Dealing with a window

Here is a little demonstration of how to cover a board that has a window in it. I am not going to include all the steps of making this book. I am just dealing with the window.

First of all, there are a few ways to do this. The method I am using here is just one option. This method should work with most covering materials. Before you undertake a project, though, it is always best to practice with the materials so that you know how they behave.

Here is my case. As you can see, the back cover already has the covering material in place. I have another piece of the cover material cut and ready for the front.

Spread paste on the back of your cover material, and put it onto the front cover, like this. Right over the window.

Flip it over, trim the corners and turn-in the head, tail, and fore-edge.

Now, the window. Cut an X in the middle of the window. Be careful that you do not get too close to the corners. Leave a little bit of the paper uncut in each corner. Here is the window, after I cut the X.

Now you can gently fold in each of the triangle pieces. Do not worry about the corners too much. For this step, just leave the corners alone. Here, you can see that I have the four triangles pasted down, but the corners are still loose.

Flip over the case and use a bone folder to gently push the cover material into the corners.

Note: There are some possible refinements to this process, such as covering the inner edges of the boards before turning the paper, but most of the time this basic approach will work quite well on its own.

Now the outside is finished. But, we still have to finish the inside of the cover. I have applied the paste-down to the back cover and I have another piece of paper ready for the front cover.

We need to cut a window in this piece of paper before we glue it to the book. If you like measuring, you can do lots of careful measuring here to figure out exactly where to cut the window so that it aligns perfectly with the hole in the cover. Or, as I have done, you can carefully place the paper underneath and trace the window.

Now you can cut out the window. It should be bit bigger than the square you traced, about 1mm larger. You can discard this little cutout.

Spread glue on the back and place it onto the cover. Now the inside of the case is finished.

Here is the book, complete with pages.