Bookbinding the Necronomicon – part 3

Now we’re getting into the details.  And this book had a lot!  I’ve never bound a book before, and this one was a tough one to cut my teeth on.

This was my rough design for the Necronomicon that I sent over to Mark Fukae.  It was a lot more elaborate to begin with as you can see.  Plus, I made some changes when I actually had the different leathers in my hands.  I knew that the main leather should be a sheep hide.  It’s nice and smooth and easy to work with.  Perfect to get that open area in the middle.  Originally I wanted there to be some replica bear claws around the edges, but they looked too fake when I received them in the mail.  I also planned on having some coyote jaw bones be on the top and bottom of the book – so it would look like a mouth opening when the book was opened.  It would have worked I think if the book was 200 pages instead of 100.  They ended up being omitted.  And I think it was a good thing.  There was so much detail as it was, this might have been too much.  Also, as you can see, I ended up switching the black and red leathers.  The red leather worked better as the exposed area in the middle and the black snake print leather worked better on the spine:

I used waxed leather thread to tie on the claws to the book cover.  The claws on the left are porcupine and the claws opening the center of the book are badger.  To attach I drilled 2 holes next to each other.  Then I wrapped the thread around a claw.  Next I tightly tied it through the holes fairly flush to the cover.  And last I added a few drops of super glue as a just-in-case measure:

Next step is to cut the book cover leather to size.  As you can see I have left some extra there as it needs to wrap around the cover.  You can also where I cut the leather where it meets the spine.  On this type of book, you cut and fold the leather at the spine against itself and glue it there:

Here’s the leather roughly wrapped around the front.  I then felt where the claws were and marked where I felt I should start cutting to expose the red leather underneath.  I didn’t make the hole to big there.  Because to begin with, I didn’t want to overdo the hole as I did want to stretch the leather and also be able to get the claws through around it.  More to come on that:

Next up with be gluing the leather to the book and shaping it into the Necronomicon!

Go to Part 4

Go to Part 2

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