zachsbanks547
Active Member
I’m currently working on a replica of the Red Book of Westmarch, otherwise known as the book Bilbo writes his story down in. I’m specifically making the version seen in “The Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy.
I started with 11x17 parchment paper, which I folded in half to make my signatures. So the final size of the paper will be about 8.5x11. I did signatures with 4 sheets of 11x17, and did 25 signatures. So about 400 pages all told. I did saw-cut holes and a kettle stitch binding, using regular sewing thread. Then I glued on end pages, using the same parchment paper, and then glued on a fabric reinforcement, just some regular woven cotton.
The cover is made of veg tan leather. I cut it to size and burnished the edges. I then wet carved the design using a ball end tool, using this design as reference, that I resized fit my dimensions in Photoshop:
I just printed it out, laid it over the wet leather, and ran over the lines with the ball end tool. I then went over everything again without the paper once the design was all transferred.
Then I dyed the leather red, and attached the tie closures. Those are cut out of the same leather, which I fed through a slit in the front cover to the back where I glued and hand sewed it into place.
In order to make sure the book opened well once things were assembled, which was an issue I had on a test piece, I skived out the spine are of the cover and folded in creases right where the corners if the spine will be.
Once the cover was all done, I glued the textblock into the cover, using Leather Weld glue, which seemed to work well.
I’m really happy with how the whole book turned out. My work on the spine paid off, as everything seems to open really nicely and fold right where I creased and skived. It’s really satisfying to hold, with a nice weight and the leather feeling as nice as it does.
Only thing left is to add the silver paint to the “BB” and the star on the top.
I started with 11x17 parchment paper, which I folded in half to make my signatures. So the final size of the paper will be about 8.5x11. I did signatures with 4 sheets of 11x17, and did 25 signatures. So about 400 pages all told. I did saw-cut holes and a kettle stitch binding, using regular sewing thread. Then I glued on end pages, using the same parchment paper, and then glued on a fabric reinforcement, just some regular woven cotton.
The cover is made of veg tan leather. I cut it to size and burnished the edges. I then wet carved the design using a ball end tool, using this design as reference, that I resized fit my dimensions in Photoshop:
I just printed it out, laid it over the wet leather, and ran over the lines with the ball end tool. I then went over everything again without the paper once the design was all transferred.
Then I dyed the leather red, and attached the tie closures. Those are cut out of the same leather, which I fed through a slit in the front cover to the back where I glued and hand sewed it into place.
In order to make sure the book opened well once things were assembled, which was an issue I had on a test piece, I skived out the spine are of the cover and folded in creases right where the corners if the spine will be.
Once the cover was all done, I glued the textblock into the cover, using Leather Weld glue, which seemed to work well.
I’m really happy with how the whole book turned out. My work on the spine paid off, as everything seems to open really nicely and fold right where I creased and skived. It’s really satisfying to hold, with a nice weight and the leather feeling as nice as it does.
Only thing left is to add the silver paint to the “BB” and the star on the top.
