Tag Archives: glue

Back to the book

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Thanks to some good questions from Mage I spent the last week figuring out how to 'package' the book, and how to end it. Remember those flaps sticking out the back end?

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I've started to work from the back. Even with my fancy diagram I'm still making mistakes about the tabbing. Haven't started glueing yet, just cutting, scoring and folding. My brain doesn't want to deal with all of this, but I'm pushing it. Correcting the diagram I found several mistakes confusing things, which I clarified, I hope.

Diagram

Horizontal yellow bars are the pages of the book, joining both sides. Three larger angles are pictures showing the depth of the tunnel, which pull apart to show horizontal structures, the bridges. Thinner, smaller angles are the water feature along the sides of the tunnel.

The rectangle at the bottom of the diagram becomes the wrapper for the book, reversing direction and fastening in the front around the compressed book, which is about one inch thick. The wrapper worries me, because it will fold in both directions, creating possibly destructive wear on the paper hinges.

I began working on the wrapper assembly and glued an additional strip of card over each of the tabs. This made the whole thing too thick and cumbersome. Back to the computer I printed the two small pieces, bottom right, together, eliminating the need for one set of tabs, and reinforced the fold with linen tapes; did all of the first glueing steps working backwards through piece 9; and put everything under weights to dry flat.  I won't continue working on it until I see how everything dries.

 

Finished, but not done

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The book is finished. As usual, I am not happy, so there will be another iteration, this time with design changes based on experience. Usually I'm just speculating. The book, opened out fully, is about three feet long.

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Here is a picture looking through the opening.

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Sorry the pictures aren't better. I didn't set up properly; since I'm going to do it again, I'll worry about good pictures the next time.

I think this is not a tunnel book in the usual sense. It's really a tunnel, of sorts, but you can't see all the way through it unless you open the folded pages.

I've made several decisions about the overall look:

1. I want one more bridge after the second folded page.

2. I will remove the accordion fold next to the cover, connecting it directly to a folded page. Otherwise the whole thing is too loose.

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Above, I clipped the first accordion fold closed.

3. I will be more careful with the outside accordion folds so they will be more closely repetitive, unlike what you see below.

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I will change the back end of the book so that it is a closed sheet or another bridge. This is the one thing that needs a decision.

I want to decrease the number of pieces I have to glue. Unfortunately, even though I can print front and back with reasonable registration, some of the pieces have to be doubled in order to have some place to hide the glue tabs. My first thought was to print the bridges on one sheet, but the card stock is not heavy enough to support the other pages. So, each of the six bridges will be doubled, the three larger accordion folds will be double, and small accordion folds will be single.

I made a diagram:

Diagram

Double lines are glued pages. Single lines with yellow triangles are single accordion folds. Probably makes no sense to anyone else, but I want it as part of my record.

All about glue

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or as much as I can bring myself to write. I dislike glue almost as much as all of those details. I'm beginning to develop a technique, but it's still a challenge; either too much or too little.Too much soaks into the paper and you get streaks in solid color areas, like the sky. Too little and there are gaps between the sheets. Here you can see one of those gaps and the blue in the last page is streaked.

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I tend to forget what gets glued to what. This is the second iteration. Each page has been glued to one other page, but when I got to page three I should have glued to two pages, one before, one after, and I forgot the after pages.

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I did it again in the third iteration, but caught it before the glue was entirely set, making for a sloppy joint, but I wanted to see the entire thing put together. I finished on Friday and have spent the weekend trying to figure out how to do it better.

I went over to Staples to look at printers and paper (card) stock, and had a funny experience. The copy center has books of paper samples. When I looked at the samples I knew they had labeled them incorrectly. So I told this to the young man behind the counter. He was very nice and took me over to the paper stock shelves where he opened two different reams and then concluded I was correct. Evidently he had been stung by the mistake and hadn't figured it out. He thanked me for teaching him something. I hope what I really taught him was that old ladies often know what they are talking about. I bought a ream of something they labeled 110 lb. cover, but I don't think it is. It just happens to be the heaviest, brightest stuff they sell. I decided not to get a new printer, but bought more ink instead.

I still have lots of thinking to do. Next post I'll have pictures and the redo plan.