Before adding cover paper, we lined the front of the cover with a piece of paper, attached with PVA, so that the cover paper would meet the leather on an equal plane. The cover paper was added using paste.
Looking at the inside of my cover, you can see that the cords were shredded and glued down. I could have chosen to line the inside cover as well to hide/disguish the bumps made by the cords more, but I chose not to. I used Canson paper as my end paper and that is heavy enough that I don’t really notice the cords at all. You can also see how the leather stained the blotter paper inside – a good reminder to have wrapped the pages in saran wrap.
Adding the end paper was different than I remembered. What was the same was making sure to fold the paper along the grain. You always want to glue things with the grain running in the same direction, preferrably the length of the spine. This keeps things from buckling. Anyway, for these books, we folded the paper and then figured out what the curve of our spine was. We needed to do this so that we could create the curve (the shoulder) in the fold of our end paper. I basically guessed and used my bone folder to create a small fold. The first step is then gluing just the fold to the paper using PVA to set it quickly. I almost forgot to remove my waste paper (remember the MBM I added to help create spine space) before gluing.
Once that is dry, the end paper is glued to the cover using paste with a little bit of PVA just at the inside edge. Using my bone folder, I tried to make sure that the paper also entered the fold slightly. Once the paper is glued, I set it with a board and weight for 10 minutes or so to give it time to adhere. It has to adhere before closing the cover to cut the paper to the right width on the other side so that the inside spine won’t become wrinkly. Unfortunately, I rushed to do this in class and didn’t give the one side enough time. Therefore, this poor book has one wrinkly side and one good side.
Once the cover was dry, I closed it, and flipped the book over to measure and cut the inner paper. You want to keep the cover as closed as possible when doing this so that the inner end paper will match the width of the first sheet of the book. These don’t have to be fully glued together, just halfway or only at the foreedge. I haven’t actually done this yet, and I’m not sure that I will. I like how it looks now.
To finish the book, I have to give the spine a paste wash and then wax it. The spine should then be waxed every couple of years to keep it in good shape.
I really learned a lot from the class and enjoyed it immensely. I hope to make a couple more books like these before my sabbatical is over. We’ll see. Making the other book was quite similar to this process, so when I blog about that, I’ll most probably focus on the differences.
[...] finishing steps are exactly the same as what was done with the tight back. If I had wanted to put corners on the [...]