Rebecca Edition Run Part Five: Leather Joints, Infilling and Edge-to-edge Doublures

At the end of the last blog post I had managed to cover all of the bindings in their embroidered leather covers. When working on one-off books, I sometimes get impatient and want to start opening the covers too soon simply because I am keen to progress on! When making multiples of books though, this doesn’t happen because there is so much else to do in the waiting time, so each book had a decent amount of time to dry (a few days or so) before the next stages that I will describe in this post.

Before opening the boards of the book for the first time, I dampened the outer leather on the spine using a water pen (below left image). A water pen is a type of art tool with a reservoir to hold water, allowing you to apply water or directly from the brush itself without needing a separate water source. Adding water to this area makes the leather more supple and pliable and the boards can then be eased open.

I opened the boards such that the foredge dropped back down onto the bench. I was then able to remove the spacers that I had stuck down onto the board edge using a small metal spatula (below right image). I also utilised the water pen to help loosen the glue where they were trickier to remove.

I was then able to remove the capping layers from the text block (a layer of newsprint and then an outer layer of cling film had been wrapped around the text block to protect it earlier in the forwarding process). These layers acted as a barrier to any dirt or moisture that might have affected the text block. They needed to be removed as this point in order to release the leather joint so I could then stick it down into position.

I then peeled off the outer waste sheet from the endpaper (below left image), which had been tacked onto the leather joint of the made endpaper earlier in the process. This left a few tiny remnants of paper attached so I damped them with a water pen and was able to scrape them off (below centre image). I also removed the compensation sheet and the spacer from the made endpaper (below right image).

I made a supporting block of the correct height to hold the open board in a level position to the rest of the book block. This meant that all the work I was doing on the inside of the boards was done with the board held flat and solid and I could swap the books on and off this jig in turn.

The leather turn-ins were all trimmed to 15mm in width and trimmed against a metal ruler on their three sides using a sharp scalpel (below left image). The excess leather was then peeled off and discarded (below right image).

The next stage was working on the leather joint. I folded it up and over the open board joint into the position that it would sit once glued. It was necessary to mitre the two ends of the joint, and the turn-in leather on the board below, so that they would meet at a right angle once glued down. Using a small metal set square, I positioned it as in the below left image. I then cut through the two layers with a sharp scalpel resulting in an angled cut at the end of the joint leather, and the turn-in leather was sliced so it could also be removed (below centre image).

The little piece of leather that remains where the covering leather bridges the board joint often needs a little extra glue underneath it to stick it down once the mitred piece has been removed (below right image).

The thickness of the leather joint measured about 0.4mm against the 0.8mm of the turn-in leather leaving a discrepancy in height around the four sides of the inner board if not addressed. This would make the infilling of the centre of the board more problematic, requiring more work to level out. Before sticking down the joint I prepared strips of 145gsm Zerkall paper, mitred the ends of the paper and stuck it down on the spine edge of the board with PVA glue (below left and centre images). I then applied PVA glue to the whole of the leather joint, with a piece of waste paper below it to protect the endpaper.

The leather joint was then folded over and pushed into the correct position. Using a Teflon folder I then ensured that it was well adhered all the way along the length of the board joint.

The board was closed completely and then reopened again, just to check that the joint wasn’t bubbling up anywhere or excess glue coming out. Once I was pleased it was well adhered I closed the board with a piece of silicone release paper and waste paper inside the board to continue to protect the endpaper. I lightly rubbed along the outside of the board joint using a Teflon folder too to make sure there weren’t any irregularities here either (below right image). The book was flipped over and I did the same to the other side before leaving the book to dry under a weight.

At the position the covering leather had been turned in at the corners of the boards, this needed a little attention on some of the books. Where I had cut and pared a mitre into the covering leather, on the majority of the bindings this met neatly and formed a level surface where the mitres overlapped. However because the covering leather was cut from different areas of the goatskins, some of the stretch in the corner areas was different. The top of the back and the rear of a hide are the firmest and part of the leather with the neck and belly having more stretch.

Some of the inner corners needed to be built up with bits of paper to pack them out. I sanded the surface of the leather in these areas with some sandpaper to abrade the skins slightly. I then tore small pieces of watercolour paper to approximately the same shape and size size and stuck them down with PVA glue and left them to dry.

Once dry, the pieces of paper were sanded flush to match the level of the leather turn-in. I then cut a piece of 300gsm card (chosen as it matched the thickness of the turn-ins and the leather joint) to the correct size and infilled the centre of the boards and the books were left to dry stacked in groups of four.

Pieces of Zerkall paper were cut to a size slightly smaller than the overall board measurements: 134mm wide by 224mm height. I applied PVA glue to the paper and stuck the Zerkall down onto the inner board of the book so that there was an even margin all the way around. Once this layer was completely dry, I sanded the surface with Abranet with the board propped open to even out the board surface.

As the edge-to-edge doublure for the binding was a plain coloured paper sheet (Canson Mi-Teintes 165gsm in ‘Venetian Red’), this would be very unforgiving in terms of hiding imperfections on the inner board underneath it. I trialled sticking a piece of the red paper directly on top of the sanded Zerkall layer and the cut edge of the turn-in leather against the central infill panel was still pretty visible underneath which I wasn’t happy about. I therefore opted to stick an additional lining layer down before applying the paper doublures.

I therefore cut some pieces of Kraft paper to the same size as the Zerkall that had gone on before and stuck these down on top using PVA glue. Again, they were left to completely dry before sanding the surface flush with Abranet. This was a step in the process I hadn’t anticipated doing but it was going to be worth the extra time to get the bindings looking perfect.

I still wasn’t quite ready to stick the paper doublure down yet though. The process of sanding the inside of the board flat results in the leather turn-ins being abraded around the very edges of the boards. I mixed up some acrylic paint to the colour of the dark green covering leather and applied paint to this area to tone it back in with the colour of the leather.

Finally, I was ready to stick the doublure paper down so I prepared the pieces and cut them to 136mm in width by 226mm in height. This measurement was exactly the height of the boards, but slightly shorter in width as the paper expands slightly in that direction due to the grain of the paper when glued out. I stuck the paper doublure down using PVA and rubbed it thoroughly through a piece of silicone release paper using my Teflon folder to ensure even adhesion.

It was then time for the finishing touches to be done on all the books, starting with the title labels being stuck to the spines of the bindings. I abraded the leather with sandpaper in the recess I had left on the spine (below right image). The labels were then stuck down to the spine using PVA glue with Rebecca reading down the spine.

I also tooled small name labels onto pink paper and stuck them onto the back endpaper of the bindings.

I hadn’t yet opened up the pages of the book and it is important to do this in the correct way without forcing them open. To open the binding for the first time I gently lay it spine-down on a flat surface, then carefully opened the front and back covers, alternating between opening a few pages from the front and a few from the back to avoid straining the spine. It was important to release the hollow at the same time, as glue from the binding process can creep in and prevent the book from opening properly. Some of the books required a bit more help, by sliding a thin tool down into the hollow to help release it from the inner spine of the book.

I also took this opportunity to lightly clean the covering leather of the binding using a natural sponge, dampened with water. Paste and PVA glue from the covering of the book can get on the covering leather so it is important to get this off.

The edition features six colour illustrations by internationally acclaimed contemporary artist Iva Troj, and the very final task was to tip in a double-page illustration into the centre fold of the book. The text block had been supplied to me with all of the other illustrations already tipped in, but given this one was double-page and needed gluing down into the gutter of the pages it was agreed with Suntup Editions that I would do this once the book was bound in order to get the positioning correct. It would have been hard to do this before the book was forwarded as it was unclear where the page might fall open.

I opened the binding to the correct page on the book with the back of the book laid flat on the bench. I clipped the two halves of the illustration together with small bulldog clips and applied a line of glue to the gutter edge of each side of the illustration. I then positioned the illustration in to the gutter of the page, removed the bulldog clip and and closed the bindings allowing the glue to dry within the closed binding.

I was extremely pleased to finally have completed the bindings at this point! Just the boxes to go, which I will be explaining in the next and final blog post for this project…