you did and you looked at the spine you would see that the spine is reinforced with a kind of web-like material called mull the mall just reinforces that spine as this book is opened and closed this pva glue can become fragile and brittle and crack the mull is just an added layer to hold everything together so you can get this at specialty shops or even at art stores in a book binding section usually art stores have a book binding section you want to cut a tiny strip of maul that's just the length and the width of the spine and a bit of glue on the spine and on the headband because now that headband is going to be held down by the mall put them all down on the spine gently get your trusty bone folder and really press that maul into place you can even go in between the signatures and press them all into the grooves the last step for preparing the spine is covering the small with a bit of paper i get a piece of good construction paper this isn't children's construction paper it's a thick kind of craft paper and i cut a piece that is smaller than the spine slightly and i'm going to glue that in place as well again with the bone folder really consolidate it all and then we're going to leave this to dry for a couple of hours this stuff is called book board it's a kind of condensed cardboard that's used for the covers of hardbound books you get this specifically for book binding also at your craft store or specialty shop where they have book binding supplies it comes in various thicknesses so you want to pick the thickness that is appropriate for the book that you want to make measuring out the boards for your cover of your book is something that really is a matter of taste sometimes you might want quite a bit of overhang around the whole book so i could give you measurements i could give you a formula but i'm not going to do that i would say make the covers slightly bigger than your text block you're going to need two cover pieces one for the front and one for the back and then you're going to need a piece for the spine and you want about an eighth of an inch above and below that so you'd add a quarter of an inch to the measurement of the length of your spine why do i cut on the floor you ask because you know those mats that you can put on the top of your desk that have the measurements on it those cutting mats i think i've had three versions of them and i hate them they are so ugly i put them away in the closet and every time they fall all over the place i think why do i have this thing i don't like it it's not pretty it's ugly so three of those have gone in the garbage because it does not spark joy when i'm holding it and this is how i cut stuff on the floor deal with it let me tell you something honey look over here you need a really sharp knife for this okay no fooling around with dinky old blades you found in your dad's toolbox get a nice new utility knife with a sharp sharp blade it will make all the difference you have to have a sharp knife to cut board properly front back spine let's put it all together let's put it all together now we have our text block dried look how nice he looks it feels like a real book it's starting to look like a real book we're almost there the next step is to get some book cloth this is book cloth it is a a cloth that is backed with paper specifically used for covering books and it comes in all different textures and colors i like the linen texture some of it is actual linen here's some green here is some actual linen beautiful beautiful book cloth i think today i'm going to use the green you lay out your book cloth put your cover boards on the cloth arranged with the spine in between both front and back cover and you want a three quarter inch to one inch overhang around the edge of everything i am going to roughly mark this take this off put down some lines while i have my ruler here i'm going to just mark a straight line across the bottom which i will reference later cut out the book cloth cover boards are now ready to go onto the book cloth i'm going to use this straight line as my guide so that the bottom is even and i'm going to lay this out so that there's approximately a quarter of an inch in between the spine and the front and the back of the book and now i'm going to glue these boards to the book cloth get a big brush really cover this with quite a lot of glue i'm going to place it down on the book cloth you can move these out of the way turn it over see these bubbles we need to get rid of them so what do we use we use our bone folder now our spine [Music] and then the back cover and now we're going to glue these bits down before we do that you want to cut out these corners to make it smooth so i'm going to cut a shape like this make sure you don't cut right to the edge of the book board you want this little bit in here [Music] let's do the long side first [Music] hold the book on its end the cover is on its end press down pull this up and [Music] press it in place with your bone folder [Music] use the bone folder to sharpen the corners this is just a great tool all around for this whole process once this hard cover has been assembled with the book cloth you want to put it under a weight it is damp right now and it can start to buckle and curl the covers can actually sort of curve you don't want that to happen so put this under a weight while you do the next step now we're ready to attach the end papers to our text block this is now called a text block once it has been assembled and the spine has been glued we have these beautiful marvel papers that i made if you didn't see that video check it out there's a link below i think i'm going to pick two papers that are similar in their color scheme so i'm going to do this one and this one for my end papers of the book so much fun shopping shopping for marbled papers that i made myself and now we're going to cut these marbled papers to size you want the end papers of the book to be the same length of the book i'm going to measure out that measurement on the paper now this part is a little tricky you're going to line the paper up to the edge of the text block and with the bone folder just mark where it meets that spine fold it over on that mark this edge should be flush with the text block when the book is finished this is where book binding becomes a little stressful because it all comes together at this stage and everything needs to kind of line up properly it needs to fit so the first time i did this it was actually disastrous the book was very tight it actually wouldn't open up and i just had to rip off the end papers and start over so if you if you don't do this properly the first time i didn't either so now i'm going to place a tiny bit of glue on this edge and then i'm going to glue this to the text block line this up so that it's pretty and flash take my bone folder and just give it a little reinforcement in there fold this over and do the other side so when you're cutting your marbled paper look at it and see what part you'd like to use i think i would prefer this bit [Music] so now we have our dried flattened cover our hard cover and it's time to attach the text block to the actual cover this is a little stressful but we're gonna just do it okay we're gonna do it and it's gonna work the first thing we do is line this up so that the headband on either side is evenly spaced so there's a little bit of clearance up here and there's some down here can you see that can you see that now do you see me sweating well this next part is the brain surgery of book binding the 11th hour when things can go very wrong i'm just gonna you know what i'm just going to tell you this is the point where all your beautiful work can be ruined um so let's see what happens little tip when you're doing this have something to prop up the cover of the book so nobody told me this i had to learn this the hard way don't just try to do it like this have a setup before you start gluing this end paper to the board set this up like this put something here so that this sits like that got it so you ready we're just gonna do this okay we put a piece of scrap paper in here we get our glue we layer glue down really get into the area near the spine there is this weird bit of no man's land in here that needs some give this is the thing that no one pointed out to me and i had to figure out the hard way you need a bit of this end paper to stick in the space that's between the the board and the spine i'm going for it line up the book so that it's even top and bottom [Music] take your bone folder press in here while the glue is still wet cut this just inside the edge of the book cloth don't press too hard or you'll cut through the book cloth i told you it's like brain surgery it's how it feels there one side done next side and this is our finished book sketchbook with really nice handmade watercolor paper and end papers that were made right here the last thing you want to do is put some weight onto this book we just attached the end papers with glue so this cardboard is damp again and you don't want it to curve or to buckle so just put some weight on it center the weight over top of the book and leave it like this for about 24 hours and you're done try it yourself at home don't be afraid of making mistakes don't be afraid of it going horribly it probably will the first time but once you get the hang of it it really becomes addictive book binding nice little skill [Music] if you liked this video give it a thumbs up and if you didn't give it a thumbs down but either way since you made it to this point subscribe for more videos just like this one [Music] it's not a little skill it's a big skill

Channel: HGTV Handmade

Views: 157,099

Keywords: Bookbinding tutorial, diy bookbinding, bookbinding for beginners, diy book binding, diy book binding methods, diy notebook binding, book binding materials diy, book binding instructions, diy easy book binding, bookbinding tutorial for beginners, diy paper binding, book binding techniques diy, rajiv surendra, hgtv, handmade, diy

Id: ER9FIyYr_QA

Length: 40min 32sec (2432 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021