Hand Bookbinding

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Clear and Helpful - Rated
This is a great how-to book. It steps through the process of producing a hard-back book binding, assuming nothing about what you know or your skill level.

The start of the book introduces the techniques and tools. The main part of the book steps through each stage in detail. The book is written to assume that you are going to take unlimited care of the book. The writer asks you to have lots of extra paper, waxed paper, and so on to make sure glue doesn't transfer to the wrong bit of the book and everything stays neat. I worked through with a little less care and got very good results.

The penultimate part of the book suggests projects to get you into binding. They start of simple and work up to full books. The how-to section at the start actually covers the most complex book project, so if you find the main bit of the book too complex you can skip forward and try something easier.

The final part of the book shows you how to create your own bookbinding equipment. This is a great section, and with a little bit of woodworking skill, you can save lots of money and avoid the difficult job of tracking down specialist tools.

I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it wholeheartedly. It helped me get good results with no prior experience and only a minimum of tools. My only concern is that it shows only one binding style, and could have done with a good section on the vast variety of different bindings that can be created. But that is just nitpicking when there's so much good content here!

Excellent book - Rated
Excellent, one of the best 'how-to' books I have ever read, and certainly the best bookbinding instruction book. Clear, detailed instructions that all make sense; it is easy to understand and illustrated with precise, unambiguous diagrams. All the instructions work, and I have gone from being a complete novice to a fairly accomplished bookbinder, always returning to this book alone for help and advice. Beats the other bookbinding manuals out there hands down.

Excellent introduction to hand bookbinding. - Rated
The author covers the basic skills of hand bookbinding using clear, concise language and illustrations. He shows you how to build your own equipment using elementary woodworking skills for a small fraction of the cost of commercially made equipment. I have built all of my own equipment based on his plans and have successfully used it to bind books. Several example bookbinding projects are covered step by step. I found the chapter on binding manuscripts particularly useful for binding some academic work. The headbanding chapter is quite interesting as it explains how to add to the aesthetic appeal of your book as well as its structural integrity. I think that this is one of the best how-to manuals that I have read on any subject. I highly recommend this book for those wanting to get started in bookbinding with a small investment. Building your own equipment and binding books with it is quite a rewarding experience.