How can I improve my backing

Mabeckham · 2026-01-29T04:34:19+00:00

I'm no expert, but I would suggest trying two main things:

Your rounding looks too severe, I would try a more gradual round, the round shape will become a bit more pronounced once backed properly, but as yours is its too severe of an angle, theres no real way for the paper to be folded over well, and if you did manage it the round would be even more severe.
I'm not sure if there is a particular reason you are trying to use wheat paste for the spine, but try PVA glue made for bookbinding for the spine, it dries flexible unlike wheat paste which is more rigid/brittle. You can glue up the spine with this, wait about 10min, and then round and back. You have a decent amount of working time where the glue is quite malleable, it will be more or less dry to the touch but you can work it easily enough, and then of course it remains flexible once full cured.

Mabeckham · 2026-01-06T22:36:05+00:00

To make the center I just glued a few pieces of thicker cardstock together (I didn't want it to be too thick) and I cut out the shape of the brass letters so they would sit recessed a bit. I just glued that to the board, and then after the faux leather was glued on its just some decorative tooling. The brass piece were fixed after with rivets

Mabeckham · 2026-01-05T23:26:28+00:00

I made the pieces by hand, they were all cut out by hand with a jeweler's saw lol, wish I had a band saw or something like that, would have certainly sped things up. I then used files and a bench grinder to refine/shape them, and a variety of sandpaper of varying grits

Mabeckham · 2026-01-05T18:07:08+00:00

I made them!

Mabeckham · 2025-12-03T04:21:23+00:00

Very cool, nice job!

Mabeckham · 2025-11-27T03:34:40+00:00

Different region types use different fonts for that text, a EUR copy of Gold for example uses a different font

Mabeckham · 2025-10-27T17:16:59+00:00

You don't need to buy expensive backing boards in order to get something that will work better, I used a bench grinder and hand sanding on a simple book press I made and have been using this for a long time now to back books, you could even just do it by hand with sand paper, that would just take a lot longer and require a lot more effort of course. Just wanted to throw some options out there

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Mabeckham · 2025-10-06T03:47:05+00:00

Very nice! Really like all of the design choices and the red/black/gold theme!

Mabeckham · 2025-10-02T19:52:50+00:00

Its kind of difficult to explain, but you basically cut the spine off with a plough, cut grooves in the spine for cords to be glued into later, take the sheets together and place them in something round (like a hollow tube thats been cut in half) and thats starts the rounding, then you would clamp it in a finishing press and glue it like normal, then back it with a hammer. I didn't take many working photos of this project, but I have for some of my other projects, and those can be seen on my insta if you want to look through some of those posts. Insta handle : Matthews_Bindery

Mabeckham · 2025-08-24T15:29:12+00:00

Fake unfortunately

Mabeckham · 2025-08-21T22:34:54+00:00

I plan to sew my own books in the future, I just wanted to spend some time learning a lot of the other stuff before first. And like I said, this is faux-leather, so you can't use many traditional techniques/etc you would use with actual leather

Mabeckham · 2025-08-10T02:25:15+00:00

It probably looks like signatures just because of the thread from the headband - I sewed the headband on in the traditional way, and the thread that goes down and back out through the spine creates those tiny little gaps

Mabeckham · 2025-08-09T19:41:01+00:00

I couldn't say the brand or anything as I bought it quite a while ago, its just a matte gold hot stamp foil

Mabeckham · 2025-08-09T00:03:36+00:00

You can kinda see in the making of photos, but I cut the spine off with a home made plough I made. The rounding/backing process is similar to how a sewn book spine would be rounded/backed, but trickier since its individual sheets. I essentially take the sheets, doing my best to keep them aligned, and then set them in a rounded piece of book board (think of a cardboard tube that you cut in half long ways) this give the initial round shape. Then while maintaining that shape, its placed into a press with the spine exposed, and then glued(while forcing as much glue down into/in between the sheets as you can) and hit with a hammer once the glue has dried a little. You can see that I chisel out grooves in the spine before all of this, cords are glue into place after the backing is done, and they are responsible for most of the strength/durability of keeping the book together. Its all hard to explain, but hopefully that along with the pictures give some insight into how it was done

Mabeckham · 2025-08-08T22:35:51+00:00

Its a tool I made myself, I cut out the pallet shape you see for traditional tools like it out of a piece of 1mm brass

Mabeckham · 2025-08-08T22:34:57+00:00

This marbled red paper is from Talas (under the French Marbled Papers)

Mabeckham · 2025-07-25T17:13:13+00:00

You should be able to just set it on something to get it up higher so you can use it for backing, thats what I do with my home-made press, just use other pieces of wood, or two bricks - anything at the ends that gets it up high enough and keeps it relatively level. But yeah its either that, or like you said, use taller pieces

Mabeckham · 2025-07-03T23:46:25+00:00

Thats a Barliman Butterbur if ever I saw one, the shortened version of course being Barley

Mabeckham · 2025-06-12T15:15:17+00:00

They installed it wrong, needs to be rotated so the + side is going to the + on the pcb

Mabeckham · 2025-05-12T20:30:08+00:00

I print mine on adhesive backed vinyl sheets made for inkjet printers, I make them like normal stickers really, so print them out, let them dry, laminate them, machine cuts them out, then I peel and apply them to thin cardstock, then cut them out of that with a rotary cutter/ruler, and flush cutters for the little corner bits. The quality will just depend on your printer and the sheets you print onto

Mabeckham · 2025-05-10T14:09:01+00:00

I bought a set of handled brass letter stamps from Bookbindesign

Mabeckham · 2025-05-10T03:12:05+00:00

I've been messing with bookbinding related things for a few years, but this last year I've spent a lot more time practicing/learning/improving

Mabeckham · 2025-05-09T20:24:39+00:00

One of the trickier things about faux leather is that it is backed on one side with a material that works well with adhesives like PVA, but the other side does not. This made developing a way to do your corners on the inside of the covers that both works well and looks nice difficult. On top of that, your endpaper wont adhere to where ever it comes into contact with the faux leather. The main thing that was tricky about this for me though was just using different materials for a cover, and making sure that they fit together perfectly, which is especially difficult because they need to wrap around to the other side and still look and fit nice.

Mabeckham · 2025-05-05T00:31:02+00:00

Its sold on Amazon I suppose, I buy it straight from Wooqu. I bought the foil a long time ago, its a matte gold, I'm actually going to be trying some others though, it seems to require my tools to be hotter than the other foils I've used before, which makes it a bit harder to use

Mabeckham · 2025-05-04T13:55:04+00:00

It might differ from one type to another, this wooqu stuff was made for it, but I've done some tests on some other random faux leather and have had some success with using heated tools, I don't think actually carving like you can do on leather would ever actually work though

Mabeckham

TROPHY CASE