Q&A: What is a Nipping Press?
A nipping press is a small press used by bookbinders for various bookbinding purposes. Originally the nipping press was designed to make the gutters or ‘hinges’ on the covers of hardbound books; the process of which was done in the following way:
Following on from our latest post Guest Posting Opportunity: Share Your Projects, Knowledge or Services we decided also to do a fortnightly ‘featured bookbinder’ series and this week we’d like to introduce you to lovely Kris Steward, founder of ScrollByHand.com who’s going to talk today about her bookbinding passion and give some helpful advice about selling on etsy.com… if you would like to be considered as a future featured bookbinder then please drop us an email!
Thank you Kris for taking the time to introduce the readers of iBookBinding to your life!
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My name is Kris Stewart and I’m a bookbinder working near the city of Seattle in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, USA. I caught the bookbinding bug 16 years ago when my son was a baby. As a way to get out of the house, I signed up for a binding class at a local art shop. Three hours later I was completely hooked. Soon I was selling handmade baby books at local craft fairs, but ultimately found that too difficult with a youngster in the house. I studied up and played around with book arts as a hobbyist until my son started middle school. A friend and fellow maker introduced me to Etsy and voilà! Here I am doing what I love!
I’ve decided to open the gates of iBookBinding to the book arts community and for a limited time, on a trial basis I will be accept guest posts from our readership. If you are a bookbinder, work in the book arts field or simply have a passion or interest for bookbinding and fancy writing a piece for iBookBinding, then this could be a great opportunity for you…
Today we will be learning how to make a nice book using Coptic Stitching.This book could be used for anything such as drawings, stories, poems, scrapbook, etc.
Well, the weekend is almost upon us and everybody deserves a little break. So today, inspired by an email I picked up from Peter Verheyen on the Book Arts List, I decided to do a little light-hearted post on Paper Airplanes (or paper aeroplanes for those in the UK)!
The following instructions form the first part of the City & Guilds Level 1 Unit 118 Course in Bookbinding. Reproduced with the consent of Shepherds Bookbinders who own all rights. A downloadable PDF copy of this course can be found here.
Here are a few commonly used bookbinding terms. Learning these basic terms and phrases will help you understand the exercises covered later in this post. Along with the principle of ‘Grain Direction’, and ‘Learning about Paper’ a little time spent reading these simple definitions will help you make informed choices when ordering materials and equipment.
NOTE: You might also want to check out our post ‘The Basics of Bookbinding‘ which gives a comprehensive breakdown of all the tools and equipment you’ll likely need for your journey into bookbinding.
Following last weeks popular marbling post (see here), I received a number of emails from visitors about the different types of paper available and their suitability for marbling, calligraphy and use in bookbinding and restoration projects. So, today I decided to put together a post on advanced paper-making techniques as there seems only to be a limited number of resources currently on the internet, much of which is pretty hard to find. I hope it will help a few of you out there.
Note that I am no expert in papermaking but have attended numerous paper-making workshops and have visited a handful of Washi paper making factories in Japan over the years. If you have any questions on the subject, please feel free to ask in the comments section below and I’ll do my best to help where I can.
Find below a complete list of bookbinding courses and workshops in the UK. All courses listed are available to the public, some are day courses, others are multi-day courses and some are full time.
Marbling paper for book endsheets is a great way to add a little more class to your bookbinding project. Marbling is very simple to do and every print is completely different which further helps to add originality to your books. Your bookbinding marbling adventure doesn't have to stop at endsheets, you could also experiment with marbling the coverboards, the book cover material or even the book block fore-edges.
For the general craft-worker or bookbinding hobbyist you'll likely be able to complete adequate paper marbling with materials you can find at home or pick up from local stores (you can also buy marbling kits that have everything you need to get started). For those looking for a more professional finish you'll be pleased to know that marbling is an art, and as such there are many techniques and concepts you can learn to make your books stand out from the rest. I would recommend checking our post on the Top 5 Must Read Books on Marbling Techniques + Reviews.
A collection of free bookbinding books that you can read online and download onto your ebook reader with links to their latest reprint/republication on amazon.com (where available).
I will continue my search for free reading resources weekly and update this list when I find more. Enjoy!
I have done my fair share of marbling in the past for both clients and personal projects but I am by no means an expert in the subject, this may already be apparent by the lack of technical terminology used within this post but probably even more so when you compare my work with that of a true master.
In this tutorial we will look at the different parts of a book (the anatomy of the book); understanding the individual parts of a book will make it easier for you when following the rest of our tutorials and will prove to be invaluable in your bookbinding journey.
One of the most overlooked aspects I see from amateur bookbinders is their choice of adhesives or glue; many of whom rely on PVA as a ‘one-glue-fits-all’ solution. Whilst PVA is a good option for many aspects in bookbinding it almost certainly shouldn’t be used over other more suitable adhesives.
Ok, so the title might be a little misleading… we’ve actually crammed in 18 of the best Coptic Stitch (also known as the Chain Stitch or Coptic Sewing) book binding instructions and tutorials we could find on the web, along with a collection of video tutorials and many coptic-stitch related resources (PDF’s, Stitching Patterns, Photo Galleries etc) for you to get stuck in to – it took us a while to put this together but we hope it serves as a good resource for some of you out there.
When it comes to bookbinding, one of the most commonly overlooked areas is the gluing process, so we’ve decided to put together a YouTube Playlist of the best book binding related gluing video tutorials we could find.
We would love to know what you think of the videos, please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
** Note that videos shown above and below are works of other bookbinders and not the work of iBookBinding (these will come later…). I would recommend watching all video tutorials as they each demonstrate different techniques and offer helpful tips and advice throughout ***
