Bookbinders tools.

Though you can substitute common household items for many bookbinding tools, there's nothing like the real thing once you start to get a little more serious. If you are looking to equip a workshop the array of tools and toys available can be almost dizzying! The trick is to start with the basics and work your way up the scale as your budget and inclination allows. Even so, a basic set of tools and supplies can be had for only a couple of hundred dollars.

Here are two shopping lists for reference;

• Dennis at Cai Lun provides the basic shopping list he used after losing his tools and supplies in an apartment fire. (This is the list I used when setting up the Corner Bindery.)
  
  
• Erin Zamrzla at Erinzam also provides a list of basic tools
  for the beginning bookbinder along with an explanation of the use of each.

Know of any more published lists on the web that complement those above? Drop me a comment and I'll list them.

Bookbinding forums.

It's very amusing to see various places on the web come up with new and cute names for forums... As though the words forum itself didn't have a long and meaningful history. Everything has to be new on the net it seems - sometimes agressively so.

That being said, here are some binding forums/communities/whatever that I check on a regular basis;

• The Book and Paper Arts Forum. "Dedicated to all forms of bookbinding and book arts" - plus a section for paper arts (marbling, etc...) related to bookbinding. This is my go to source for advice and information.
  
  
• Flickr is home to the Handbound Books Pool - which has two sections, Discussion (which is fairly slow and rarely used), and the Pool (basically a photo gallery). There are some very nice works in the gallery (which has new photos fairly steadily), and of course Flickr lets registered members leave comments.
  
  
• Livejournal hosts the Bookbinding and Book Arts and the Handmade Book communities. The latter is much more active and has many creative bindings posted there.
  
  
• Artists Books 3.0 is a new forum for "artists, curators, librarians, students, and researchers interested in artist books and the book arts". Being new, it is kind of slow at the moment but shows potential as social networking/mini Live Journal site for the bookbinding and book arts communities.
  
  

With the exception of the first, I found these via Google's blog search. I have a search on "bookbinding" saved as a feed and read it regularly in Google Reader.


Updated - 10 July 2008, added Artists Books 3.0