In The Pocket

It seems that a couple of the SoFoBoMo bloggers have put together some sort of test project, just to try out their workflow. Paul Lester did get some attention for his 2 hours and 15 minutes project, which seems to have calmed down the nerves of Paul Butzi. Pauls book was really nice, especially considering the time he spend on it. I skimmed through some of the blogs, and found that Colin Jago did a small warm up, and Rachel Barnsness is putting together a book now.

I also did the exercise with my 12 picture monthly folio last weekend, and it really cleared up all my concerns regarding the processing and layout of the book. I had already collected around 30 pictures to be considered, and it took me about 2 hours to do a final pick, process and put together the pdf. Another 6 hours and I had printed it all on Fine Art Pearl, made cover boards covered with decorative paper, cut out window for title and front page picture, and sewn the pages together into a hand made book.

When I posted about the monthly folio back here, I was ready to go to bed and didn’t find the time to post photos of the book, but here it is.

The prints, ready to be cut into pages. Note the black lines around them. I do that to cut the pages to exact size. When I prepare for print, I expand the canvas with white to the size I want plus 0.5mm in all four directions. then I expand the canvas another 0.5mm in all direction with black. When I cut, I place the ruler so it covers the black line, and the pages end up just the size I want them to be.

The front cover board. I covered some mat board with a decorative paper. Difficult to see on this photo, but there are some pattern in it. I used spraymount for this (3M Photo Mount). Not as good as wheat paste, but I avoided the curling due to tension in the paper. Much faster and easier. Then I cut out the windows with a mat cutter, and printed the front page picture and title on a paper with the exact same size as the cover board. This was glued to the back using spraymount, and the decorative paper was folded around the edges and attached, again with spraymount.

The pages was sewn with a fairly simple coptic technique, well suited for assembling single, non folded pages. The thread was linen, treated with bee wax.

And finally, the book is finished. This kind of binding allows the book to open completely flat, which is good with this kind of stiff paper. Note how the thread is attached to the pages. This is necessary since they are not folded into sections, like in ordinary books.

Don’t expect this to take 6 hours the first time around. This is probably the 7th or 8th book I have made this way.