A Sturdy Slipcase

Design Decisions
Choose the cardboard and decorative materials that you want to use for your slipcase. You will need a material for the interior lining and for the outside covering. The board should be at least a mm thick, thicker if you want to, so that it matches the style of your book. For the decorative materials you can use all that you also use for covering books: Paper, (backed) fabric, or thin leather are common choices.

Preparations
Important preparatory step: Measure your book and write down the following facts: the width of your book's spine (since we want to know how much the case needs to be open, do not measure across the rounded spine but the distance between the boards at the spine). In the sketches this will be marked by a d, the height of your book - this will be donoted by an h in the sketches and the width of the covers - which will be denoted by w.

Preparing The Raw Case

Cut a piece of your lining material, wider than two times the book's width plus the spine's width and longer than twice the book's width plus the book's height. In formulas: (2xd+w) by (2xd+h). The material's grain should be parallel to the book's spine, and therefore to the second number.

Glue the lining material to the cardboard, and take care to match up the grain directions.

Wait for a moment for the glue to set, - you don't have to let it completely dry, just be sure that the lining won't slip or ripple while you are working on the other side. Then turn the board over, and square up one corner of it. Mark that corner. Also mark the grain direction on this side and piece of board. From the squared corner there are two edges, one parallel to the grain direction and one across grain direction. In the next step we score the board where we want to fold it to form the slipcase's spine. Measure and mark from this edge the width of the book at three points or more. (Making it more than 2 points makes keeps mistakes down and the deviation small.) Put your straightedge through these points and make a shallow cut through the board. In several passes deepen this cut gradually until you are left with about a mm material uncut, or about half the board's thickness. After the second pass you have a small groove in the board - you can then take the edge away: If you cut carefully the blade will stay in the groove, and it is easier to feel the cut without the edge. Make it an even cut at a constant depth through approximately half the board. The positioning of the next scoreline requires some decisions and needs to be carefully considered. To determine where it should go you have to take the depth of your cut, and the thickness of your materials into account. And you have to decide how firm you want the slipcase to hold on to your book. Fractions of a millimeter can make a difference here. Generally the slipcase should let go of the book inside slowly when tilted, so that the book slips easily from its case (without having to be pryed from it by the head or tail) but it should not fall out. In a special case something else could also be desirable. The cases for my travel journals for example hold on to the books more firmly because they are intended to be carried around in a bag, not for standing on a book shelf. Therefore they have these strips of leather that help getting the book out of the slipcase: Generally if you want your slipcase to sit more tightly around a book, you need to design a way to get the book out - be creative! Common choices are a ribbon, or to cut away part of the slipcase to make it easy to get a good grip on the book. Keep in mind that at the foreedge of the slipcase the turnins from the outward covering material will fold over the board; this is also the point where the book itself may be

wider than the inside edge of the book if your book is not rounded. The inside width of the case will be the distance between the two score lines minus twice the thickness of the uncut material (this will be about half the board's thickness plus the thickness of your lining material) and minus the bulk of the turn ins. Therefore mark for scoring at the distance: width of the spine + board thickness + lining thickness + covering thickness. Then score similarly to the first scoreline. Next measure and mark from your last scoreline the width of the book, and cut the rest of the board away.

Carefully bend over the board at one of the scorelines. First turn it to 90 degrees and support it on the inside with a straightedge to make the edge sharp. Then remove the edge, and fully fold over the board to full 180 degrees and let the insides lay against each other. Ideally your cut was as shallow as possible, but deep enough so that in this action nothing in the board tears, only bends. Use your bonefolder to make the bend sharp as you so when folding paper. Repeat at the other scoreline.

Then flatten the board again, und turn again to the backside where you are making the cuts. We are now going to work through the length of the case, and begin measuring from the other edge of our initially squared corner. First measure and mark from this edge again the book's width and mark this line with a pencil. Score this line only between the previous scorelines at the spine. Then cut free the head piece of the slipcase along the scored lines.

Measure on the outward pieces the boards thickness, and score the board there, off the marked line.

The next decision you have to make is how tall your slipcase should be. The same reasoning applies as for the width: You want it close to the book so that it doesn't fall out, but enough space so that it can easily be taken out of its slipcase. So you want to make the next pencil line at about the books height plus twice the thickness of the covering material, plus the boards thickness, plus twice the lining materials thickness. Before scoring the board, first take another measure at the book's width and cut away the rest of the board. Now prepare the tail of the slipcase like you did with the head: Score alonge the pencil line between the older score lines. Then cut free the tail of the slipcase. Mark the boards thickness on the sides, and score slightly off the pencil line. Bend and pronounce the new score lines like you did before: Bend the cardboard completely over, carefully supporting it first on the inside, and then pressing down with the bonefolder from the outside.

Then push off the cardboard at the outside squares. To do this, bend them over so that the insides are touching, and then push it upwards. This way the remaining part of the board is much thinner. This will be your glue tabs. Do this on all four corners.

Mark on the remaining board that is still attached to the case and now thinner half the slipcase's spine's width plus the thickness of the remaining board plus half the board's thickness. And cut the rest off. If you close and square up the case, the tabs should be just touching.

Your board should now look approximately like mine in the photo to the right. Good news: We are done with measuring, cutting and scoring!

Assembling the Case

Now we get the glue out again. I recommend using straight PVA for the assembly. Put glue on one edge of both the head and tailpiece and glue them to one of the sides of the slipcase. This gives something like a tray. Take care that all the edges line up neatly and your constructions ends up square.

Then glue the other edges and close the slipcase. Apply gentle pressure, and wait a little to let the glue set itself. You don't have to wait until it is completely dry, but be sure it does not come apart when you set it down. (In the photo you see what needs to be done. Obviously this is a different case than above, though - the tabs are not yet cut to size.)

Then put glue on the head, and bend over the tabs. Use a bone folder, to get them to close smoothly, and make sure everything is square.

Use clamps and let it dry a little before working in the same way on the other side.

If you miscalculated the length of the tabs, fill in the remaining space with the cardboard pieces that you cut away - it already has the correct thickness.

Covering the Case

You are almost there. All that is left to do is covering the slipcase. You need 3 pieces of covering material: A strip for the spine, and two pieces for the sides. The spine strip has to be about 3 cm longer than twice the width of the case plus its height, and has to be wide enough so that you have a small strip (maybe 5mm) on the sides.

For the side pieces measure on the case how tall you want them - this is an aestetical decision depending on how much of the spine's material you want to show on the sides - and make it about 1.5 cm wider than the case.

Glue up the spine strip. Place the slipcase in the middle and attach the strip by rolling the case over the material. Rub on. The material is wider than your slipcase, and you need to cut some slits into it and cut some corners out to cover the sides neatly. First rub down the material gently in the middle of the edes. Then take care of the corners. It depends a bit on your covering material, how exactly you want to do this. Leather corners are formed a little differently than paper or fabric corners. The following series of images is intended to explain the general idea. For your specific situation you may want to find some specific solutions. The two important principles are: Cover all of the board, do not let pieces of it shine through. Do not double the material inside the slipcase.

You can fill in the sides before covering them. But this is only really necessary if you used a thick material. In any case this is the easiest part: Glue up your material, lay it in place on the side of you slipcase, cut off pieces of the front corners before turning in if you want to, and turn in the material first onto the front edge and then into the case an gently rub on. Wait for the slipcase to dry completely before you insert your book.