The Craft of Bookbinding (Dover Crafts: Book Binding & Printing)

I do bookbinding for a hobby and also as a help to the local library. This book is a great way to help explain to beginners what I do and why. The diagrams are nicely done and the written explanations are concise and well thought out. The equipment shown can be made fairly easily and cheaply. My only caution on making your equipment is the same as when I am teaching how to do it, measure twice and cut once. Scaling your equipment to whatever sized book(s) you will be binding is the only other caution. A thorough and knowledgeable author and a great teaching resource.

This book was meant to be a textbook to learn the craft, and its lessons are clear, concise, and detailed. An absolute joy to learn from.

Excellent book for it's size. I ordered four books total and this one was the best for tech advise and instructions to build your own equipment and tools as well as binding and repairing your own books.

Other reviews have panned this book, mainly for the grainy and sometimes dark photos. I'm not gonna' lie. The photos are dark and grainy, but you can still see and understand them. The drawings are excellent, though. The book is a good read (if you are serious about learning) and it clearly relays each step of the process. Although, you may have to page forward or back to see the images to which the section you are reading is referring. I took a Star off of my review rating because the book could have been arranged better so that those instructions and images are on the same pages. This arrangement was to efficiently fit everything into the book, rather than to improve the flow and ease of understanding. The complexity of some of the steps takes a fair bit of explaining and you may need to reread a paragraph to really understand it, but all of the information is all there. If you have seen a few Youtube videos on bookbinding that show the use of the proper tools, it will all make sense and this book will take you to a deeper level of understanding than any 5 minute DIY video ever will. One of the BEST things about this book is that the author starts by telling you what tools you need to do proper bookbinding, but then gives you the plans/instructions to build those tools/presses from items which you can find in a hardware store. This was very inspiring and makes professional level bookbinding much more accessible, as you now don't need to pay $1000.00 for all of the necessary presses, but could instead make them all for less that $100.00. Or just start with one or two of the basic presses before you decide that you want a tricked out dual sided lying press with an edge trimming plow rig. Deep in the book, the author introduces you to more tools that, once you have tried doing things the traditional way, you can see some alternatives which you may find more handy to your own way of doing things. But you have to read the book. This is NOT a book that you merely scan to get the basic idea so you can just try it out. This not not like the quick and dirty "How To DIY" articles which you find on the internet. This book is an education. You have to put in the time to learn what the author has to teach. And it will save you mistakes and heartaches in the long run.

Ok it’s not exactly a page turner with all the history and backstory of it all. However, very comprehensive and the index makes it a must have if your getting into bookbinding.

This is a great resource with apt descriptions and excellent dimensional diagrams. While I recognize this version (updated from the 1970s publication) was printed in the early 1990s, I do find the photographs unclear. If I already knew what it was portraying, I am sure it would be better, but poor image quality makes this a challenging text from which to learn.

This book--paired with Hand Bookbinding: a Manual for Instruction--are just what you need to get started with the art of hand bookbinding. The only time I would buy another book about bookbinding would be if I needed more information, or wanted to try out some new stuff, which is highly unlikely. So, if you're interested in hand bookbinding, buy the two books I mentioned, and you'll be all set (apart from equipment).

The printing is poor quality. The pictures are too dark and small to convey the steps.