Book Craft Materials and Tools: What to Use and Why
Domain 1 tests whether you can name the materials and hand tools of book craft, state what each is for, and choose correctly for a stated job.
Materials and their jobs
- Paper – text paper 70–100 gsm, endpaper 100–140 gsm; grain parallel to the spine.
- Boards – strawboard and greyboard for cheap notebooks; millboard and dense Davey board for case binding. Match board thickness to book size and weight.
- Covering – sized book cloth, buckram (heavy library use), calico, handmade paper, leather.
- Adhesives – PVA (strong, flexible, fast, not reversible), wheat starch paste (reversible, the conservation standard), hot animal glue (spine gluing), methyl cellulose (paper repair).
- Sundries – linen thread, mull or crash, hollow tube, headband tape, blocking foil, beeswax.
Tools
Bone folder for creasing and burnishing; awl for sewing holes; scalpel and steel rule on a self-healing mat for accurate cutting; nipping press for pressing glued spines; sewing frame, needles and thread for sections; backing hammer and lying press for rounding; guillotine for trimming.
Worked example
A 1930s book has a torn page. PVA would hold it, but it cannot be undone later without pulling fibres, so it is wrong for a conservation repair. Cooked wheat starch paste is reversible, grips with low moisture, and bonds Japanese tissue to old paper. Choose starch paste with toned Japanese tissue.
Traps
- Cutting with a blunt blade: it skips, then tears the sheet.
- Buying paper or board without checking grain direction.
- Using PVA or self-adhesive film on any historic paper.
- Assuming a higher gsm always means a better sheet.
- Storing boards on edge without support, so corners crush.