The fellow says “Make Your Own Moleskine-Like-Notebook.” So I did.
The promise of “your very own Moleskine-like-notebook/journal/sketchbook” was too much to resist, especially as I have always been curious about bookbinding.
Some hours later, over the space of a couple of days, here’s what we end up with:
Call it my Little Red Book.
Tabula rasa.
Object in hand is about that size.
So for the price of 20 sheets of paper, some odds and ends from Pacific Fabric (a MAKER’s paradise: there’s stuff in there I just marvel at, even if I don’t know what it’s for), and some time and patience, I have this little book. All in? Less than $10, and much of what I bought will be used in other books. Upholstery thread, beeswax, a set of tapestry needles, some cheesecloth, and some hyde of the wild American Nauga (the $1.11 I bought of this would cover a pile of these books).
Worth doing? Depends. Worth learning, for sure, I think. It opens up a lot of possibilities if you really wanted to make something nice, either a unique blank book for someone of perhaps a bound copy of something you want to keep in book form.
What did I learn? The instructions, as good as they are, still baffled me at times. The stitching together of multiple signatures was tricky, as well as the final assembly. I would perhaps look into other papers: I used some good cotton bond for my endpapers, but I could see that as a place to really splash out on a nice book. I could see making a simple press, as the author mentions: a couple of 1x4s, some bolts and winguts is all that would take. More reliable and secure than a pile of heavy books.
You could easily make more than one. It doesn’t a lot more time, but with all the waiting around, you might as well have a couple in process. I think a couple with larger but fewer pages might be nice for kids. Interestingly, you could bind different kinds of paper: maybe some writing paper, some water color or drawing paper, and maybe even some tissue or tracing paper for leaf or flower pressing. Could be a nice thing to take on a big trip, to make your own multi-faceted journal.