Knights & Knaves Alehouse

TheRedPriest wrote:I'm impressed that you're going with the sewn binding instead of just being glued. Do you sew each signature individually to the tape, or do you sew one long continuous thread through all of the signatures and tape together?

Well, I'd just glue them if I wanted to do a reproduction of my UA (i.e. with 'removable' player's section) Seriously though, I have only done bindings where I'd sewn, although I might try doing a perfect binding with a soft cover at some point. I sew with one continuous thread (well, more than one thread, but they are spliced together so it is effectively one).

TheRedPriest wrote:I haven't made any books yet, but have been reading up on it for awhile to give it a shot. I definitely want to go with smythe sewn.

I definitely would encourage you to try it. There is a decent but uncomplicated tutorial on YouTube I can find for you. There are also one or two books (at least one of which is fully available on Google Books) which you'll probably want. Finally, there isn't a lot of equipment you need, but there are a few things as well as supplies, and I can point you in the right direction for that, too.

I basically started this because I have all of these PDFs of historic fencing books from the 1500 and 1600s that I study and I wanted something better than a spiral binding or staples, but I thought that D&D and AD&D deserved the treatment, too...

tauman

Yes, very impressive.

Thanks for giving me, yet one more thing, to drive my wife crazy, with.

tauman wrote:I think it would be kind of fun to do two mammoth volumes where one volume was all of the monster books (MM, FF, MMII) and DDG, and volume two was the other books (PHB, DMG, UA, OA), but those would be pretty large volumes (about 520+ for the first one and 640+ for the second). Also, I'd need to scan my DDG because I never bought the PDF (and also because mine has the Melnibonean and Cthulhu pantheons).

If I could find some good copies of the first edition books, there wouldn't be anything stopping me from taking them appart and rebinding them? It should speed things up as I can separate out the original signatures and then bind those together, right?

It would be excpetionally cool to have the PHB, DMG, a few pages from UA, OA and some of that book that had the Greyhawk spells in it matched with the MM, FF, MMII book.

Baron Opal wrote: If I could find some good copies of the first edition books, there wouldn't be anything stopping me from taking them appart and rebinding them? It should speed things up as I can separate out the original signatures and then bind those together, right?

You'll need to look into how you'll bind them. The method I used in the black book (end-sewing) won't work for the single-leaf pages. The original printings were end-glued and then sewn in the side while the second printings were essentially "perfect bound" hardcovers (which is why all the pages fall out once the glue ages a little). I'd definitely do some practice runs before trying it with actual AD&D material.

tauman

I have always been interested in binding my PDFs but just don't seem to have the time. You did good work.