My faux book project

If you wanted to send me the leather I'd be happy to stamp some titles for you. The fonts are expensive though so I only have Times in 4 different sizes. I can post some pics if you want.
 
If you wanted to send me the leather I'd be happy to stamp some titles for you. The fonts are expensive though so I only have Times in 4 different sizes. I can post some pics if you want.

You could?!? Man, you're a gem!

Can you print from a file or do you print with metal Times blocks directly? I've made a jpg file I was planning to print to A4 elephant hide sheet, and run through a laminator with gold foil (I've checked, it actually works). Real leather it is not however. I'll happily (really happily) pay for someone printing the labels on Moroccan leather for me!
 
No problem :) I have actual metal type that I use for it, the machine heats it up and it gets pressed down onto the foil and into the leather. Here's a set of Harry Potter books I did:

IMG_0735.JPG

Those are are the two smallest font sizes I have, 24 point and 14 point. 14 point works best if you want the letters to read horizontally, but if you're happy to have them going downwards like these books then you can use the 24 or even 30 point.
 
No problem :) I have actual metal type that I use for it, the machine heats it up and it gets pressed down onto the foil and into the leather. Here's a set of Harry Potter books I did:

View attachment 724787

Those are are the two smallest font sizes I have, 24 point and 14 point. 14 point works best if you want the letters to read horizontally, but if you're happy to have them going downwards like these books then you can use the 24 or even 30 point.

Oh, those are very nice! They certainly looks a lot classier than the ones on my shelf. I really envy you that press!

Here's what I had in mind gilding by the laminator/laser-printer method (to be cut out and glued to the spines). Is this something you could do with your machine? (the file is an A4 sheet intended for a laser printer):

Farscape etiketter.jpg
 
Yesterday I added some finishing touches to the box.

19th century books typically had boards covered in marbled paper. Since I'm doing this the cheap and dirty way, I just printed out a suitable marbling image I found on-line. I glued it to a bit of cardboard about the thickens of the leather so that leather and board would sit (more or less) flush:

IMG_1866.JPG


I'm quite happy with the result:

IMG_1871.JPG


The leather looks a bit to bright and new next to my genuinely old books, so I decided a bit of stain was in order. First experimenting with various combinations on a bit of scrap leather:

IMG_1875.JPG


I settled on a thin stain, and proceeded with the box (here's two books done):

IMG_1876.JPG


This is where I ran into the first actual problem of this whole thing. It seems I had been less than careful with the wood glue on the first spine I made. The result was the whitish patch on the closest stained spine. Luckily I didn't go for a darker stain, or it would have been very visible.

Any suggestions on how to get a wood glue (PVA) stain out of leather?
 
Shoot me a PM and we can talk about it, I'm sure we'll come up with something. PVA is water soluble, so you can try that, but water will darken the leather. Since you're actively going for an antiqued/distressed look you may not mind, but I'd recommend testing on a scrap piece first.
 
Shoot me a PM and we can talk about it, I'm sure we'll come up with something. PVA is water soluble, so you can try that, but water will darken the leather. Since you're actively going for an antiqued/distressed look you may not mind, but I'd recommend testing on a scrap piece first.

You've got PM, mate!
 
Bookface has graciously agreed to do some experimenting for the labels, in the mean time I've put the box where it's supposed to on the shelf.

Before:

IMG_1889[1].JPG


After:

IMG_1890[1].JPG

With labels, I think this is going to look the part!


I have done some errors with this first box. Some tooling marks and glue drops are unfortunately visible. Most importantly though, the spines are too short to do more than just covering the box. Ideally, they should extend a few millimetres above and below, so that I would have been able to make book covers to extend on the top and bottom of the book. That way, I could glue in something resembling a paper block and have a box that would look like a book from 4 or 5 sides rather than just 3.


When doing weekend clean-up today, my 10 year old came with a box of detetctiv/science gear she suggested might go in the shelf as a faux book too. The little plank I'd used as wood for the first spines was just wide enough to cover the box on it's high end (box and plank):

IMG_1891[1].JPG


A quick job with a file and some sandpaper:

IMG_1893.JPG



Since this will be kind of an experimental design, I decided to boy a simple gold pen to do lettering. The following was done freehand, if I draw it up a bit more carefully I think it might work for some simpler designs:

IMG_1896.JPG


The wooden spine glued to the box, pieces of string will do as raised bands:

IMG_1895.JPG



I found some darker scrap leather for this book. If you look carefully, you can see where I've done some preliminary wet-forming of the letters. I'm planning to go for a simple gold title with no decorations, typical of late 18th century book.

IMG_1897.JPG

I'll post some pictures when it's dried out by tomorrow.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1894.JPG
    IMG_1894.JPG
    2.1 MB · Views: 99
Day two of the impromptu box project for my daughter didn't go all that well. I did a few mistakes which I won't repeat in the future.

First up, the spine had dried out to show a nice shade of middle brown:

IMG_1898.JPG


I then (stupidly) proceeded to glue on the corner pieces on the bit of pizza box to become the boards. My idea this time was to make the boards a tad larger than the box, allowing for the book to look like an actual book also when viewed from above.

IMG_1899.JPG


I then glued some blue leftover curtain fabric to what was supposed to be the rest of the board, to get it to lay flush with the leather.

IMG_1901.JPG


The problem was that there's always some small adjustments to be made, and cardboard is much less forgiving than leather. Result: Wood glue residue everywhere!

IMG_1903.JPG


So, lesson learned, I did the fabric first and the leather corners afterwards for the other board. If anyone is in for making a box, I highly recommend doing it in that order. Leather is much more forgiving to work with! 2nd board:

IMG_1904.JPG


... and installed:

IMG_1905.JPG
 
A question for my fellow RPFers:

On my daughters request I put the book-box in the shelf, and it doesn't look half bad, even before putting on a title. It is however very matte, Next to an actually old book (the smaller ones with raised bands is Dr. Livingstone's African adventures) it's apparent the real one is much more shiny.

IMG_1907.JPG


I could give the box book a lick of shellac, but that would also darken the leather as if it was wet. I quite like the shade of brown it has, does anyone have a suggestion for making it shiny without darken it?
 
That looks awesome! Where did you get the leather for this project?


The light leather for the first box was some leftover bits given to me by a neighbour. It's actually very fine leather, leftover from a gilt leather project too small to use for any of their projects, but large enough for my book spines. It's about 1/2 mm thick calf leather.

The brown leather is bits of leftover scraps I bought from a leather supplier where I otherwise buy stain and leather needles and stuff like that. I bought scrap leather for 100 Norwegian Crowns (about 10 US dollars), which will more than plenty see me through most of this project of filling my shelf I guess.

The trick is it get thin enough leather, and also leather that is "pre-distressed", i.e. dinged up and worn. I have some leather I use for projects like this which comes from old leather jackets and bags picked up at garage sales and flea markets (or out of the wheelie bin). The more worn and scruffy, the more suited it is for projects like this, and the less you're likely to have to pay for it.

My idea for this project (as well as the Luke Skywalker build I did for my son) is to try to see how far I can get on a minimal budget. I have plans for doing a few of the more more typical Victorian cloth backed books, and I have some ideas as to how to make gilt cloth spines quite cheaply.
 
Last edited:
Any suggestions on how to get a wood glue (PVA) stain out of leather?

I have used lighter fluid to effectively remove PVA glue from leather and other materials in the past. Depending on the quality of your leather, however, I would do a colour-fast spot test on a scrap piece first.
 
I have used lighter fluid to effectively remove PVA glue from leather and other materials in the past. Depending on the quality of your leather, however, I would do a colour-fast spot test on a scrap piece first.

Sounds interesting! I think I'll test it out on a spot of leather to see if it's suited for the thin calf I'm using. Thanks for the tip!

- - - Updated - - -

As for shining it up, a shoe polish maybe? Just a thought.

That is a good tip! I guess colourless polish should do the trick. I'll try it out on some scraps of the same leather!
 
A quicky project on the side:

I've been given a new office at work, and have been screwing up shelves and putting odd things in cabinets to try to shake the horrible dentist office style interior. One of the things I wanted to camouflage was an extremely ugly air vent cover. I put up a shelf, but the cover made the shelf too shallow for the archive boxes I'm using. So, considering the current faux book project, why not make something quick and dirty?

Here's the shelf and the air duct cover:

IMG_1910[1].JPG


This will be high up and out of the way, so no need to use anything fancy. I picked up and old cardboard box (the type with a corrugated middle layer), some old cotton fabric remains and the trusty old wood glue and a bucket of wallpaper glue.

I cut a suitable screen from the box, and cut the remaining cardboard up into stripes of different with. Some I matched in hight to the boxes, others I made shorter to put a book laying flat at the top. The basic idea was to have basically similar hight along the top to so as not making it too obvious it's just a flat series of book spine façades.

Here's the result look like:

IMG_1911[1].JPG

The small brown and red volumes I gave a lick of shellac to have some spines more shiny than others. The red volume and one of the brown ones have a double layer of cardboard to make it stick out more to make a slightly uneven row. The brown volumes are supposed to be field notebooks with simple numbered spine labels (cut from a manilla envelope). The green spine at the end is made from a couple of empty toilet rolls covered in the same wallpaper I used for my sons droid caller and given a layer of acrylics.

On the shelf:

IMG_1912[1].JPG

Verdict:

- It works tolerably well as long as no-one pays too close attention. By using rather un-attractive colours and no fancy lettering, I hope no-one's going to pay too close attention anyway.

- The glue did however moisten the cardboard, and make it warp. Even a cursory look shows the spines are far from straight. I'm tempted to pick the whole thing apart and apply it to a piece of plywood.

- The cardboard works reasonably well for spine fillings, but not for properly bound books with round spines.

- The blue and tan spines would look quite OK if they were not so bent. A couple of spine labels should give it some oomph.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and it took me about 4 hours and 0 cost.
 
Back on track!

My daughter's box-of-science-stuff book was basically finished, but lacked a spine title. Since I don't have any means of hot-stamping gold foil, I settled for a gold sharpie.

1st step was to mark up where the lines would go using a sewing thread. I dragged this back and forth across the spine a few times to make a visible line that would easily disappear with a bit of rubbing. After that, I marked up where the letters would go with a pencil:

IMG_1923.JPG


When I was reasonably pleased with the result, I marked them up with a black ballpoint. The ballpoint also made an actual impression, like gold stamping would have done.

IMG_1924.JPG


Then on the the gold-pen. It's hardly perfect, but it was about as good as I could get it with the heavy tip.

IMG_1925.JPG


I hid the worst of the blemishes with a fine tipped sharpie. Not only does that help to fix mistakes, it also add to the perception of stamped letters. Here it is back on it's shelf:

IMG_1926.JPG


Verdict:

- Gold pen works tolerably well, but not for anything that's supposed to look look machine made (the letters on a 18th century book was often stamped one by one by hand).
- In the future, I'll investigate if I can sharpen the tip for a thinner, more precise line.
- The "ball pen stamping" added to the finished look
 
After a bit of hiatus, new experiments in gilding:

Holding me up is a way to apply golden lines and letters to boks, so I decided to experiment with two books at work. I have two similarly sized biology books that could be given a better looking spine.

Having looked a a few crafts videos on you-tube, I decided to try the laser printer/gold foil/laminator approach. First, I ordered a cheap gold foil of Aliexpress. Then I did a slight rewording of titles of the two books to a more Victorian style, and made a A4 size sheet with the two backs in photoshop:

Bokrygger.jpg

These two are made to look similar to look like they belong to a series of books.

Next up was making a jacket for the books to hold the spines:

1.JPG

The jacket is made from fairly solid fibre paper I found in the trash heap in the plotter room. Good stuff, I might experiment a bit more with it later.

Then I found some paper with some structure to it. The colour was less than ideal and I did some experiments with using acrylics to paint structure papers, but the gold foil stuck to the acrylics. Spirits based colour don't form a sticky surface though, so I used a big permanent marker:

2.JPG

Print the book spine design on the black side of the paper with a laser printer (important, ink printers won't work):

3.JPG

Then I taped small bits of gold foil over all the printed portions. I could just have laminated using a full sheet, but that would be a bit wasteful (if much faster). The foil has two sides, one silver and one gold. The silver one's will stick to glue, the gold one won't, so golden side up::

4.JPG

I then folded a piece of A3 around the sheet and ran it through the laminator on normal settings. Removing the foul, the faux gold had stuck to the laser printed lines.

5.JPG

The finish was simply to cut out the two spine strips and glue then to the jacket like a quarter binding (quarter cloth binding was not at all unheard of in Victorian times). Here's the result:

6.JPG

The verdict:

They don't look bad, but the colour of the gold is a bit off. It looks a bit to plastic (which I suppose it is). It's actually too shiny relative to the more matte and deeper tone of the gold on some of the real gilt book spines I have. I think the flat surface of the paper makes the shininess stand out a bit more than necessary. I think I'll experiment with using thin rayon or cotton fabric backed by paper to print on. Perhaps the faux gilding will look better with some structure to it.

The other option is to buy a more expensive gold foil. Does anyone else have any experience gilding with printers and laminators?
 
Here's a better picture showing the difference between the gold foil and gilt lettering of an actual book spine. I think I'll need to invest on some better gold foil:

IMG_1984.JPG
 
Just a point worth noting that the laser printer technique doesn’t work on colour lasers or larger more office orientated models, because they use toner that fuses at a much higher temperature and you can’t then get that toner to melt again with a laminator or iron.

You can get decent real gold leaf sheets on Amazon (.co.uk at least) for about £5 for 20 sheets of 4.5cm x 4.5cm leaf. I’ve used it for a holy grail replica and I’m working on my own book binding project with some as well. I’m currently also looking for a good way to do a book title in gold on a leather spine that doesn’t involve me buying a hot stamping set. I was wondering if making a stencil and then using that to apply gold size and leaf that would work, one way to find out I guess!
 
This thread is more than 6 years old.

Your message may be considered spam for the following reasons:

  1. This thread hasn't been active in some time. A new post in this thread might not contribute constructively to this discussion after so long.
If you wish to reply despite these issues, check the box below before replying.
Be aware that malicious compliance may result in more severe penalties.
Back
Top