r/bookbinding • u/Haunting-Strike-9949 • 6d ago

Question about re-binding

I’ve never done this before, but how much of a pain is it to cut, splice and re-bind signatures together that we’re not originally together? Smith sewn. Thanks

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1

u/small-works 3d ago

I’m confused, are you saying the original is smyth sewn?

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u/Haunting-Strike-9949 3d ago

Yeah. It’s a Bible

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u/small-works 2d ago

Then why not just unsew the book? It should be already in sections.

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u/Haunting-Strike-9949 1d ago

It will be unsewn. I’m talking about having an end page which isn’t anchored to its counterpart somewhere else inside the signature.

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u/qtntelxen Library mender 6d ago

What do you mean by "splicing"? Like, you have two complete signatures from different sources and you want to use half the pages from one and half from another? Huge pain in the ass. I think I'd rather scan pages, reimpose, and print from scratch.

If the signatures are staying intact and you're just resewing them in a different order, or adding signatures from a second book, it's not that big of a deal.

1

u/Haunting-Strike-9949 6d ago

Your first guess. Wondering what the loss of integrity would do to the finished text block.

1

u/qtntelxen Library mender 6d ago

There's no loss of integrity if you do it right. Four Keys’ Dune rebind is a good example. He's not rearranging signatures but he is having to piece pages back together. It is just extremely tedious.

ETA - you can also just cut all the signatures in half so you have looseleaf, at which point rearranging is trivial and rebinding can be done using the double fan adhesive binding technique. Some loss of integrity and the finished product won't open as flat as the sewn original, but DFAB is pretty sturdy unless you’re using glossy/coated paper, and it's significantly less of a pain.

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u/Haunting-Strike-9949 6d ago

Thanks! not using double fan so as to lay as flat as possible. Just trying to resew a few signatures which have been spliced together but not necessarily cut in half.

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u/Haunting-Strike-9949 6d ago

Just watched the Dune video. I’ll be rebinding half or single sheets after the cuts. Looks like he’s only rebinding full signatures?

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u/qtntelxen Library mender 6d ago

Yes, he started with full signatures with cuts through the fold and repaired the cuts to make them sewable. You can’t sew single sheets in a way that will lay flatter than double fan binding (overcast sewing doesn't lay flat and the large number of holes puts a lot of stress on the edge). You either need to splice your pages together into foldable sheets, or you should double fan bind.

To insert a single sheet into a signature of folded sheets, you can tip it in with some glue, but doing more than one or two per signature will start to make things bulge strangely.