Discover the Craft
Learn what bookbinding is, explore how books are constructed, and discover the many directions this craft can take.
Explore BookbindingBook Makers Craft · A Modern Bookbinder’s Platform
Your bookbinding journey starts here.
Explore approachable lessons, practical resources, traditional techniques, and thoughtfully selected tools, all brought together to help you begin with confidence and continue growing in the craft.
Start Your Journey
Not sure where to begin?
Find Your Starting Point
You found the craft. Now find your path.
Perhaps you have watched a few videos, admired handmade books, saved project ideas, or even gathered some tools, but you are still unsure what to learn first or how everything fits together.
Book Makers Craft brings approachable lessons, practical resources, traditional techniques, and thoughtfully selected tools into a clearer learning journey, so you can spend less time wondering where to begin and more time building the knowledge and confidence to create.
Start Your JourneyThree Clear Ways to Begin
Build Your Foundation
Understand essential terminology, tools, materials, and techniques, and learn why they matter.
Explore the Foundations
Make Your First Book In development
See how foundational skills come together in a guided beginner project experience now in development.
Preview the JourneyUseful Resources Available Now
Learn the Language of the Craft
From signatures and sections to grain direction, shoulders, joints, squares, and turn-ins, bookbinding has a language of its own. Explore clear definitions and visual guides designed to help unfamiliar terms become useful parts of your working knowledge.
signature (also called section)
A group of folded sheets nested together to form one section of a book. Multiple signatures may be sewn together to create a text block.
Understand Your Tools and Materials
Learn what common bookbinding tools and materials do, why they are used, and how different choices may affect the way a book is made. We’ll help you distinguish what is useful when beginning, what you may already own, and where specialized tools can add value as your skills grow.
Made by Hand
Every handmade book is a collection of choices: structure, paper, thread, cloth, leather, decoration, proportion, and purpose. Explore projects from Bob’s workbench and discover some of the many directions the craft can take.
Preserving the Story
Worn covers, detached boards, damaged spines, loose pages, and years of use are all part of a book’s history. Explore selected repair and restoration projects and see how thoughtful intervention can preserve a book’s character while helping it remain usable for years to come.
After: The same Bible after treatment, rebound in a green faux-leather case with gold spine titling.
Turn the press to see the treatment.
From a Love of Books to a Life in the Craft
Bob’s journey into bookbinding began with a book repair and a simple question: How is this done?
That curiosity led to his first class at the American Academy of Bookbinding in 2019, and to an ongoing journey through bookmaking, repair, restoration, traditional techniques, and the materials that bring books to life.
Book Makers Craft brings together Bob’s love of learning, making, and teaching to help others find a clearer and more welcoming path into the craft.
Meet BobWorkshops
Bob teaches hands-on bookbinding workshops. Here is what is coming up, and what has already run.
Workshop Recap · Presented by Art Trek, Inc.
Our first class was a wonderful success
17students, each finished a book
On September 24, seventeen students gathered at Art Trek to fold, sew, and case their very first hardcover notebooks, and every one of them left with a finished book made entirely by hand. Heartfelt thanks to Janice and her amazing team at Art Trek for the beautiful space and all their help bringing the evening together, to my wife Jess for her tireless work and support, and to the students, who brought such energy and did beautifully at their first binding. It was a joy to teach.
There is no public workshop on the calendar at the moment, but more are in the works. Keep checking back, and if there is a project or skill you would love to learn, tell us: your ideas help shape what we teach next.
Tell us what you would like to learnWhat Is Taking Shape
In development
Bookbinding Foundations
A clearer path into bookbinding is taking shape. Bookbinding Foundations will bring essential tools, materials, terminology, techniques, and beginner projects together into a guided learning experience designed to help you understand what to learn first, and where to go next.
Explore the Learning RoadmapComing soon
Learn Together
BMC is developing its own classes and workshops. In the meantime, Bob teaches hands-on bookbinding workshops with Art Trek, Inc. in Newbury Park.
See Upcoming WorkshopsIn development
A Community of Makers
Craft grows through connection. BMC is building toward a welcoming community where bookbinders can share their work, ask questions, learn from one another, and continue growing together.
In development
From Bob’s Workbench
Future stories, practical notes, repair case studies, project reflections, tool explorations, material comparisons, and lessons learned from the workbench.
Every book begins somewhere.
You do not need a fully equipped workshop or years of experience to begin. Start with curiosity. We’ll help you understand the craft, build a foundation, and find the next step in your journey.