Weekly Bookbinding Report: repairing, cutting & sorting
Week five as an apprentice bookbinder at York Bookbinding
Week five entailed two workdays as I had missed a day due to transport issues.
The first day I started by being shown how to repair pages of an old book, and sewed the book back together. I then learnt how to case in, finishing off the notebook I had been working on since the first week. After, I stripped some magazines of their covers and glue, ready for them to be trimmed and sewn together. This also involved sanding off the binding side of the covers so that the glue is able to attach.
The second day I got taught how to measure and cut boards and cloth for a casebound book. I then cut some calico to keep the materials stock up ready to be used. After this, I took a stack of old Leeds football game pamphlets that a collector needed being bound together. This involved re-organising them pamphlets so they are in chronological order of date, also checking there are no duplicates. I then removed the staples and repaired the pages. After this I was to sew them altogether, making the appropriate holes and using the cradle to sew with coptic stitch and kettle stitch.
Week five accomplishments:
- Independently carried out tasks on live work, sewing with the cradle.
- Learning and then putting into practice repairing methods.
- Measuring and deciding placement for holes when re-sewing a book, aligning as many holes as possible with pre-existing holes.
- Independently and successfully using coptic and kettle stitch.
- Successful use of Japanese saw to saw holes in pages for sewing.
- Measuring and deciding placement for holes for sewing of a book with sections that have multiple heights, knocking to the bottom.
New skills acquired during week five:
- Repairing tears of pages.
- Ironing out creases.
- Casing in a rounded and backed book to a clothbound case.
- Using polish to repair damage of cloth.
- Glue removal and preparing magazines for sewing.
- How to measure and cut board and cloth for casebound book.
- Using judgement for decision making in page repairing.
- Creating hole placement guides tailored to books for re-sewing.
What I need to improve on:
- Technique of using the guillotine.
- Accuracy of trimming cloth.
- Pace of page repairs and staple removal.
- Carrying out proper method of casing in.
