Book Binding round 2: Hardcover Books

On the course of building my books, I did three different covers: 2 soft cover (with different colours of paper) and a hard cover edition. Here are some instructions on hows to make your own hardcover books!

The first thing that you need to do when creating a hardcover volume is to find a material that will sit under the cover paper to give it the desired stiffness. For my books I used mil-board, but you can use just about anything that is hard and flat, like cardboard or wood or what-have-you. Then you cut two rectangular pieces for for the cover and one thin rectangle for the spine. The rectangle for the spine should be the same width as the width of the book when it is laid flat.

Lay out the pieces as shown in the above image and cut the cover paper so that it is easy to fold and glue.

Glue down cover paper and smooth with a bone folder. Then get your text block signature that you want to go inside and glue down the outer sheet.

And away you go! This method is very similar to the one I used for the other covers, and just as before nows the time to put your book under some weight and leave it over night so that the glue can set. Presto! hard cover books!