Binding The Golden Key

At Pegana Press we make all of our books by hand from start to finish.  

I'd like to share the binding process here with you, and I'll be taking photos as I bind The Golden Key.

After Mike trims and collates the pages, he hands them off to me in the form of signatures.  This is a beautiful book to work on and I'm really enjoying it.

I start by piercing the holes for sewing into each signature.  They have to line up, so the book will be even.  I use a template and a stabbing cradle and pierce each one by hand.

The next step is the sewing.  For The Golden Key, I used linen thread and linen sewing tapes.  I am binding in batches of 12 to 14 until I catch up with the preorders, so I sewed a stack of books before moving on to the next step.

Today I tipped in the end papers, which were cut and folded by hand.  I have to wait for the end papers to dry before moving on the next step, gluing the spines.  Once that glue has dried, I round the spines.  This afternoon, I will add mull and head bands.

Tomorrow, I will be cutting cloth and spine reinforcements.  The reinforcements create a flat spine for our letterpress titles to be glued to. 

Back to the bindery.  More later.