An old bound mini-comic of mine.
I’ve been learning something new this week. Book binding. That’s book binding by hand mind you. I don’t have any automatic machines to do it for me. I saw a video online made by a woman who upscales old hardbound books into sketchbooks. She sells them too. I thought that was a cool idea and wanted to try to make them myself.
I actually bought two books on the subject. One written by the woman who made the video. It’s called “Simple Book Making” by Unbind Books and it’s available at Amazon. So is “Zine Making and Book Binding” by Lauren Simkin Berke. Plus I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos.
Being that I’ve never done this before I had to buy a lot of stuff to get started. It’s not especially expensive but it adds up. It’s mostly a lot of drawing and writing paper in different sizes and styles. Plus I had to get some bookbinding thread and needles. Though I’m looking to upscale existing hardcover books I also bought some book cover cardboard to make my own hardcovers.
By for the most expensive thing I bought was a $70 book press. This is a metal machine that either clamps a book in place so I can work on it or presses a book flat as can be. I bought it with credit card points so the price didn’t hurt as much.
I already had some bookbinding glue from another project so I haven’t had to buy any more of that just yet. I’m a little bit clumsy with the glue anyway and prefer to use my 3M Repositional Mounting Adhesive in it’s place but that led me to the discovery that they don’t make that anymore.
Back in the 1990s Marvel Bullpen we called that stuff “3M paper” for short. We used it to glue stuff down. It comes on a long twelve inch roll with the plastic paper backing on one side and sticky stuff on the other. You cut a sheet to size, 8.5×11 inches if the paper you want to glue down is letter size, and then place the sticky side on the sheet of paper.
The “Repositional” part of 3M Repositional Mounting Adhesive means that it doesn’t stick fully right away. You can move it around a little bit. After you get it in position, sticky side down against the paper, you rub the back of the plastic paper with a burnisher. This pressure transfers the sticky stuff to the paper you want to glue down. Now that the glue is on the paper you want to glue down you place the paper where you want it to go and use your burnisher again to stick it down.
This 3M paper is easy to use, useful, and archival. This is why it’s been used for years to “Dry mount” photos. I’ve used it to make my photo collages since I started making them back in the 1990s. I decided to use it in place of some of the glue in book binding and that’s when I discovered that 3M stopped making it in 2025. I found what is supposed to be a replacement for it “Neschen Gudy870 Double-Sided Adhesive Film” but it’s not repositionable. That makes it much harder to use.
Meanwhile back at the book binding things are going frustratingly slow. Some of it is easy and some of it is tough. I can’t even figure out how many pages go in the sketchbook I’m making. The first one I did I put in what I thought was the same volume of pages that came out other it but there were too many. The book wouldn’t close correctly. Or maybe I messed up the spine binding. I’m not really sure.
I also added an extra step. The woman who upscales her books finds interesting old hardcover books to use. Since I’m new I only have dull old hardcover books to use. She uses the existing covers (because they’re interesting). I decided to make my own covers. This meant that I had to print something out (the easy part), cover it with book cover film (frustrating to use), cut it to size, and then use the mounting adhesive to attach it to the book. This took way longer than I thought it would. They look good but it’s a lot more work.
I’m also finding out the difference between hand sewing signatures of pages versus glueing individual pages. This probably means nothing to the average person but it’s two completely different ways to book bind. I’ve done it both ways and messed up both of them. It’s slow going.
At the same time as all this I’m also trying to figure out how to bind individual comic books into a hardcover book. I’ve bit off a lot.
So far it’s been a frustrating week trying to figure all of this out and it has me contemplating the nature of learning. I’ve always been good at learning and have always liked to learn to do new things despite it being hard and frustrating sometimes.
I’ve often hear it said that it’s easier to learn things when you’re young than when you’re old. They say that learning new things often means unlearning old things that are wrong. I think there is a bit of truth to this but for me there is something different in play. That is the other axiom that to learn something new you have to be willing to be bad at it.
I’m good at a lot of things. I’ve got a lot of expertise in making art. I’ve been working in a lot of different mediums for decades. If I want to make a painting I know how to. Even if it gets frustrating at times I know it’ll all be good in the end. I’ve done it before. Lots of times. I draw, I paint, I write, I make videos, I do photography, and I do other stuff I can’t even think of right now. But I’ve never bound books before.
Also when you’re older time is shorter. I know I have more time behind me than in front of me. If I want to learn something new I have to leave my area of expertise and be terrible at something. This is tough to do when I could be spending my time making stuff in the areas I’m good at.
I think when I was younger it was easier to learn because I wasn’t expert at anything. Being terrible at stuff was normal and having to put in the hard work to make something nice was normal. Tough learning was part of wanting to be good at something. Now that I’m older and I’m good at a lot of things my choosing to learn something new (and not be good at it) is rougher than ever.
But I’ll figure out this book binding thing yet. At least that’s the plan.