I found this copy of Church Dogmatics: A Selection by Karl Barth at the local Lutheran seminary Library, in their book sale room. The cover design has that early 60s look to it, including the rips and scuffs that mark a 50-year-old paperback. In all honesty, paperbacks don't carry much in the way of collectible value, so I didn't mind ripping the cover off this one.
Most of my experience in binding has been making journals: sewing signatures together to make the book block of blank pages, making the case (cover), and 'casing-in' (gluing the pages into the cover). There are actually two ways to case a book. You can assemble the case separately and glue it onto the book block, which is the way I learned to do it originally and is the method I've used to bind my journals.
The second method is to build the case directly onto the book block. I didn't know this until I received a couple book-binding books in the mail from my thoughtful mother who looks out for that kind of stuff for me. So I thought I'd give this latter method a shot, with the following results:
I'm not sure which method of casing the book I like best. Assembling the case separately seems to be less hassle. For the spine, I used a vinyl lining that I picked up at the fabric store. The rest of the cover is heavy stock on which I printed out the design with an ink jet. I'm pretty pleased with the way the binding turned out. In the future, if I have a book that needs to be rebound, I've got confidence I can make it look decent. Now we'll have to see if I can bind those paperbacks in leather...
