So let's talk about making books - that's why I started this little blog, after all. I think the posts about binding get lost in the sea of printing and stitching elsewhere, and I want to give my books some due consideration. It helps, for some reason, to write about the process, and I definitely need to improve my bookbinding practice.
I haven't gotten back to the Byzantine binding, mostly because I haven't had a good block of time for it (the press is awfully distracting). I have, however, made some fascinating ledger-style books. One of these days I'm going to make a few of them correctly. I have this excellent book on Japanese bookbinding, and I keep sort of glancing at the pictures and faking my way to a finished product that at least looks like a book.
These books (I made three, in various sizes) are also an excellent example of one of my favorite bookbinding phenomena: paste-paper that is incredibly ugly (no, seriously, this stuff was hideous) in the sheet, but which looks pretty good on a book. It's something about how one can crop the page.
They're better paper than the last couple of batches I've made - it's a nice heavy drawing paper, and I think they'll be useful for me. I've decided that it's ridiculous for a book-binder to use commercial blank books, so I'm trying to come up with something that fills (most) of my notebook needs. It's harder than you'd think. I'll let you know how it goes.
