#half leather binding

Round up of my re-binding project of the Moomins books. I really enjoyed making them, but I'm also happy the project is complete now.

Back and front covers of the each of the books.

While I used some of the designs chosen for the book edition I had bought, I altered pretty much each of them to fit the size needed and/or also have an image on the back cover instead of the solid colour and a summary the published edition had.

The titles are printed with a metal cliché that I had custom made for that another binding and chose to use, instead of going for the full titles of the books. To indicate the volume I opted for dots above the title.

Endbands

I tried to also use the endbands to tie the different books together and picked one thread to be the leather colour or previous book and the others to fit the cover. I'm mostly happy how they came out. Only in the 3. book (where the colour shifts from violet to yellow-orange) the bead looks a bit irregular. Bead on the edge is simply not the endband style meant to be worked in such a pattern. I still like how it came out.

See the individual volumes here 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

This is the metal cliché btw

I might have mentioned that before, but I'm not the most skilled when it comes to paring leather. Fortunately for me there are other ways. One way is to press down the leather while it's still moist from gluing.

I cover the spine with leather that is still rather thin (this one is 0,7mm), work in the hinges in and do the turn ins (I might reconsider to do this only after the leather is pressed down since it tends to bulk up a bit at the edge of the boars if done sooner).

Then I mark off the distance from the spine with a compass and leave a small indention as a guide.

I learned from experience that it's no good to put a thick steel ruler directly on wet leather though. They stick to the leather, get rusty and the rust can even stain the leather! So now I put some silicon paper (but honestly a plastic sheet would do just as well) between ruler and leather, align carefully with my marks and put it between boards into the press. It's important to use something with a sharp edge and considerably higher than the leather itself, otherwise the grain of leather can get crushed even where it's still supposed to show.

The result is a ridge that separates the leather with the visible grain and very smooth and very flat leather area that is almost level with the board and will barely show. (The stains visible at the edge are in fact water stains, I literally soaked my leather in paste to make it more flexible so this method had better results).

materials used:

inner book textblock - purchased book in signatures, (partially repaired with japanese tissue paper) endpapers - lokta, backed with Schirting (thin, seized fabric) endbands - buttonhole silk case boards - grey board 1,5mm spine stiffener - cardboard covering material, spine - leather (vegetable tanned) covering material boards - laser printed publishing paper cover art - original by Tove Jansson (altered for this case) title - hot stamped with genuine gold foil

original case of the purchased book

materials used:

bookblock - original book in signatures endpapers - tairei paper cover paper - laser printed publishing paper cover art - original by Tove Jansson (altered for this case) spine material - leather (vegetable tanned) endbands - buttonhole silk title - hot stamped with genuine gold foil

original cover

Dimensions: 11cm x 14,5cm x 1,5cm

Materials used: case binding: - coloured cardboard (270g/m²) - genuine leather (spinecover and headbands)

Materials used:

covers - cardboard (multiple layers) - slate veneer (translucent) - genuine leather (coated) - Tsumugi paper

book block - Munken polar 100g/m² - tracing paper - Satogami paper - headbands buttonhole silk 

With blank permission by the author for all her fandom related work there are two copies of this book now with only slight differences.

The slate veneer is slightly different in pattern since it is natural stone and you won’t get two pieces looking exactly the same

and I also had a slight alteration in the headband pattern

I also made an informations page thought that probably could do with more information on some parts...

materials used:

original book in signatures coloured endpapers publishing paper (for printing the covers) leather (vegetal tanned) silk thread for headbands genuine gold foil (for hot-stamping the title)

Since there’s so much going to be ‘experimental’ with this book anyway I decided to add some more ot it. At the last binders fair I bought a sheet of papyrus paper (it’s really more of beaten papyrus fibres, one going short grain the other long grain) that I used for the cover. I have no idea how well it will hold up to wear and there were were some issues when applying it.