Chapter III
A first case binding, and the boards I cut too tight
A case binding is a hard cover made separately and then attached to the sewn text block, which is how most hardbacks on a shop shelf are made. It is also the stage where I learned that a millimetre matters, and that measuring the book is not the same thing as measuring the diagram.
First written 12 October 2025 · revised 4 January 2026 · 8 minutes’ reading
Measuring the book, not the pattern
The case has three parts: two boards and a spine piece, held together by a covering of cloth or paper with a gap between each board and the spine for the hinge. My first attempt used the measurements from a diagram in a library book, scaled to what I thought the text block was. The resulting case fitted the diagram beautifully. It did not fit the book, because the book was slightly out of square and slightly thicker at the spine than I had allowed for.
These days I measure the text block itself, after it has been sewn, glued up and pressed. The height of the boards is the height of the text block plus two squares, the small overhangs at head and tail, which I make three millimetres each. The width is the width of the text block, less a little for the joint, plus the square at the fore-edge. The spine piece is the thickness of the text block, measured with a strip of paper wrapped round the spine and marked, rather than with a ruler held against it.
I write all of these on a scrap and draw the case at full size before cutting anything. It feels slow. The one time I skipped it, I cut two boards that were each a couple of millimetres too narrow and had to start again with fresh board.
Cutting the boards square
Board is cut with a heavy knife against a metal straightedge, on a cutting mat, in several light passes rather than one heavy one. The first pass scores the surface, the next few deepen it, and the last goes through. Pressing hard on the first pass is what makes the knife wander. I hold the straightedge down with a flat hand and my weight over it, and keep my fingers well back from the edge.
Square is everything. A board that is half a degree out shows as a cover that does not line up with the text block at the head. I check my set square by drawing a line along it, flipping it over and drawing again from the same point; if the two lines diverge, the square is not square. My first one was not, which explained a great deal about my first year of notebooks.
Whenever possible the two boards are cut together, clamped side by side, so that any error is identical on both. Then the edges are sanded lightly with a fine block, just enough to take off the fuzz, and each board is marked with its grain arrow and which face goes towards the book.
Covering the case
The cloth is cut larger than the case by about two centimetres all round for the turn-ins. I lay it face down on a clean waste sheet, glue the back of the first board with PVA, and set it down with its edge on a pencil line. The spine piece goes next, with the joint gap set by a strip of board used as a spacer, and then the second board with the same gap. Each piece is rubbed down through a sheet of scrap paper with the bone folder.
The corners are cut at an angle, leaving a little more than the thickness of the board beyond each corner so that the cloth can be tucked in to cover it. The long edges are turned in first and folded tight over the boards, then the corners are pinched in and the short edges turned. On my first few cases the corners either showed a sliver of grey board or bunched into a lump. The fix was to cut them slightly further from the corner and to work the pinch in with a fingernail before turning.
Once covered, the case goes under weight between two sheets of waste paper for an hour, and then it is tried against the book before it goes anywhere near glue again. That trial is where I found the problem this entry is named after.
The boards I cut too tight
On my first proper case I took the joint gap from the library diagram rather than from my own board. My board was thicker than the diagram assumed, and the gap I left was too narrow. When I wrapped the case round the text block it looked fine closed. Opened, the cover strained at the hinge, and the boards would not lie back without dragging on the endpaper. The case was too tight at the joint, and it would have torn the first time anyone opened the book fully.
The honest thing was to strip it. Cloth glued with PVA does not come away cleanly, and the boards were ruined. I cut new ones, set the joint gap at roughly twice the board thickness with a hair to spare, and tested it by wrapping the uncovered boards round the book with masking tape before gluing anything. The second case opened easily and lay back flat. The gap is what lets a hardback breathe, and it depends on the board in front of you, not the one in the diagram.
Casing in, the final step of pasting the endpapers down to the boards, went smoothly after that. The book sat under the dictionaries for two days, and when it came out it opened like a proper hardback. I gave it to my sister for recipes, and it has survived nearly a year of use in a kitchen without the cover loosening, which is the only test I really care about.
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Measurements here come from one kitchen table, one set of tools and the weather in one flat, so check them against your own paper before trusting them. Return to the contents.
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