Part 22

The making of the book cover is a distinct branch in binding edition work. The pasteboard formerly was cut by hand shears, one piece at a time. It is now done by rotary shears, cutting from six to ten pieces as fast as the sheets of board can be fed to the machine.

The cloth for the cover is cut to the proper size, glued by hand, the boards laid on by gauge, and the edges turned in with a folder. A man expert at the work can make from 600 to 800 covers a day. About fifteen years ago a machine was invented, which turns out from 3000 to 4500 a day. This machine is automatic in its operation, gluing the cloth, laying on the boards, turning in the edges, and delivering a more perfect cover than can be made by hand.

Stamping the cover is a trade by itself. It requires long experience and skill to make an expert. There are several branches in this trade, such as blank or blind stamping, stamping with ink (or a colored leaf made to take the place of ink), and stamping with gold. Laying gold preparatory to stamping is a distinct branch, and is done by girls. This is such a delicate operation that it requires long experience. There has been no improvement in the principle of the stamping or embossing press since the first machines came into use. The die or stamp is held in the head of the press by clamps, and the cover is placed on the platen or bed of the press, which is raised up to the stamp by a "toggle joint" operated with a "cam."

Since covers began to be ornamented with ink, attachments have been added to the presses for inking the stamps. There have also been invented powerful printing presses, made for stamping covers in ink. The process is the same as on common printing presses.

The dies used for stamping covers are cut on hardened brass, and are capable of standing an immense pressure. They are not set in chases, as are the forms on printing presses, but are glued to iron plates. The head of the press to which the plates are clamped is heated, either by running a jet of live steam through it, or by gas jets.

For gilt work, or colored leaf, heat is necessary. The cover is prepared with a coat of size. The gold or ink leaf is then laid on and an impression is given with the heated die, which melts the size and fastens the leaf only at the point where the die strikes. The surplus leaf is brushed off, leaving only the design visible.

The binding of cheap leather-covered books is essentially the same as with cloth. The difference is that the covers must be made by hand. No machine will do any part, except paring the edges of the covers. There are several machines that will do this work, one machine doing as much in a day as three men could with knife and paring stone in the old way.

Edge-gilding is another distinct branch of the trade, and is generally done before books are rounded and backed. The books are clamped, after trimming, between the jaws of powerful screw presses and the edges scraped to make them perfectly smooth. They are then colored with a mixture of red chalk, or black lead, applied with a sponge, to give the gold a dark color. A size made of the white of eggs is then applied with a brush, the gold leaf floated on, and when dry burnished with an agate or bloodstone. No machine has yet been invented that will do this work.

Edge-marbling is another branch. A shallow trough is filled with a solution of gum hog or gum tragacanth of the consistency of thick cream. Each color, which must be ground very fine, is mixed in water and ox-gall, and sprinkled separately over the surface of the gum with brushes. The ox-gall prevents the colors from mixing together on the solution, every drop being distinct. If three or more colors are used, the first one containing a little gall, the second more than the first, and the third more than the second, each color will make a place for itself by crowding the others into a narrower space. The books are held firmly in a clamp, and as the edges are dipped into the solution they take up the colors as they lie on the surface.

There are other edges called for besides the gilt, the marbled, or the plain smooth cut. The deckle edge is left uncut, just as it comes from the paper-maker. The uncut or rough cut is made by taking off any projecting edges of the leaves. There are machines for doing this, one having a circular knife rigged like a circular saw, the book being run lengthwise against it. There are also other methods of removing overhanging leaves, one by using hand shears, another by filing.

In fine leather binding, while the preparation of the book for the cover is essentially the same as in cloth work, the covering is all hand-work, requiring experience and skill, and is a distinct branch of the trade.

Finishing by hand is another, and requires long experience to become an expert. Gold ornamentation requires heated tools, and in the hands of a practised finisher beautiful designs can be worked out with quite a limited assortment of rolls, straight and curved lines, and a few sprigs, dots, and stars.

In olden times, when all work was done by hand, the product of a good-sized cloth bindery was from 500 to 1000 books a day. Now, with modern machinery, in a well-equipped bindery, the product is from 5000 to 10,000 copies of an ordinary 12mo book.

There are a number of other machines in use, run by power, which have not been enumerated in the above sketch, such as wire and thread stitching machines, gluing and pasting machines, brushing machines, and last but not least a gold-saving machine, out of whose bowels large binders take from $200 to $400 worth of waste gold each month. This waste gold comes from the surplus gold brushed from the covers after stamping.

SPECIAL BINDINGS

By Henry Blackwell.

Much has been written about the art of special binding, and many lengthy treatises have been written on the various methods of early and modern "extra," or fine binders. It will be my province to describe the stages through which a book passes, from the time it is received in the bindery until it is shipped out of the establishment. I will take for my subject a rare old book that is to be rebound in a half-levant morocco binding. In a good shop, all books, no matter what the binding is to be, are treated alike in regard to workmanship, care, and materials. If a binder puts his name in the completed book, it is a sign that the book has been to the best of his ability honestly and well bound.

When the customer brings the book to the binder, the style of binding, color of the leather, amount and kind of ornamentation, and all the other details are determined upon and entered carefully in a numbered order book, and the number of the order is marked in pencil on an inside leaf of the book itself, so that the original instructions may be referred to from time to time. This number is usually left in the book after it has been finished and delivered to the owner, and not infrequently has been the means of identifying a lost or stolen volume.

The book is then given to the first operator, usually a girl, who removes the cover, if there is any, and takes the book apart, separating carefully each of the "signatures," or sections, and removing the threads of the old binding. If any of the pages are loose, they are pasted neatly in their proper places and the "insert plates" (illustrations, maps, etc.), which had been printed separately from the text and pasted in the volume, are examined to make sure that they are firmly fixed. Another operator goes over the entire volume and cleans any of the pages that have become soiled.

The book is then prepared for the sewing by a man who hammers the back until it is flat and all the edges of the signatures lie evenly. He then divides it into sections of half a dozen or more signatures, places each of these between smooth wooden boards, and puts the whole into an upright iron press, in which it is subjected to a great pressure, and where it ought to remain over night in order to make it entirely flat and solid. A better way of pressing a book at this stage of the operation is to pass it several times through a rolling machine, which is made for this special purpose with two heavy iron rollers, say twenty inches long and ten inches in diameter. These machines are seldom used in America, but are invariably found in the equipment of binders' workshops abroad, which is perhaps one reason why English books are so solidly bound.

Following the pressing, or the rolling, the book is placed, back uppermost, in another press, something like a wooden vise. By means of a handsaw, several cuts, just deep enough to cut entirely through the fold of each signature, are made across the back of the book. Seven of these saw marks are usually made, the five in the middle being for the cords on which the book is sewed, and the two at the ends for threads which help to make the sewing more secure. If the book is to have a binding with raised bands across the back, no actual cuts are made, the back being simply scratched to guide the girl in sewing, so that the heavy twine on which she sews will stand out on the back, forcing the leather up in the five middle places and forming the raised bands.

After it has been sawed, or scratched, the book goes to a girl who collates it--that is, examines it thoroughly, signature by signature, and makes sure that everything is in its right place. If the volume is old or especially valuable, it is gone over page by page. The first and last signatures are then whip-stitched, or sewed over and over along the back edges, and then put in their places.

The book is then sewn on a "sewing frame." This is a small wooden table about twelve by eighteen inches, with legs only one inch high. At two corners there are upright wooden screws, some fifteen inches long with movable collars which support a crosspiece. To this crosspiece are fastened three stout cords, their other ends being attached to the table. The position of these cords are regulated to fit the saw marks on the back of the book, then they are tightened by means of the screw collars. The sections of the book are then placed against these cords, one by one, and the threads passed through the saw cuts and outside the cords, thus sewing them firmly to the back of the book. When several books of the same size are being bound at one time, the operator goes right on sewing book after book, one signature after the other, until she has finished a pile of books a foot or more high. When the sewing is finished the cords are cut so as to leave a free end of an inch and a half on each side of the book, and to these ends are fastened the boards, as described later.

Linen or silk thread is used in sewing, the heaviness of which depends upon the size of the book and the thickness of the paper of the book. If the book has many single leaves, or illustrations, it is sometimes necessary to whip-stitch each signature before sewing.

The book, or the pile of books, then passes to the "forwarder," who "draws off" or separates each book from the others in the pile, and again hammers the book, to flatten out any "swell" which may be present after the sewing. He then pastes, or "tacks," the first and last whip-stitched signatures to the signatures next them, this pasting being only, say, an eighth of an inch wide along the back edge.

The paper is then chosen for the "end papers," usually matching closely the paper of the book. They are cut a little larger than the paper page of the book, and pasted along the edge to the outside and whip-stitched signatures. Marble paper in suitable harmony or contrast with the leather to be used on the book is then selected for lining the inside of the covers cut to the same size as the "end papers," and pasted to them, after having been folded so that the colored sides come face to face.

When all this pasting has dried thoroughly, the back of the book is covered with a thin coating of glue, to preserve its shape and then, while the back is quite flat, the front edges of the leaves are trimmed off evenly in a cutting machine. If this edge is to be gilded, special care is taken to have the edges cut smoothly.

The back is then "rounded" by use of a hammer; if the book is to be a "flat back" one, the rounding is very slight. It is necessary even in the case of a flat back book to round it somewhat so that it will retain its shape when the finished book is placed on the shelf. After the rounding, the top, or "head," and the bottom, or "tail," of the book are trimmed evenly in the cutting machine.