A bindery glossary

Every trade carries words that mean one thing at the bench and something looser outside it. This page holds the vocabulary used in the folios, in the sense a working bindery uses it.

The sheet

Grain. The direction in which most of the fibres of a sheet lie, established at the paper mill by the direction the stock ran on the machine. Fold with the grain or the fold cracks; the next folio on paper, board and adhesive takes the fold test apart.

Deckle. The untrimmed, slightly ragged edge of a handmade or mould-made sheet. A deckle edge is a feature of the paper, not a fault of the trim.

Jogging. Squaring a stack of sheets or sections against a stop so the edges agree before cutting or gluing.

Caliper. The thickness of a single sheet, measured in thousandths of an inch or in micrometres, and the figure a bindery actually needs when it plans a spine.

The block

Signature. A printed sheet folded, usually three or four times, to give 8, 16 or 32 pages in reading order. The fold sequence is what makes a signature open in the right places.

Gathering. Collating the signatures of a book into the right order before sewing or gluing.

Spine swell. The extra thickness the sewing thread and the folded spines add to the block. A case is built to that measurement, not to the untrimmed one.

Nipping. A short, high pressure squeeze in a press that takes the bulk out of a spine after gluing.

Headband. The band at the head of the spine. Sewn by hand it is structural; glued on it is decorative, and the two are worth telling apart when a book is repaired.

The case

Casing in. Attaching a finished block to its case, working from the spine outwards so the boards close square.

Hollow back. A tube of paper between the spine of the block and the spine of the case. It lets a heavy book open flat, and it is the first thing to fail in a cheap binding.

Buckram. A stiff, coated cloth used for library cases: it takes gold foil and it survives a shelf.

The machines

Collator. A machine that gathers folded signatures in order, either by hand at the bins or automatically to a stitch line.

Guillotine. A knife that trims the block on three sides after binding, and the reason a trim allowance appears in every binding specification.

Saddle stitcher. A line that drops folded signatures onto a saddle and drives wire through the fold.