My Favourite Book Making Technique

 I make a lot of books using this technique. It is a very good for creating a quick books, no stitching is required and has the  advantage that the books can be easily dismantled and pages added or removed.

A great advantage of this style is that pages can be easily removed or added or swapped around.

Books are made up of a collection of signatures. Each signature is a page or a bundle of pages folded in half. The signature fits over the concertina spine.

The signatures fit over the concertina spine. The size of the book depends of both the number of signatures and the number of pages within the signatures.

Mark each signature with the size of the concertina spine.

Cut a narrow slot between the marks for the concertina spine.

Fit the signature over one of the spines.

Cut a retaining tab that will fit through the spine, it should be only just smaller than the width of the spine. If too narrow it will fall out and the book will not hold together. Too wide and it will not slide through.

The retaining tab needs to be longer than the spine and fit into the size of the pages/signature. The flat tab can be glued to the covers, usually onto the inside.  I use a sturdy or heavy weight card to make the covers and then glue paper over the flat tab and inside cover. 

Pages can be used to hold additional papers/collage/ lightweight found objects.

Once the basic technique is mastered you can play around with different ways of constructing covers, mixing up paper sizes within the signature and the concertinaspine. Sometimes I make the concertina folds very wide so that they form small pages.