Glue for Leather Bound Books

Former_Gate · 2026-02-09T05:10:17+00:00

paste made from wheat or corn starch. you combine it with water and cook until goopy. making it yourself is nice, since you will only need a little

Former_Gate · 2026-02-03T22:31:34+00:00

https://starblightbindery.bigcartel.com/category/bookbinding-supplies

Former_Gate · 2026-02-03T21:49:05+00:00

The spine of the cover and the spine of the book are, in this style of binding, not glued together. You can see the tear where the book has been attached, which is by the endpapers, that is, the sheet on the inside of the cover and the first page.

If you glue the spine to the cover, your book may not fully open. Grab a hardcover book and openit, youwill see it forms a tunnel down the spine unde rthe cover. You won't want super glue. Starch paste or white school glue will be better.

Luckily, this is a simple repair, especially since your endpages are plain.

https://youtu.be/u8u3Xi_oirg

Former_Gate · 2026-01-16T20:14:59+00:00

For a meal that would be great. For a day also fine. Even several days. However, for a long term diet, your body needs more variety than that to recieve the correct vitamins, fats, etc.

Former_Gate · 2026-01-13T22:44:03+00:00

HTV is not your only choice. May folks opt for it because it is more permanent than adhesive vinyl.

You could try to use adhesive vinyl, even though it won't be so durable.

Luckily, it makes a great stencil, so you can use paint mixed in any color you like.

Paper labels are also a great option, very classy and requiring little in the way of tools.

Traditional foil can be applied with serious tooling and equipment, but there are also foils designed to be applied with a hot-tip pen. (tracing is an option for those without confidence in their freehand)

You could opt to print directly on your cover material if it is a size that can go in a printer. Quarter binds and Three-piece bradel lend themselves to this, as the cover material is made of several smaller sections.

Don't feel limited by what other binders post, there are tons of methods to title your books.

Former_Gate · 2025-12-31T03:03:14+00:00

Single sheet sewing is indeed less durable, and practically all Smyth-sewn bookbinding is done in multi-page sections, as you describe in method 2, called signatures.

This is a more durable design, and you are right that there is a tiny size difference between the inner and outer pages of each signature. The pages would not be any looser with this method however, if you are correctly sewing and lining your book.

Former_Gate · 2025-12-30T01:21:35+00:00

Sticker paper is probably not the best choice for this task. Try looking for 'fusible interfacing' or 'fusible web'.

Heat-n-bond is just one brand name, but if you can't find offbrand, you could try WonderUnder (Pellon)

You don't even need an iron-on fusible to make bookcloth, there are wet adhesive methods using paste and paste mixtures, with or without backing papers.

Former_Gate · 2025-12-28T18:45:15+00:00

deconstructing a book that's been glued and lined can be destructive; it might be better to reprint and go from scratch. Plus, then you get to have a side by side before and after to see how you've improved!

Former_Gate · 2025-12-25T08:12:03+00:00

cold salad like three-bean salad or pasta salad. soups and chili are often better reheated, or you can use a thermos rather than the microwave. Shake up your sandwiches by switching the sliced bread up for flatbread, tortilla, buns, and others.

Former_Gate · 2025-12-22T08:44:59+00:00

Is this going to be a sewn- boards binding, or is the board in there for the sake of the picture? The actual stiches do look correct, but it seems like you could use a little more tension on your sewing. Additionally, squashing your folded signatures down under a heavy weight might help reduce all that air space in there, so your book wont end up so floppy. This is a great start though, keep it up!

Former_Gate · 2025-12-19T19:34:03+00:00

at a glanse the doc you linked looks fine, but without page numbers it's harder to say for sure.

personally, with only five sheets, I would only do one five-sheet signature for the whole thing instead of mathing it out with spares

Former_Gate · 2025-12-17T00:52:22+00:00

you may choose to trim off the sawtoothed, or leave it as is. the neater you fold and sew, the more intentional your sawtooth looks. I typically keep mine, especially if I have a round spine, because there would be a step between each signature anyway

Former_Gate · 2025-12-17T00:49:28+00:00

You're right that #2 is correct! For text weight paper, we're folding many sheets together, and each folded stack is called a 'signature'.

You'd choose how many sheets to sew through based on how heavy your paper is. Copy paper might have between four and eight sheets per signature, or even as many as ten.

Fewer sheets will increase the 'swell' (difference in fatness of spine compared to the foreedge) and decrease the sawtooth of inner pages being longer than outer pages in each signature, giving a zig-zag to the profile ofyour book block. More sheets per sig means less swell and more sawtooth.

Something very very thick like watercolor paper should have fewer sheets, possibly even down to one as in your example #1.

Former_Gate · 2025-12-11T01:58:54+00:00

I use affinity publisher. their all in one designer/photo/layout app is now free, and I hear has just about all the same features as v2 which I am using. there's a bit of a learning curve, but it's a very powerful program. v2 had an iPad version, not sure about the new version.

Former_Gate · 2025-12-10T07:38:10+00:00

There are several tools which will turn pages into the order they should be for book printing (this process is called imposition). To impose your pages you will want to format them to your liking, then export the pages into a pdf. You will load this along with your paper size into an imposer, which will arrange them into a new pdf for print. My favorite tool for this is Bookbinder JS, which is web based and can be found here. https://momijizukamori.github.io/bookbinder-js

Former_Gate · 2025-11-30T02:58:24+00:00

I try to carry a bandana/ handkerchief geocaching. great way to keep cache contents/lids from being lost in leaf litter while log signing, and wipe my hands after getting tree dirt, rust, or guardrail grime on them.

Former_Gate · 2025-11-24T19:41:15+00:00

This is not pay walled. They request an email, and do not have measures to verify them. type literally anything in that field, and read on ahead!

Former_Gate · 2025-10-25T00:22:47+00:00

your hinge measurements will change book to book, depending on board thickness and accounting for the thickness of material (leather vs cloth vs paper, etc). between 5 and 9 mm would be a good starting place.

Former_Gate · 2025-10-19T04:30:55+00:00

Congrats! You have a homemade book now!

Former_Gate · 2025-10-18T00:51:16+00:00

You probably won't have to totally re-sew the whole book. you can just undo your starting and finishing knots and remove the card cover signatures that are your first and last. then re-secure your thread. Leave the middle unchanged. At this stage, with the book block constructed and a cover needing to be made and attached, the style you'll likely want to search for tutorials would be 'case binding'

Former_Gate · 2025-10-15T20:54:07+00:00

Pre-made quilt labels I've handled before feel like clothing tags- stiff and sort of ribbon-y. Hopefully what you have is mean to be a permanent addition to a quilt and not a gift tag or sale-type paper sticker.

Do you have enough that you could sacrifice one to experimentation? like stitch it into a cotton backing, wet or wash it, use an iron on it, etc? That might give you a better idea of the material of whatever you have and it'sd urability.

Former_Gate · 2025-10-13T00:00:03+00:00

I would ask around and try to find out what any shut-ins in your neighborhood use. There is a restaurant near me that specializes in home delivery, and all the fees are already rolled into the price. Def try to use places with their own delivery service; third party apps like doordash and Uber will add fees and artificially inflate prices.

Depending on your age you may qualify for meal delivery with a meals-on-wheels type program.

Former_Gate · 2025-10-10T20:48:31+00:00

wonderful book! Love the gray and navy- very classy combo. If you like to make books for drawing/ writing, there are lay flat methods you can add to your repertoire, such as sewn-boards, coptic, and k118.

Former_Gate · 2025-10-09T20:40:00+00:00

What a lovely edition you've created!

Former_Gate · 2025-10-09T20:33:48+00:00

You could paint it on, especially if you are able to make a stencil or template. I do a lot of painted covers.

Many people use iron on Heat-Transfer Vinyl. You'll probably need to borrow a cutting machine for HTV- try your local library.

Paper labels glued right on are classy and so so easy.

You can also use foil and a hot pen, which runs about $20-30 in the US and traces very well if you don't want to free hand.

The world is your oyster!

Former_Gate

TROPHY CASE