Jeansbooks Work in Progress Continued or Cutting Jig II

Hello once more. I just wanted to show you today’s progress on the jeansbooks. I started this morning with putting together the signatures for the small books. For the bigger ones I put each block together individually, and choosing colours and papers was a long process. This time I just decided to use one sheet of Clairfontaine, two sheets of sketching paper and two sheets of drawing paper. Working through my piles was therefor quite stragithforward, and I was done in about an hour. And it only took me this long because I had to cut some more drawing and sketching paper in size, too.

I did not cut them to size yet, so they will need two cuts tomorrow: one to adjust height and one to adjust width.

The larger signatures already had the right height and now just need to be trimmed on the foreedge. I do this before binding them because I do not want to trim the bound textblock, and I find it works best with trimming them before.

So again I set up a jig, just like yesterday. This time, however, I needed to use two pieces of cardboard on top of each other for the markers, because the signatures are of course thicker and one or two sheets of paper. The markers need to be higher than the piece you want to cut. So that, when putting a signature down to cut, it is easier to side it against the first set of markers without it sliding over. And then, after putting down the ruler, you want to be able to just slide it against the markers, not having to see whether everything is in the right position.

Below you can see how this looked like. – I hope you can. Unfortunately the photo turned out rather blurry.

This time I took some photos of the signatures and covers:

I am looking forward to binding the book above. From the four I put together today I think it is my favorite because I like this paste down so much. This is a paste paper that I received as a gift from Christine from Buntpapierfabrik.

Above you see the book whose book block consists (will consist) entirely of Clairefontaine drawing paper. Below book number three.

I had almost finished with cutting the pages above, when the telephone rang, and the display told me it was my kid’s school. Yikes! I feared something had happened. Fortunately after a couple of polite sentences and explications she told me: “Your kids both are fine.” – Thank you! Couldn’t you have said so immediately?! She just wanted me to bring over spare clothes. – The pleasures of motherhood, never really off duty…

The book above is the only one that doesn’t have any Clairefontaine paper. Instead it has a mix of creme and brown sketching paper.

All in all I spent another full workday just with cutting and folding paper, and I hope to begin binding soon. For now I have this big pile of cut offs.

Their size would be perfect for a bookmark, and I need new business cards. Mhm… Except my printer wouldn’t take them because they are not at least 10cm wide. So do I really want to print them by hand? Mhm…