How to Make a Hand-Made Hard-Bound Book

So, before we began our urban sketching outings, we first learned how to make our own hand-made, hard-bound book. Quite a feat within itself! You can certainly make a book of any size that you wish; however, ours are 10 x 13 inches, which opens up to a fantastic drawing spread of 10 x 26 inches. Perfect for urban panoramas. 

Above is an exampled of the book style that we produced. It's great to use your own decorative paper--this is a screen print, and then book cloth used to bind the spine and pull the book together.

We worked together in class on this across approximately 2.5 days of class time (about 6.5 hours of class work plus some paper/board cutting prep), with drying times for the books to be properly weighted, etc... 

I made a series of youtube demo videos for this a few years back to help with this process. (Do note that the size of the book that I demo in the videos is a bit different. You can easily adapt to any size of book that you wish to create.) If your are interested, take a look and make your own book to take out on site with you! 

Note: These aren't perfect! I hope to update them soon with  better views, but they will show you the process if you listen well... :)

#1 – Materials and Prep (overview of materials, cutting paper and book board)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMqKHR2vfqk 

#2 – Finishing the Prep (finishing up prepping the paper, folding into sections, pressing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppCDcy_aixE

#3 – Covering the Book Board (covering the book board with decorative paper)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13awBACHf74

#4 – Finishing up Covering the Book Board (finishing up covering the book board with decorative paper, creating a book bed for punching holes, a look at some other types of books that you can make, how to make a hole-punching guide)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAZO1guLuV4

#5 – Prepping your sections (finishing up hole-punching guide, punching the holes in the sections, trimming pages, sewing the text block
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdSXKWD5gA0

#6 – Sewing the Text Block (finishing up sewing the text block)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYR62R_Qa5k

#7 – Prepping the Text Block (gluing up the spine of the text block and adding end bands)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWP_vDRDUCk

#8 – Text Block and Cover Prep (finishing up prepping the text block, connecting the covers and adding book cloth)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbk4qQqfDiw

#9 – Casing in the Book (finishing up adding the book cloth to the cover and beginning to case in the text block)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Q7lWxQNjo

#10 – Finishing the Book (finishing up casing in the book)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzliaDZZ4L4&list=UUvrncnG-LUnDxGraPafgEBg&index=1