More Booklets

I made two more booklets last night:

#3 is the little one, with pages 1/8 of a letter-sized sheet in size. #4 is another one with quarter-sheet size pages. Same off-white mystery paper pages and reproduction map of San Francisco for the covers. Both are sewn with off-white linen.

#3 just has the cover paper folded over to the inside and glued down, on #4 it wraps over and is glued down to a piece of cardstock. 

It looks like I could have paid more attention to getting the book square to the streets on #4, but the blocks on the two sides are actually not perfectly aligned, so at least halft the cover was going to look slightly off-kilter no matter what I did. The truth is, I picked the straight edge of the remaining large enough chunk of paper, and worked from that. I think it was square to the edge of the map, but it might not have been. 

FWIW, the circular arcs are every half-mile from a "Ferry Depot" that looks to be in the same location as a modern Ferry Building Marketplace, which is on the northeast side of the city/peninsula. And now you know as much as I do. 

Above are the inside covers of books #1 and #3. Book 1 doesn't have the folded-in bits of the cover paper glued down, #3 does. I prefer #3, gluing the flaps down looks more finished.

And here's #2 and #4. #2 has the cardstock endpapers glued down over the cover flaps, #4 has the flaps folded over the cardstock (yes, it is a lighter shade of green). I like #2 better, it looks more finished. But I like #4 better than #1, because the cardstock beefs up the cover a little. Booklet #4 is small enough that it feels fine to me without the cardstock. 

I decided my Mom is getting me a sewing frame for Christmas. Now I just have to decide which I want of the three Affordable Binding Equipment makes. 

While I was looking at sewing frames yesterday, I was reminded of the plywood and laminate lead-weighted press board that Affordable Binding sells, which is a nice wooden box, with laminate exterior, filled with lead, weighing in at 8-9 pounds. For $39, plus shipping. A useful thing, for, say, flattening finished booklets, or any squashy-smooshy job. But more than I was willing to pay.

I asked Ron if the shot bags we got for weighting down photography/lighting tripods were easily accessible. They were. We went to Menard's in search of countertop remnants. After a minor in-store detour, we found them, up front, by the shelving. I got a 4' long, 12"-ish wide piece, that's over an inch thick. The sign on the shelf said it was $5, but the cashier rang it up for $2. Its chipboard, and we didn't get the stuff to finish the edges, but for that price I'm fine with not-pretty edges.  Ron cut it into four pieces, and here they are pressing booklets #3 and #4.

Yeah, you kind of have to take my word for it that the booklets are in there. Ron brought down all four shot bags, so there's probably over 20 pounds of weight on the stack. Yes, it is sitting over the table leg. 

Yesterday I picked up some fancy patterned paper and coordinating solid-color paper for pages for another style of book, and to the side of the picture above is a reproduction map of Rome that's going to be a book similar to 1-4, but with the sewing hidden, and cloth on the spine - the next step in complexity. I cut the pages for that one last night, but I need to go to Dick Blick and get some heavier board for the covers of both the next books. I have some 130# cardstock that I thought would be heavy enough, but Ron disagreed. So I'll probably get that tonight. And book cloth, because I can't find the roll I got earlier this year. Grumble.