Book Rebinding Basics: From Costs to Completion

hi and welcome today I'm going to go through all the costs that are associated with starting to book bind and just a really quick Glimpse at the process so you just have an idea of what's involved and all the supplies that you need in case you have some of them already at home or if you just want to get an idea of what the initial input cost is because a lot of people have asked me about that so I rebind paperbacks and hardbacks into sort of special edition hard cover books I hope that by the

end of this video you'll come away with a better understanding of the initial todos and two guys for book binding so that in 10 minutes you can know whether you want to try this craft yourself or just keep watching people do it and maybe put it off until you have more time so please remember to like And subscribe I'm slowly trying to get more book biting YouTube videos out there for you guys they just take a while to edit and so I'm slowly getting better at it okay before you are the absolute bare minimum things

that you would need to rebind a book you would need an xacto knife the Ula one is best scissors a bone folder one brush I these rubber ones are really nice because you can just roll off dried glue as opposed to having to wash them if you're lazy like me you need pH neutral PVA glue you need book cloth you need a corkback ruler you could do anywhere from 12 in or higher you need a piece of mole or you could use linen you need book boards to make your front and back cover you could

also use it for the spine if you want and you need some papers to make end papers you'll need a cutting mat you'll see some things are missing from here this is is the absolute bare minimum and we'll add up the total of what these pieces are just on their own and if you were to buy the starting packs for them because mold doesn't come in this size it comes in something this size but this will also last you for a lot of books okay let's go over some of the extras they're not essential but

they can help add a little something special to your book or they're just making the process a little bit easier for you one is bookmark ribbon it's nice to have a a ribbon in a book such as these also something called endbands they're right here top and bottom it's a little you can buy a single color or big packs I think about 25 came in a pack with all different colors about this length make the process easy you can make your own but that's way way more tedious a rolling cutter you can use scissors but

I just find for cutting book cloth and cutting my end papers that a rolling cutter is a much easier it takes very little time if you want to do designs on books if you want to cover the front and back with HTV like this you need the tools and the Machine for this so here are the tools that'll go over you need first you need HTV you can use any brand you like I like czer and Cricut you want it to be iron on you need tools to weed it and a mat to cut it

out so you'll need normal tweezers that are helpful and then a little one of these or this little pen and you just need a cutting that and then the machine okay so the Crickets can range in price depending on which one you want to get the cheapest one is a Cricut Joy extra and that's the smallest width that you can use to make a book cover you can't just get the plain Joy it won't work for books most expensive one is maker and the maker can do a lot more than the Cricut Joy extra can

do but the joy extra will work just fine so if that's all that's in your budget then that will totally work and if you're going to do iron on vinyl you're also going to need a little iron that's specific to vinyl that's flat like this to iron it on a normal iron won't work we're getting down to now the things that are just Essentials but these are 3D printed spacers that you can buy off of etsy they have ones for corners and they have ones for your hinge gap which is basically the measurement between your

front and back book covers and your spine piece I find these save the most time and I would recommend that every single person buys these there's a ton of sellers selling them on Etsy and it's a onetime purchase they will save you a lot of time in the future maybe $20 now but it saves you hours later okay so the first step in reminding a book is removing the cover so for a paperback you'll just pull it off and it will look like this and I try and keep this intact cuz I use these as

bookmarks so this is just paperback cover pulled off and then for a hard back you would just you just cut off the edges and it looks like this so this is the cut off cover and these two with the covers removed are called text blocks the next step in the process is taking your text block and turning it in to this those end Pages headbands mole in some cases a bookmark ribbon and some spine strengthening these are the materials that you'd use you doce the mole headbands end papers glue brush cutting some extra card stock

for strengthening kind up Mark ribbon next is the process of making your case so you need your text block just to measure it so that you can cut down your book boards and then you'll take your book boards and you'll glue them to your book cloth with all of these and for this you'll be using these 3D printed Cutters to help make this process easier and the brush the glue the rolling cutter to cut the book cloth the Ula knife to cut the book boards and the bone folder to smooth out once you've glued down

everything you want smooth it out and then you'll go over the hinges like this another option if you don't want to use bookboard if you rebound a hard backbook you can just reuse the cover and cover over it as long as the fabric won't if you have a light fabric you might be able to see this but if you don't that won't you won't it won't see through there some books like this put the covers like that if you rebind this you'll get this crease so if that bothers you then just just cut your own

book boards okay once you're done with your cover you can decorate it so different options are using the Cricut to cut out some decals such as this weed them out put them on your cover and then iron them on which looks like this this is one that I messed up with the ironing and so this is an unused one I also have a video linked above that goes for other ways to decorate your rebind without a Cricut here are a few options you could use these things by Fable and bind they're press on decals so

none of these tools or machines required you just take this and you rub and you press them on you can use iron on patches this one's probably too big but you can laser cut a cover this was like low Forge laser cutter so it's just wood etched this is an example of the Press on decals this part is um HTV from the Cricut but this is what the Press on decals look like and then these are just them on on the naked hard covers of just a normal book highly recommend these if you don't want

to invest in a cricket and another thing you can do is just this is just a piece of paper that's printed it's a little bit thicker of quality so you could just use this but then design one of your own in canva and just do the dimensions of everything and then get it printed at a local print shop so now that we've talked about designing your own book cover in canva I wanted to share something helpful with you I've been using skillshare which is an awesome platform with tons of classes on all sorts of topics

they even have classes on how to edit your YouTube videos which I actually use to edit this video did you notice two perspectives I'm slowly figuring this out skillshare also has great classes on canva and procreate which can be super helpful when designing beautiful book covers and two programs that I don't really know how to use that well yet so I'm excited to take classes in them as well if you're into crafting design cooking maximizing productivity or you just want to learn something new skillshare is truly a great place to explore they are giving the

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let's get back to book binding the last thing that you're going to do is why you have your cover if you've put your HTV on it or a press on decal or whatever is you take your cover you take your text block and you're going to dis glue them together I use parchment paper throughout a lot of different steps in this process but this one is you definitely need it as a tool and two sheets of scrap paper and you just put scrap paper in put glue down replace this with clean parchment paper close it

up and let it dry in the press okay so here's a look at the totals of buying all the supplies for book binding the basics are on the lab left and on the right are if you added in the Cricut and all the other miscellaneous tools that would go with it plus any additional items it does raise input price some but if this is a hobby that you think you're going to want to do for more than a few books the majority of the supplies are ones that you're going to use for years to come

you only really need to Reby HTV book cloth boards glue and papers mole and those even depending on where you Source them and I have a video above linked on where I get everything from because I'm just using Amazon as an example here but for the most part I just buy my glue mole in the original tools there my average rebind cost now and just supplies is about $10 a book the most expensive part of rebinding a book now is just the HTV cost because I buy on-brand materials if you were to buy off-brand HTV

the cost would be even lower if you take a look at ety you'll see some people selling rebound books for upwards of $200 which is a lot this is a rather timec consuming hobby at first when you're just learning the craft and figuring out what works and what doesn't work but once you have the basic supplies you can easily make your own books for a fraction of that cost so if you're wanting to rebind an entire series like Harry Potter load of the Rings acatar throwing a glass Etc it's going to be much cheaper for

you to buy your own materials than it would be to buy a rebound set from someone else so in conclusion I hope that this video was helpful in giving you a quick little insight and overview and just see if that's something that you want to continue on please remember to like And subscribe and if you have any questions just drop them in the comments and I will get back to you have a great day thanks bye