Bookbinding in 1887

An excerpt from Great American Industries VII: The Printed Book
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, July 1887.

By R.R. Bowker.

Binding is a very simple art, which the division of labor has caused to seem very complex. Its beginning is so natural that it can scarcely be said to have been invented. The Egyptian glutinator, as the Romans translated his name, glued together his pieces of papyrus into the volumen, or long roll, which was the first volume. When printed sheets came into being, it was natural enough that they should be folded for easier handling, that several sheets, so folded should be fastened together, and that they should be protected by a stout cover, which should carry the title of the book and such ornamentation as seemed desirable. It is this simple work which was developed into the seeming complexity of the modern bookbindery, of which the census of 1880 recorded (blank-book making included) 588 establishments, with $5,798,671 capital, producing from $5,195,771 worth of material, $11,976,764 product, and distributing $3,927,349 wages among 10,612 employees, half of them women— an average of $370 yearly.

First of all, the printed sheet must be folded. This is done by hand, with no tool except a folder, like a paper-knife, to do the creasing, or by an ingenious machine, the principle of which was patented about 1853 by David A. Wells, who was apprenticed a paper-maker, though since known to the public rather as a paper-user. The sheet is laid on a flat table, across the center of which is a slit, into which a thin bar of metal forces the middle of the sheet. Below this slit two rollers, working slowly together, clutch the sheet and carry it down folded, delivering it on a second table below for a repetition of the process, and so on as many times as the sheet is to be folded. A folder, human, will do about 500 octavo sheets (of three folds) per hour; a folding machine, about three times as many. A newer method of folding, used mostly in machine folders dealing with a web of paper, creases the sheet by drawing it over a tapered cone, whence two rollers seize it and complete the fold.

The folded sheets must next be gathered and collated. Each sheet when folded bears at the bottom of its first page the “signature,” the number or letter showing its place in the book, whence the folded sheet itself is often called a signature. Beginning with signature “1” or “a” or with any title or other extra signature which may precede “1”, the piles of folded sheets are laid in their proper order on a long table, alongside which a quick-handed girl passes, taking one of each sheet after another until she holds a complete book. In some binderies a revolving round table takes the place of the long one, and the gatherer sits or stands in one place, and while the table is swung round by machinery, completes one book at each revolution. If “inserts” or “plates” of single sheets are to form parts of the book, these are usually pasted or “whip-stitched” by hand upon or within the folded sheet before gathering. The book is then “collated”; that is, a careful eye runs over each gathered set of sheets to see that all sheets are there, that each sheet is in its proper order, and that inserts are in their right place.

The gathered and collated sheets are now to be “sewed” or “stitched” together. Sewing and stitching are, in binders’ parlance, two very different methods of accomplishing the same end. “Stitching” or “stabbing” is the simpler and cheaper process of driving a thread or wire, by the help of machine-power, straight through all the sheets of a book which are first stacked evenly together, or “jogged  up” by the back and top. For thin pamphlets, a line of stitching is sometimes run across the back by an ordinary sewing-machine, built very stout and strong. The more usual method is to carry the thread through two or three holes by a stout needle, and tie it by hand. Wiring is the most modern method, by which tinned wire is fed from a spool, cut into a staple, driven through the book by the machine, and clinched on the other side, two or three such clamps completing the book.

In sewing, which is both the older and the better way, the set of sheets is placed in a press or treated by the “smasher,” which at a quick blow presses them firmly together between two plates of metal, and is thence taken to the “sawing machine,” where a circular-saw cuts four or more furrows across the back to receive the threads. Several sets of sheets are pressed and sawn in a single stack, which is then taken to the sewing bench, an upright frame in which bands of twine are threaded perpendicularly, so that they fit into the furrows made by sawing. Here a girl sits, who sews and ties each sheet separately through its fold upon these bands. When she has finished “a bench of books,” as a frameful is called, it goes to the “preparer,” who “draws off” each set of sheets separately, fastened the bands, and pastes in the end or lining papers.
            The books thus “prepared” are now trimmed at the edges by the “guillotine” or other cutting machine; “uncut” books of course escape this barbarity. If books are to be gilt-edged, red-edged, sprinkled, or marbled,  these processes are next in order. The gold is applied in leaf, and burnished on. Red edges are made with the brush, and gilding is sometimes afterward added, producing a very beautiful effect. For sprinkled edges the color is literally sprinkled on from a bru sh. Marbled edges are produced by dipping the book edges in a marbling trough, just as marbled paper is produced.

            The b ack of the book is now covered with glue, and presently “rounded” by pounding with a hammer till it takes the desired curve. It is next “backed” by placing it edge down between two clamps and working over it a heavy roller, which causes the back to spread slightly over the clamp, so that a ridge is formed along its edge, into which the cover board may fit. The head-band and backing of cloth are glued on, and the book is now ready for its “case.”

For cloth-bound books, in considerable editions, covers are made in quantities separately from the book. The basis is the two pieces of “binder’s board,” a stiff pasteboard, made usually of manila, cut to the size of the cover, and perhaps beveled at the edges. The piece of cloth, or book-muslin has been cut large enough to allow for the back width of the book, where it is stiffened with a strip of stiffening paper, and to lap over the edges of the boards, and this is glued upon the two sides and folded over. for the lettering and ornamentation, brass dies have been cut or stamps electrotyped from type, and the blank stamping, colored ink, or gold-leaf is stamped on with the power of the embossing press.

The book is finished by “casing-up,” which consists simply in pasting the set of sheets into the case by means of the outer flap of the lining papers.
In “fine binding,” where each book is separately covered, the bands are fastened to the boards through holes before the cloth, leather or paper is pasted upon the sides, and the lettering and “tooling” which ornament edges, backs, or sides are put on with individual tools by the finisher.