This was the last box I made on the last day of class no less. I couldn’t believe how simple it turned out to be. It’s basically just a three-walled tray with a top. I had always wanted to know the secret of how the box was lined inside, and now I do. It was so obvious once Barbara told me. You line the box before you assemble it!
So, the steps to make a slipcase were:
- Cut the boards obviously, based upon the size of the book, adding in cloth thicknesses here and there plus board thicknesses here and there
- Line the boards with paper – be sure the grain of the paper runs in the same direction as the board, and glue up the paper not the board. The trick with this is to align the paper perfectly in one corner, so be sure its squared. This will leave an overlap of paper on two other edges.
- Sand off the overlapping paper. This is done by placing the board on a table and drawing the sander down along the edge. Doing it this way won’t change the shape of the box. The paper comes off very easily, leaving a clean edge.
- Glue as normal for a three-walled box.
- With the spine facing you, test fit the lid.
- Glue edges and place the lid on; fitting it to the spine first.
- Let sit with a board and weight on it.
- Line the outside of the box to hide the seams and give the box a better appearance. This lining is applied the same way as the lining paper. I’m not sure whether I used museum board or simply a heavy-weight paper to do this. All I can recall is that it was white. Hmmmmm.
- The book cloth is cut to fold around the box with the grain running from head to tail. It should have at least a 1/2 inch margin at the head and tail and 1 inch on the length.
- Cover the box with the cloth.
- Pinch the cloth at the head to create an extension of the corner seam and cut a straight line so that the spine and two sides are separated.
- Fold the two sides in on the top and find the middle. Cut the middle line so that both sides meet equally.
Fold the spine tab over the top and cut a triangle that runs from the outside corners of the spine to the middle line. This triangle should go through the two side pieces as well.- Glue it all down and cut a piece of fabric to fit that will be slightly smaller to cover the top. This will hide the seams and give it a neater appearance.
Cut the corners on the fore-edge, like those on the three-sided box where there is a mirror image cut.- Measure the shorter side to be turned in and trim the other pieces to match. This will give an even edge once it is all glued in. Presumably. I messed this up a bit, but that’s okay. It’s only my first slipcover.
So, I know this post wasn’t quite as descriptive as the others, but it’s meant to build on them and simply show the slight differences that this box requires. I didn’t take many photos because of this.
You might notice that I’m wearing a band-aid in one of these. It seems that I can’t avoid injury. This time I tried to crush my finger in the board cutter. How would that device crush it? Well, there is a pressure clamp that holds the board in place as its being cut, and I was trimming a thin piece that I wanted to keep square and didn’t realize I was going to clamp my finger until I started to. Oooops. The injury actually reminded me a lot of the time I slammed my hand in the car door as a teenager. Ah, such is life.
