Weekly Bookbinding Report: new bindings, accidents, lessons
Week twelve as an apprentice bookbinder at York Bookbinding
Week twelve at York Bookbinding entailed three days of work, allowing a lot to be practiced, achieved, failed, and lessons learnt!
This weeks accomplishments:
- Sewing of eight (?) volumes of magazines.
- Removing staples in magazines.
- Rubbing spines with sandpaper so that the glue has something to stick to.
- Punching/sawing holes.
- Sewing sections into book blocks.
- Gluing book blocks, ready to be rounded.
- Hammering spines of book blocks to knock out the bulge of the thick folded sections.
- Sewing a new binding, the loose pages sent in from the client.
- Removing glue and trimming the spines of perfect bound magazines.
- Sawing the spine, and glueing up with thread support one volume, ready to be side sewn.
- Relearning how to use the hand operated guillotine.
New skills acquired this week:
- I made the mistake of pulling the tape out when trying to snip it. To get it back in we attached it to a safety pin and thread it back through. It was tricky, but it worked!
- I also learnt how we sew in a perfect bound section into a book block of sewn sections. To do this we need to trim it to expose a spine of loose pages, then rebind it with a runner stitch, then sew it in, threading through the runner stitch.
- It is hardly a new skills, but something I hadn't done for a while - bind a book from loose pages sent in from the client. I was to fold, then make a template for holes, then saw them to then sew onto tapes.
What I need to improve on:
- Using sandpaper to rough up the edge of the magazines - it is easy to loose control and catch the cover, destroying the print.
- Sawing through thick magazines is difficult without creating huge holes, so I ended up using the cradle and awl to create holes. Perhaps trying out different saws could solve this, or maybe avoid the risk and just use the cradle with thick sections from now on.
- When sawing for side sewing thread support, go a little deeper so that it is as flush as possible.
- Be careful with finishing the tapes!
- Improve use of hand operated guillotine. Always double checking and only pushing the buttons when confident. Trim magazines one at a time to avoid mistakes. Ensure the books is neatly pushed against the back so it trims straight.
Notes of the week:
- If spending a lot of time at the sewing frame pulling on thread, wear some kind of protection. Thread cuts deep!
- You find your own ways of working - I finally have formed the muscle memory to automatically thread the tape onto the key.
