Binding Evil

Yop!
Those days we are managing our next issue of Alkom'X; n°6, and we know some of you are involved in; so I wish to show you how it work.

Alkom'X 5 as same shape as the future n°6 : it's printed on soft paper (bouffant) by numeric ways (aaah maybe someday we'll have enough money to print by offset!) with a linoprint cover. The book is made of 5 different booklets bound together by hands with a technic which is similar to the first decades of XXth c books (paperback) with a honeycomb sewing. Each booklet is made of 6 leaves corresponding to 24 pages.


This is why we need to manage contributions, to know final pages order & booklets composition. Also of course for final price: if I need to add 1 page then I'll need to find 3 pages more because I add one leaf (which is 4 pages). Same; if I need to remove one page it will be a problem for 4 pages... For n°5 I needed to move out 2 leaves, so the book is made like that : 24+24+24+24+16. I can say next one will be 5x24pages (at least!).
We bring paper to the printer, cutted A3 by 10 pack; and we have then to fold by hands each booklets after printing.



Then after sewing each by each (this took one week for 140 copies and with 4-5 peoples); the back is glued. And the cover as to be printed. With lino I can print several color in one move, so for n°5 there's 2 layers on outside & 1 inside + a stamp "5". Total for 140 copies : 520 passages. This took 3 days. After that we cut each book (3 at once).





Finally we paste together cover and booklets, cut the paper in excess, add stamp & verify each copies. Et voilà ! Next issue we plan a final run of 500 while n°5 was made at 210copies.

Photos : 1-folding; 2-printtesting; 3-sewing; 4-pasting; 5-inking; 6-cover; 7-final pasting; 8-final book with stamp.