The Gently Mad Edinburgh Bookbinder and Bookseller
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Bookbinding Services
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~ Bird prints ~
19th century hand-coloured bird print by F.O. Morris
19th century
hand-coloured prints
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~ Selling Books? ~
We Buy Books in Edinburgh Scotland
To find out how
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  ~ bookbinding tools & materials~

You'd be forgiven for not guessing that flour and eggs are used in the binding process of leather volumes.

Flour is used to make up a paste for adhering the leather to the boards and spine during the covering process. Rice and wheat flours are the most popular.

Eggs are seperated and the white mixed with a drop of vinegar, left overnight, and then strained to produce a glaire. This glaire is to help gold leaf adhere to the leather when impressed with a heated brass tool. 		egg and flour used in bookbinding

  ~ bookbinding tools we use ~

Tools used in bookbinding
Bone folder used in bookbinding
THE BONE FOLDER

This is perhaps the one of the cheapest bookbinding tools you can purchase but this little tool is the most used by any bookbinder. We can't live without one, let alone do any work without one!

Bone folders are very personal to each and every binder. They can have varying shapes and forms to suit the users hand.

Bone folders are usually made from cow bone but other materials have been used to make them.
This simple tool is used for various processes in bookbinding. They are ideal for the folding and creasing of signatures that make up a books pages, but can also be used to help work pasted-up leather onto a books boards and spine during the covering process. They are also used in other operations such as headbanding, capping the spine, marking up, as well as for working onlayed leather onto decoartive bindings, etc. A truly amazing and simple multi-functional tool.

BOOK PRESSES

Book presses are used for nipping endpapers during the binding process, pressing finished books, and for blinding in engraved plates to leather covers to produce embossed decoration.

At The Gently Mad we have three small presses called Tom, Dick and Harry, plus one large 'nipping' press called Bertie.
A Gently Mad Book Press
~ Binding Menu ~
Marble Papers we Use
Tools we Use
Our Price List

~ Featured ~
Leather onlay for Mervyn Peake's Alice
A leather onlay for Mervyn Peake's Alice
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~ Dutch Onlay ~
Leather only for Dutch Fairy Tale Book
Example of Baz's
leather onlay work
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The Gently Mad : 2 Summer Place, Edinburgh, EH3 5NR : 0131 261 6028 / 07702592972