Friday, April 20, 2012

Bookbinding 101: Materials

You can make books out of anything. Reclaimed wood, aluminum cans, banana leaves, cereal boxes, butterfly wings, rusty hinges, fishing flies -- really, whatever you want to use can be used in the process of making a book. But in this 101 series of posts we're not going to get into the more creative materials you might use, but set a foundation of understanding for constructing basic book structures using more traditional materials, and from there you may branch out into a birdcage and canary grass book (or whatever) if you wish to.


All the materials in the following list can be replaced with something else, and some structures we don't cover in 101 will require additional materials, but for the present course, this is what we will discuss:


We'll discuss the materials in greater detail in upcoming posts.

Anything to add to the discussion? Please leave a comment.

3 comments:

Nancylynn said...

I look forward to upcoming posts regarding bookmaking. Wish I lived closer, your ten book class looks wonderful! What kind of paper do you use for the I terrors of your books?

Unknown said...

We are in the works of getting an online class going for the Ten Book Workshop. We'll announce that here on our blog and through our Newsletter.

For the text paper of our books we did a post about that here: http://badgerandchirp.blogspot.com/2012/04/bookbinding-101-paper-for-pages.html

And the decorative paper post is coming soon :)

Unknown said...

Does anyone know where I can purchase acid free kraft paper with about a 35 lb weight or the light kraft paper that crinkles? I want to use this on the binding of book for the head band.