FEDRIGONI RESPONSIVE// First Day of Binding/ Embossing

Binding the book is the part of the process that neither Ste or Myself have any experience in. This is also cutting the submission deadline really close so to add to the pressure we really need to get this right first time. Luckily the tutors down in Vernon St helped us with every step.

I started by reprinting this page, which I had laminated because of its dark colour. In the process of doing this I had cut the page too small for binding so it had to be printed and cut again. I managed to cut this page out again by hand with a scalpel, luckily it was a hill with very little detail.

Our first step was to trim each page along the spine and mechanically fold each page. This would allow us to bind the book and trim the rest later. The fold is placed 2mm away from where we will drill the holes for binding and will allow the fairly fragile pages to be turned without bending the design.

We did have a look at various covers and binding methods. We chose go go for a japanese bind with a cover. The cover would hide the stitching and could be applied after we embossed it. 

We used this mounted drill to drill holes through the book. We also used a template measured out on cardboard to help us drill in the right places. However with some confusion over the size of the book we had measured the holes relative to the size of the A4 sheets the book was printed on and not the actual size of the trimmed book itself. This could have been a disaster but luckily no holes were too close to the edge of the correct dimensions, we halved the measurements and drilled again. 

The second and correct drill measurements...

While we lasercut our books we also managed to lasercut some mount-board for the embossing on the front cover. We used mount-board because the print tutors up in Blenheim Walk suggested it, however the more professional equipment down in the old college basically just crushed the mount-board and the embossing was way to faint to even take a picture of.

However we did do a lot of measurements which we can use again and it was great practice for the real thing, which we will have to do tomorrow now, after cutting some more covers out of MDF.

We tried to emboss on this hydraulic printing machine down in the Rossington St print room. We will use it again tomorrow for the second attempt at embossing.