Booking In

Spine Trimming

Advert Collation

2. The old binding adhesive is removed with an automated guillotine. All the latest safety features are present with these machines, including laser light barriers to protect the operator, and ball-bearing air floatation beds to make handling of work easier especially when cutting large and heavy items.

3. Adverts are manually removed from the journals, and remain on our premises for 4 weeks should they be needed. For laminated paperbacks the covers are removed and sent to our reprographics department for reproduction.

Book Sewing Machines

Section Sewing

Steaming

Heat Pressing

Gluing Up

5. Steam folding is a process applied to books and periodicals which have been oversewn. Remoisturisable adhesive is activated on the sewn edge of each end sheet when steam is applied.

6. Immediately after steaming the binding requires 'nipping' with a press to align end sheets and to square the edges of the book text block.

7. Flexible adhesive is applied to the spines of the sewn, steamed and pressed text blocks. Fans are used to aid the drying process of the spines.

Guillotine Trimming

Rounding and Backing

Spine Lining

8. High precision guillotine machines preserve margins and ensure clean edges on bindings.

9. First the block is rounded to form a convex shape in the binding edge and a corresponding concave format the front edge. This gives the binding a natural shape and achieves an effect similar to a bridge span where stress forces are evenly distributed stopping excessive pulling at the ends.

10. Spine Lining is applied to the spine of each of bound book to strengthen the text block.

11. Next a joint (sometimes called 'a ridge' or 'a shoulder') is shaped on each side of the binding edge. This joint allows a hinge in the cover, meaning that the book can be opened with less strain on the binding as the pages are now securely held in the cover. This type of binding joint means that the pages do not fall forward or sag due to their weight, thickness or type of paper. A book not bound in this traditional way stands a higher risk of failure - inconveniencing readers by being out of use.

Hot Foil Lettering

Glue Rolling

Laying On the Cover

12. One of only a handful of machines to be found in Europe capable of lettering across and down the spine on individual different sizes of materials. Our hot foil lettering machines enables us to produce a bound book quickly with consistent lettering in gold, silver, black or white foil. The very latest in bookbinding technology, extremely dependable in day-to-day operation. Moreover, the book finishing department at Hollingworth & Moss is connected to a main database server pulling information off our databases for automatically setting and stamping of covers.

13. Spine pieces are cut to size for each book text block to complete the cover. The front boards of the book are already present as these were produced at the guillotine trimming stage.

14. Each lettered sheet is placed through a glue roller machine which applies adhesive to the underside of the covers the boards are precision aligned and the cases made by one of our binders.

Casing In

Hydraulic Press

Checking

15. Adhesive is applied to the book end sheets before a hydraulic press is applied to the book cover using heated rods to define the French Joint, which is designed to facilitate the ease of opening. Each sheet of lettered buckram cover is placed through a specialist glue roller machine which applies adhesive to the underside only. Allowing the front boards and spine to be attached to the buckram.

16. Books are then checked and packed, signed out and ready for dispatch.