Some of the items that I really enjoy to make are notebooks with wooden covers, bound with Coptic-stitching. The front cover often have an image cut with a scroll saw. In this post I make notebooks with the image of the Guy-Fawkes mask, currently associated with the hacktivist group Anonymous:

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There are three parts to making these books. The first is making the covers, the second is making the signatures and last part is binding everything together. I start making the covers. For this book I use A6 sized pine covers.

I use tape three blank covers together, to make a stack to be cut at the same time, and stick the pattern on. I add clear tape over the cover to kelp with lubricating the blade while cutting and also not to smudge the printed image (I need a better quality printer…). The next step is to drill the entry holes.

After the holes are drilled, I can begin with cutting the image. I use a #5 reverse tooth scroll saw blade for this image. This image is quite easy to cut since it is reasonably big and it takes approximately 40 minutes (at some stage I hope to be a faster).

Before I remove the pattern I add the back covers to the stack and tape them in place. I drill the holes for binding through all 6 covers before removing the pattern and all the tape. Using masking tape (painters tape), before sticking on the pattern makes removal easy. The next step is sanding. I sand the covers to 400 grit and use several small strips and emery boards on the inside of the image.

I made three notebooks and decided to make each one slightly different in color. The first I kept natural pine cover. The second I painted with a diluted, water based, acrylic paint to give a slightly white wash appearance. The third cover was stained with a home made stain of vinegar, steel wool and coffee. This gives the wood a grayish aged look. After the stain and paint dried, I added 4 layers of glossy lacquer.

After the covers are done I make the signatures. For each book I make 9 signatures with 12 pages – 108 pages per book. To make each signature I take three A4 pages and fold in half 2 times. I stack the 9 signatures together and place between 2 pieces of sacrificial wood. I tape the wood together and cut approximately 5mm from three outside sides on the scroll saw using a #9 blade. While bound I also cut the slits in the back of the signatures through which they are bound (see here for more information).

I roughly paint the first page of the first signature black. This is to give a nice contrast to the image when the book is closed.

The last item to prepare is the thread. I use black thread that I pull through beeswax to make my own waxed thread.

The final step is to bind the book. I use Coptic stitching since it makes a nice pattern on the spine. It also allows for the notebook to open completely. Currently it takes approximately 50 minutes to bind each book (if no mistakes are made).

The completed books turned out very close to the image I had in mind when starting this project.

I currently have several notebooks and will continue to make more with different designs (I also take requests for custom covers). These three notebooks are however the only “Anonymous cover notebooks” I have and are available here.

I have tried other binding methods and plan to try a few more in the future. I am however working on several other projects that are not notebooks and I will write about these soon…

Robroy

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