Just wanted to post publicly and say THANKS to Lighting the Way and Dunhom5 for the fabulous bookmaking tutorial:

http://www.atlasquest.com/tutorials/logbooks/codex/

I made one pretty much exactly as instructed, and two others with a slight twist - instead of a "soft" cover using an old cereal box, I used heavier cardboard that I got from the Postal Service (Did you know that if you order a sheet of 20 stamps by mail, they back it with a nice sturdy piece of cardboard? I have several of these now!). Then, rather than gluing on decorate paper, I used heat-fusible webbing and ironed on some scrap fabrice for the covers. They came out FANTASTIC - and so easy! I stitched up a couple more insides last night while watching "The Daily Show" - took no time at all!

So it looks like I'll be giving out logbooks as gifts in the near future...thanks again to the writers of this tutorial, and to AQ for, well, for being here! :-D

rozebud

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Just wanted to post publicly and say THANKS to Lighting the Way and Dunhom5 for the fabulous bookmaking tutorial

I have to agree. The tutorial and the graphics for it are great. I made a few books using this tutorial and they are fun. I double layered the cereal boxes for sturdier covers and added fibers for bookmarks and just to look interesting. The third one I made is having a bit of trouble staying together so I started looking at older books that are bound in this way.

Let me know if anyone else has tried this:

Instead of gluing the signatures onto the spine of the cover, they are further secured together by adding a loosely woven mesh over the stitching. The mesh extends down the sides of the pages, almost their length. Then twill tape is glued down the spine of the signature block to secure the mesh and "finish" the stitched edge of the block.

The block is glued onto the cover as the instructions stated, but omitting the glue for the spine. Essentially the outer page (decorative card stock or paper in my books) is glued to the cover, sandwiching the mesh in the middle. Once dry, this allows the spine to flex when the book is opened. The finished product looks and acts more like professionally bound books, i.e. it will lay flat.

Tee (hoping that was clear)

What do you use for the mesh?

Tx dragonfly

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What do you use for the mesh?

I haven't found anything here that's like what they use in the books; so I have used cheesecloth, organza, tulle, and other fine or thin fabrics. They work well. Other meshes were too heavy and left a texture under the paper.

I also wanted to chime in with a special thank you for the excellent tutorial on codex binding. Just happened to have a pile of unlined index cards that I acquired from an aunt which I was wondering what to do with <VBG>

Then the follow-up posts gave me even more ideas to play with.

What do you use for the mesh?

I tried a nice wide first aid type gauze bandage. I'd used that before on a book successfully. Seems to work and using that along with the twill tape and a fabric cover sure does add a bit of class.

mt walker

I like the gauze bandage idea. I have a bag of 4x4s that would open up and could be trimmed appropriately. Thanks~

My son is binding his first sketch book with this method. He'll be ready to put it on covers in a day or so. We'll try the 4x4s on his book.