Comment on Hardcover Bookbinding and Laser Etching the Bookcloth
JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net 2 months agoTo be honest, until reading this comment I didn’t even know that was a thing! This is very cool and something I’m going to have to experiment with in the future!
Every time before this book I used a heavy duty canvas suitable for printing on with a plotter printer. It was very sturdy and seemed pretty impermeable, so it was very easy and low-risk to glue to the bookboard. Dust didn’t really seem to stick to it either.
With this one, I just just glued the fabric to the bookboard with acid-free PVA but I was much more careful with the amount of glue I used for fear it’d soak through. I think I went a little light on my first copy, but I’m working on another and took a few more risks and they worked out - it seems to be better bonded without marring the outside. I have noticed that dust really sticks to it, I don’t know how well this one would hold up to thumping around in a backpack for a few weeks or anything like that. So there’s definitely room to improve on the materials.
revelrous@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Ah! I am a beginner, and use a much thinner quilting cotton. To prevent the glue showing I have to fill with mix of acrylic medium and starch paste (haven’t found a ratio I really liked), or to back the cloth with paper to keep the glue from showing. So to me your casing looked like witchcraft! I really like the etching effect. No idea how you’d line it up, but it seems like you could make some gorgeous illustrationy covers by going over the cloth multiple times at different strengths for different values.
JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
I’m definitely a beginner too, especially with using actual cloth - I think I just got lucky with which fabric I happened to have on hand.
This simple beginning definitely got us thinking about more elaborate stuff to try in the future. Part of why I did a basic cloth hardcover was that the author never made any cover art for it, and partly that I just thought it would be a good fit for the feel of the story. But for some of our own I think we can do some really cool versions of their cover art in this format. Part of that would be inverting the colors and dialing in the contrast for clarity.
I’ve seen some really cool looking illustrations etched on online demonstrating the potential:
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