Well, now that The Nameless Knight has been released and I can finally take a breather, I’ve got some new bookbinding projects completed that I’d like to show you guys.
The Giant Coptic Notebook
So I found that I needed a large notebook for mind-mapping and plotting the final book of the Daemonva Trilogy, so I created this – a Coptic notebook, using fine quality paper, that’s about double the size of my usual 8.5″x5.5″ books. It opens and lays flat for a very large surface on which I can draw out all kinds of diagrams, plot threads, that kind of thing.
No photos of the inside, because spoilers! The stack of signatures in the second image are the usual size, so this notebook is quite a bit bigger.
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- The Coptic Notebook!
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- Size comparison with a stack of signatures for my usual size books
The Punching Cradle
I decided that I needed to get some kind of punching cradle for doing my signatures. I’ve been using an old dictionary as my cradle but it’s just not working well, so off I went to Google to look for pictures of DIY cradles. And here’s the result – a punching cradle cobbled together out of 1/4″ book board and duct tape.
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- The cradle opened up
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- And disassembled and folded flat
Cool, huh? I grabbed some big pieces of book board, each around 12″ square, and cut them both in half. Then I took two halves and cut a 4″ long slot on either side of them that’s 1″ in from the edge. The slot was 3/8ths of an inch wide. Then I lined up the halves with the slots facing each other and about 1/4″ of an inch between them – so they could fold properly – and wrapped duct tape around the sides and put a small piece in the middle for strength.
Then I folded the halves together, opened them again, and slotted the other two pieces into the V to make the cradle! I marked some notches on the holder pieces that you can see in the second photo so that the fold will sit comfortably and won’t shift around while I’m punching signatures.
Not bad for fifteen minutes work, eh?