How-to

Building The Adhesive Quarter-joint Binding

The quarter-joint binding is fully cased, adhesive binding designed to open flat without significantly stressing any components of the binding. This is accomplished by using a thin liner on the spine, special endsheets and a case with loose hinges that vary in width according to the thickness

Materials

• Endsheets

Endsheets are specially contructed to provide support at the shoulder/hinge area. They are comprised of a pastedown made of a folded sheet glued shut with an enclosed strip of 5 mil Mylar J at the hinge and a single flyleaf attached to the paste down with a cambric strip (see illustration below). The purpose of the Mylar J is to stiffen the shoulder of the endsheet to provide support to the textblock shoulder when it is needed. Mylar J offers both a high resistance to creasing and good adhesion (a property not found in Mylar D).

• PVA suitable for fan-gluing

adhesive used for consolidating the leaves of the text must be flexible and should build a relatively thick and elastic film with a single coating, such as Wisdom 1503.

• Binder's Board
• Book cloth
• Spine lining material

spine liner should be a tight woven (no cheesecloth type liners), breathable (no tyvek) material such as LBS cotton specification backlining.

Process

Overview

1. Construct endsheets
2. Trim endsheets to textblock height
3. Trim textblock spine and endsheet foredge for gluing
4. Fan-glue textblock with endsheets
5. Apply spine liner
6. Measure and cut boards and inlay
7. Make case
8. Case in

1. Construct endsheets

• Using a standard three part endsheet (folded sheet, single sheet and cambric strip) glue inside of folded sheet, place 2" mylar j strip inside aligned with the fold and press

  (Note: since Mylar will not show up in a photograph I have substituted a piece of card stock to indicate the proper placement of the Mylar).

2. Trim endsheets and spine liner to height of the textblock

• Insert the spine liner into the center of the endsheet aligned with the top edge. Trim the endsheets to the length of the textblock. If the spine liner is properly placed in the endsheets it will be trimmed to proper size also.

3. Trim spine of textblock.

• Trim endsheets to width at the same time by placing the endsheets in the guillotine with the hinged edge against the guide.

4. Fan-glue textblock and endsheets

• Align textblock and endsheets in the fan-gluing press and fan-glue. Be careful not to get extra glue between the endsheets and the textblock.

5. Apply spine liner to textblock

• Immediately after fan-gluing the spine, apply the spine liner. The liner which should extend at least 1 1/2" onto the sides of the textblock and should be glued up on one side before applying so it can be tacked down on the sides.

• Jog textblock to square up spine

• Set textblock on spine edge until glue sets.