cool italian leather book spines

[SojournerLeather]

Does anyone have any clue where I would begin researching how to make those cool italian leather book spines, in particular, how to make the raised ridges that run horizontally across the spine? I've attached a picture of one I found on the net.

[nomi]

I saw a tutorial on that once on the net, I'll see if I can find it again.

Basically all they were doing, was pinching the leather with something that looked like a flat pliers. Cased leather might have enough stretch to it to see a similar edge.

Another site I saw they used a small piece of twine under the leather to give it a "bulge".

- Noel

[fishguy]

The things under the raised bands are the cords or thongs to which the gaterings of pages are connected. it is kind of an old fashioned style of book binding known as "raised cord binding". In fact there is and example from the sixteenth century illustrated here:

http://aic.stanford.edu/sg/bpg/annual/v07/bp07-04.html

Don't be put off by all the academic jargon, there are some pretty good pictures near the bottom where you can see what is under the leather. Bookbinding is a huge art unto itself and there is a lot of stuff on the web about how to bind books, etc.

[SojournerLeather]

Thanks for the link, fishguy. It's definitely a start.

[mb5]

You don't have to bind them that way. You can cheat and use strips of leather along the back instead of cords. Some instructions also call for building up the cords with scrap leather. Instead of using the pliers to pinch the cords, you can use a cord on the outside to pull the leather down around the interior cords and burnish on either side.

This was bound on a single raised cord, a second cord was glued next to the first, and a piece of leather was the glued over the two cords.

[Skipknives]

thanks guys ,,i learned more new stuff,,old stuff,,you know what i mean,,lol