Episode 37: The Big One
Oct 26th, 2009 by tedorigawabookmakers
What we have here is the largest book ever made by myself here at Tedorigawa Bookmakers. It is hardbound with book boards about 1.5 mm thick and has about 200 pages, I think. 180? In that neighborhood.
It is A4 size (11 3/4″ by 8 1/4″ • 21cm by 29.8cm). The cover is made of an old piece of cloth I got at a flea market at a Buddhist temple. Buddhism had nothing to do with either the flea market or the cloth; I don’t think. In any case, it was cheap but small - an odd size small - which finally fit perfectly this large book.
I found a tutorial at PapierDesign, also available on the YouTubes, and mostly followed it. I especially liked his sewing of the signatures. His Yootoob videos are easy to follow. On his website he has similar video tutorials in German and English.
It’s big and it was fun to make and it’s blank - You can do anything you want with it: turn it in to an accounting ledger, draw fabulous pictures of aging hippies, or collect autographs.
But what did I learn from this little adventure?
First, it takes time. From folding the A3 sheets to sewing to gluing to attaching the mull to measuring and cutting the book covers to backing the cloth to be used as book cloth to thinking about it all takes time. Time well spent because I think this is a fairly good production (despite a few flaws which I will get to later).
Second, don’t panic. (Hmm, I read that somewhere before….). Glue might set quickly but not That quickly.
Third, cut the corners Before you glue them. Big mistake that, but not untreatable. This is related to whether to panic or not. When one looks at one’s cover and notices that the corners have not been cut and the glue is thick and drying, one tends to panic. Quick cutting is required - not panic.
Finally, align the endpapers nicely. The one (minor?) flaw is that the endpapers are not straight, especially on the back cover. However, that is just the appeal of a handbound book, is it not? Those slight Human imperfections. To the right is a detail on the back endpaper.
Standard Podcasts [00:01:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (6)







Behold, a blank notebook from my
The second thing is the thing the book is sitting on. It’s an old printer, obviously a
The cover of the book, remember that? is from a cereal box of brown rice flakes (vs corn flakes) and the Japanese on the front cover says that: 玄米
The DinoSoar Pix Episode Guide is thinner and less, er, perfect. Neither are perfect but the DPEG one is the lesser of the two. The H/CEG has endpapers whilst the DPEG does not. I think the endpapers, plus the better gluing and sewing job on the H/CEG the nicer looking of the two. Also, the H/CEG was made second so the DPEG labored as sort of a practice book.
What did we learn from this little episode guide creating event? Alignment is important. Beside alignment, thinking would be nice. Thinking is always nice. By making DPEG first, I could think about how I should improve my next attempt, the H/CEG. Maybe I should always make three or four books at a time. By the time I get to book 4, it might just turn out okay.
and a bit of old cloth. Main impression: use a lot of glue. Day Two was making the cover with the book cloth, getting the text block into the cover - all without making too many mistakes. Okay, one: the text block had to be re-sewn because both knots came unraveled.
One teacher (at left, the main teacher) sells binding supplies, paper, presses, and books, actually. She also accepts commissions and spends a lot of her time doing wedding albums, baby books, and whatnot. She works everyday on something.
Well, I’ve done it. Finally. What have I done? I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone (sounds like a Beatles tune). I finished my long-postponed
Cool book but it took too long to make and was too long in the making. Working on an edition of five. 

I covered the whole thing with rough cover paper. The end papers are also rough but over the endpapers I added more rough paper with poems by
First,
A mere three solid months after my last book creation, I have enjoyably folded, sewed, and glued a small, multi-page blank notebook of recycled everything: the signatures are recycled B5 sheets folded into quarters, the boards for the covers and spine are made from recycled cardboard from a shirt, the cover itself is a flyer for a performance of Puccini’s La Boheme (so even the title is recycled, eh?) The endpapers, yellow, are also recycled from a larger project. I think the thread (unwaxed, by the way) that holds the signatures together is not recycled; nor the glue. Recycled glue. That would be an interesting business
model.
it, look at it, view it from afar. Perhaps because it is small and - perhaps - useless. Perhaps it is not so useless. It is a book to cheer and encourage the mirth of one’s heart. (From La Boheme?)




