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Theroc
2318
Keyboard Club Member
Aug 18, 2017
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Do you still bind books J9? Where do you source your material and equipment? I would love to get my hands on a book press and a heavy duty paper cutter.
Aug 18, 2017
jeanines
516
Aug 19, 2017
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TherocThese days, not so much-- but I'd like to get back into it. If there are any folks locally (Bay Area) that would like to Skillshare or hang out and learn, this could be fun.
There is a lot you can do at home without having things like a fancy book press, and that's one of the things I love about it. I'm super lucky that in SF, we have the San Francisco Center for the Book. Once you take a basic course with them, you are able to rent studio time- and they've got all the stuff you need. Sometimes I will work on as many projects as I can up until a certain point where I need the equipment, and then spend some time there to use even just the guillotine for those smooth even edges.
As for supplies- I got some basic supplies (awl, bone folder, linen thread, paper) from a normal art store. Of course today you can also get everything online, but I think it's fun to make my own book cloth. You can take any fabric and turn it into book cloth with the right kind of glue and paper. When I was in college, there was a bookbindery super close to campus (Petingell's Bookbindery for any Berkeley folks). They would sell me leftover scraps of book cloth for very cheap, and they also had a selection of other supplies and leftovers, like headbands and cool paper. Art books made out of found objects are fun too.
What about you? It sounds like you are into making books as well!
Aug 19, 2017
Theroc
2318
Keyboard Club Member
Aug 19, 2017
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jeaninesBack home, almost every other stationary store would offer book binding services. Nothing artistic; it was a university town and most of it was binding and re-binding of text books. The upshot was you could bring your own project to any of those stores and they would cut or press the block for you, for the equivalent of about 50 cents. Binding material was easy to source and very cheap. It's still common for people to buy the fabric and sew their own clothes. In the past it was out of necessity, today its more of a tradition. The one thing that was hard to get (read expensive) was quality paper. I started by downloading texts from the Gutenberg Project (it was the bees knees to me, back then. Like a public domain Amazon) work typography and page layout on Microsoft Publisher, add illustrations, sometimes my own. Then print it on cotton paper, get it cut and pressed, then bind it and have it gold embossed. I did all this because fine-bound books were impossible to find over there. However, I wasn't very happy with the end result, mostly because HP Laserjet 5. So eventually I gave up on the printing part and began re-binding my father's old books and notes. Anyway, that was all over a decade ago, but I've always wanted to pick it up again.
Aug 19, 2017
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