Bookbinding Links Roundup
When I find great bookbinding resources online, I tag them in del.icio.us, but I thought it would be useful to others if I put the best ones in one place here, just this once, since I tagged most of them before setting up my automated blog posts from del.icio.us to this site. Here’s a roundup of the top 20 links I’ve collected so far (not including my own tutorial or photos, though some links may have shown up previously in my blog posts).
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Making a Casebound Book
The best, most detailed online bookbinding tutorial I’ve seen (including, of course, my own).
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tobycraig: Book Assembly Photo-Journal
A goofy little photo-journal of the book assembly of my stuff for the upcoming MoCCA show.
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Do-It-Yourself Book Press
An amazingly detailed bookbuilding resource (via Craftzine).
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Book Binding Books
Free online books about bookbinding.
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Three-Layer Star Book : DIY Network
Deb took a bookbinding class and ended up taking apart all her books at home to figure out how they were assembled. In this segment, Deb makes a three-layer star-shaped book.
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Cafe-Kreativ: Bucher binden
Great roundup of online bookbinding how-tos.
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Coptic Bookbinding How-To
DIY blank journals.
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Fun and Easy How to Guide to Binding Your Own Paperback Books At Home … FAST
I’ll show you a quick and dirty book binding technique you can use to turn your ebook into a real book with about 5 minutes worth of effort.
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Lay-Flat Bookbinding
It seems like you can either get a cool cover OR nice paper (suitable for use with a nice pen) OR a nice lay flat, durable binding. I finally realized that to get all three requirements, I would have to try my hand at making my own notebooks.
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one shot tutorial – a photoset on Flickr
Wanna make a neat, fun zine that only uses one sheet of paper? Of course you do.
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Make Blank Books, Sketch Books or Repair Paperback Books with a Simple Japanese Bookbinding Technique — a Tutorial
Make or repair books with this easy technique.
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the0phrastus: Simple Book Binding
I’ve been doing some simple binding for my own writing about a year now, and I think I have it down to an easy four step process, printing, drilling, sewing and wrap-up.
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Douglas W. Jones on Bookbinding
This tutorial introduction is aimed primarily at those who wish to preserve the content of old pulp paperbacks by photocopying them onto archival paper and then binding the results using an archival binding technique, the long-stitch.
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Pennant Publishing
I found a book in the local library which taught me the following method of producing a paperback from separate sheets of A4 or A5. I reckon it is suitable for volumes up to up to 2cm thick.
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Bookmaking
How to make a simple hardcover book.
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Board Book
How to make a children’s board book.
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DIY: reconstructed book
What an awesome & useful way to preserve the great cover art of those vintage, hardcover books, that we treasured as kids. I picked one of my favorites, Nancy Drew & turned it in to this fun, mini, journal/sketchbook.
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The Bonefolder
An e-journal for the bookbinder and book artist.
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Handbound
A bookbinding blog with some beautiful specimens.
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Hand Bookbindings: Plain and Simple to Grand and Glorious
Books as works of art, from the twelfth century to the twentieth.
Got any great online resources I’ve missed? Leave links in the comments!
UPDATE
As a bonus, here are some great finds from the comments and links followed from them:
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TJBookarts
Welcome to my Book Arts site. Please feel free check out the information pages and tutorials.
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The Book Arts Forum
This forum is dedicated to all forms of bookbinding and book arts.
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Magazine Binding for Leathercrafters
The method I developed and describe here, is completely my own and not traditional at all. It works best for binding magazines that consist of single (or multiple) signatures.
Thanks for reading and sharing, and keep ‘em coming!
Kazzan is discussing. 
leahpeah 9:43 pm on March 20, 2007 Permalink |
hey – this is great, brian! thanks! so many fun books to try.
Sonja 1:25 am on March 21, 2007 Permalink |
Oh, thanks for linking my website! I’ll link yours too soon
Sonja from Germany
Sanjoli 2:43 am on March 21, 2007 Permalink |
Wow. Lovely books!
Brian Sawyer 7:14 am on March 21, 2007 Permalink |
Sonja: You already have.
Jackie 10:18 am on March 21, 2007 Permalink |
Brian,
Thanks for this great list of links.
Just wanted to let you know that I have an bunch of free downloadable bookbinding tutorials over on my site at http://www.tjbookarts.com. Please check them out.
Jackie
Brian Sawyer 10:23 am on March 21, 2007 Permalink |
Jackie, thanks for stopping by and sharing your great links. Bookmarking your page now!
em 10:35 am on March 21, 2007 Permalink |
Hi Brian,
Thank you for this great resource.
Several years ago, I was speaking at B & N and they were willing to let me bring in my self-bound books. I had attended my local book-binding and calligraphy guild and would have loved to have my books self-crafted that way, but for this ‘commercial topic’, it was not appropriate or possible.
So, I chose Abico’s very unique ‘clamp-style’ metal spiral bindings, got their machine and spent my creative-effort on the unique, enticing cover (and of course, the books contents, too).
I was frustrated when I was seeing my books at the University Bookstores which carried them, as on the shelf, this binding does not provide a readable spine.
There, I also saw a few other commercially-bound books which had a “new” form (then) where spiral bindings had the outer-diameter of the spiral wrapped-over and connected to front and back cover (there’s undoubtedly a business name for this binding … do you know it?). This provided a place for the title to be on the spine and seen when books were on the shelf, yet the book remained capable of being fully-flat when opened.
Can you shed any light about how to make this binding or specific sites which might be helpful?
I also hope that you will visit my blog, as its information is for everyone … either for treatment or for prevention!
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Best to all,
Em