Machine Bookbinding

MACHINE BOOKBINDING Bookbinding by machine methods has been greatly improved in the past decade. Automatic machines have made possible mass production and eliminated much of the hand work heretofore necessary. Machine production is divided into two classes, edi tion or hard bound products and pamphlet or paper bound publi cations.

Pamphlet

Binding.—In the field of pamphlet production the introduction of web and rotary type printing presses, with fold ing equipment as part of the press, have eliminated the separate operation of folding such printed sheets. Automatic inserting machines introduce separate leaves or sections and the automatic assembling, wire-stitching and covering machine units complete the operation of pamphlet binding to the point of trimming the edges and packaging for shiprnent. Several types of machines, combining these operations, are in use and a method known as "perfect binding" is sometimes employed where the side or saddle stitch type of wiring does not please. Perfect binding is effected in a machine which accepts the complete book in sections, clamps and cuts off the back or folded edge of the sections, glues, affixes crash and in turn glues on a paper cover, completing the book for trimming.

Trimming, or cutting the edges, has been improved by the intro duction of rapid three-knife machines which cut the top, front and foot edges of a large pile of books or magazines at one opera tion. Packaging or wrapping for mailing is accomplished by auto matic machines, often in conjunction with addressing equipment synchronized with the wrapping device.

Edition Binding.

Edition binding still included, in 1928, folding printed sheets in machines automatically fed from a pile, one sheet at a time, and delivering one or more sections, or signa tures, of 16, 32 or 64 pages each, up to as many as eight 16's or four 32's, at each revolution. Bundling oi signatures after fold ing has been improved by the introduction of compressed air bundlers, in place of the former hand and electrically driven types. The pasting in of illustration leaves and affixing to the first and last sections of each book of the fly-leaves and cover-lining sheets is accomplished by Marresford tipping machines. No machine has yet been developed to paste satisfactorily insert-leaves inside a folded section. End papers may also be affixed to books by attach ments built on assembling machines, but as yet few of these equip ments have been introduced into binderies. Reinforcing maps, folded sections and the end sections of books is accomplished by Brackett stripping machines, which work equally as well with muslin, twill or paper. Other machines performing similar opera tions are the Marsh end paper, the Marsh twill school book end paper and the Eldredge end paper machines. Gathering or assem bling of the separate signatures into book sequence is almost en tirely performed by machines, among which are the Sheridan, Jeungst and Plimpton. These machines consist of ten or more pockets or metal bins in which quantities of each signature are placed in consecutive order, and by the operation of the machine one drawn from the bottom of each pocket, dropped on a travelling conveyor and with one circuit of the machine a gathered book emerges. These machines are often synchronized with perfect binders, stitchers, pamphlet coverers and have end paper affixing and smashing units. Smashing and nipping operations have been improved by the introduction of the Sheridan belt conveyor smashers and the Seybold compressor. These machines reduce the books to uniform bulk, eliminate printing impression, and the compressor reduces the swell caused by thread used in sewing. Sewing machines have been improved in speed and uniformity. It is possible to sew not only on tapes but, by affixing the cotton or twill tapes, to the book proper by stitches passing through the tape. The Smyth curved needle and the National straight needle machines are frequently used in American production. The Staubli Swiss machine, with straight needles, automatic gauging and pasting devices, with straight arm feeding and tape sewing attachments, is a noticeable improvement in machine method. The oversewing machine, for extra strong and library bindings, and the Leonard wire sewing machine, for particular problems, are new developments. A new type of thread binding machine has just been offered which cuts diagonal slots traversely across the back of the gathered book and in the slots automatically places, cuts off and glues in strong threads, tipping the thread ends down on the front and back leaves of the book. This is designed as an im provement over ordinary perfect binding, which has been at tempted on edition book work with some success on low cost production. School-books are often side stitched with thread through and through, the book and end papers having twill rein forcements. The Morrison stitcher, which first drills holes half way through the book, and with synchronized stitching attach ment forces the needles through the prepared holes, has made possible stitching of books up to one inch in thickness, where five-eighths of an inch was considered the maximum before. Book trimming machines, as in magazine trimming, have been improved in speed, accuracy and capacity. The Smyth continuous trimmer, three-knife type, in which the knives cut against the next book instead of against a base-board, and the Seybold three-knife drum type continuous trimmer have to a large extent superseded the former duplex two-knife and the single knife trimmers for book work.

In edging, the application of gold is still made by the old pro cess of scraping, filling, sizing, laying on leaf in sheets and bur nishing. Edge colouring, formerly done by sponge or brush, is now largely accomplished by air gun; sprinkling likewise. Mar bling materials have been improved, but the method of spattering colours on a vat and dipping books while held under pressure is still followed. Simulating deckle edges has been improved by the introduction of a steel studded disc, revolving at high speed, against which the front and foot edges of books are held by pres sure until the edge is roughened in an even manner. Shaping the back, whereby the concave front and the rounded back edge is obtained, and the joint set, against which the cover will hinge, is accomplished by the Crawley machine. The Pleger gluing-off machine is accepted in many plants as a substitute for hand gluing off the backs of books before backing. Murray, of London, has developed a new roller type machine backer and an automatic feed for sewing machines, which are not yet introduced in America nor on a large scale abroad. Thumb cut indexing is largely a hand operation, with the improvement in the aperture cutting tools using air pressure to operate instead of hands. In backlining and headbanding, which includes the application of glue, crash, glue and paper to the back and the small ornamental woven head bands, machines are now in vogue which eliminate practically all hand work. These machines include the Blauvelt, Sheridan, Beut ler and Brock types; the latter two being exclusively used in plants where they were developed by individuals. The Blauvelt, Brock and Sheridan are the only ones which affix headbands as well as linings. Casing-in, or affixing the book in the cover, is entirely accomplished, where the book must be glued tightly into the cover at the back, by hand, and on much of the flexible and limp type of leather and artificial leather bindings. All ordinary productions and many unusual types are affixed in cover by Smyth or Sheridan automatic casing-in machines which, accepting the book placed on a revolving arm by the operator, paste off the end papers well into the joints and affix the cover, fed simul taneously from a magazine, delivering the book on the arm of the machine to the inspector ready for building into presses between wooden boards having brass, aluminium or other metal edging, which set the cover and form the valley along the back of the book, which gives a hinge to the cover. Screw type compression presses are being replaced with types of compressed air power pressers.

Stock cutting methods have been improved by the Cameron slitting machine, which slits to any desired width and re-rolls paper, cloth, artificial leather or crash in rolls of suitable size for cover making, backlining and wrapping machines. The Smyth cloth cutter slits and cuts off full width rolls of book cloth or artificial leather into single cover size for other types of cover making machines. Board cutting has been simplified by the introduction of the Stolp-Gore automatic feeder for rotary board cutters, which feeds board strips (after the large sheet has been stripped) at triple the hand feeding speed. Machine cover making has been developed by improvements on the Sheridan casemakers which, feeding the cloth from the roll, glue-off the back of the cloth. affix the boards and backlining, cut the cover material to size, shear off the corners and turn in the complete cover at the rate of I,800 to 2,000 an hour. The Smyth casemaker, formerly hand fed, is now equipped with an automatic feeder, which makes possible a production nearly equal to the Sheridan. New devices on the Smyth machine also make possible the production of leather and artificial leather covers, some types of round corner covers and a large variety of flexible (thin board) and parti type covers. Hand casemaking is more rapid by the use of the Booth, U.S. Shoe Machinery Company and Anthony type machines. The use of gluing machines either with or without belt conveyors to carry the glued materials to operators has superseded hand gluing meth ods and also for gluing or pasting off labels, inlays and other mount ings. Cover stamping or blocking has had more attention than the majority of machine binding operations. Automatic feeders have been developed by Miller and Kluge for feeding book covers from magazines into Chandler and Price and other presses. The use of electrically heated plates as a base for affixing dies in presses has simplified the blinding or blanking out of pattern cloths before inking, thus perfecting register. The introduction of the Peerless, American roll gold and Brighten roll leaf attachments for upright two and four rod Sheridan and Standard Machinery Company presses have eliminated to a very large extent the hand laying and slow stamping with gold leaf, metal leafs and ink foils. The two-way attachment by Peerless is the latest development in equipment of this type. Hand laid gold is still employed on many fine quality productions, especially where deep grain goat-skin and cowhide is used for cover material. The use of airbrush methods for sizing covers and particularly in effecting superfinish results, by which variegated colour combinations, grainings, panel ings, embossing and several tone treatments are produced, has reached a high point of development. Superfinishing, originated by Utley and developed on book cover work by Molloy, has now become an accepted form of cover decoration in all large binderies. Automatic feeding devices have been installed on Standard machinery upright presses to cope with automatic fed inkers. Book inspection and jacketing continues to be done by hand, but individual wrapping and packaging is now accomplished by machine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Pleger,

Bookbinding (1924) ; Philip, The Business Bibliography.-Pleger, Bookbinding (1924) ; Philip, The Business of Bookbinding (1912) ; Hasluck, Bookbinding (1920) ; Hitchcock, The Building of a Book (1927) ; B. L. Goodwin, Pamphlet Binding ; E. W. Palmer, A Course in Bookbinding (1927) . (E. W. P.)