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:
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.