Bookbinding the Necronomicon – part 2

And now onto the spine…

First I clamped the book together with some simple hand clamps (a makeshift bookbinding clamp):

While doing this I shaped the pages into as much of a curve as I can get.  You want a cord-type of book to have a nice curve to its spine.  It gives it a nice old-fashioned look.  And since this is a prop of the Necronomicon, we want a nice old book look.  Now, my cords were fairly “temperamental” so they were tough to curve at all.  It did eventually behave, but it took some doing:

The next step is to cut some thin cotton fabric to wrap around the spine and a couple inches onto the cover.  This helps to bind the pages, cords, and cover together as the spine.  I used an old dish cloth.  It was pretty thin and ended up cracking as the glue dried.  Probably could have used a thicker cloth.  One good thing about the thin cloth cracking with the glue is that it added more sound to the book as it was opened – a nice and unexpected feature:

In part 3:  From simple book to NECRONOMICON!

Go to Part 3

Go to Part 1