How to make a Hard Cover for a book

To make a hard cover you will need:

- Text block

- Card / Board

- Book cloth or Paper to cover the card

- Glue

- Brush

Start of my placing your text block onto the card and draw some marks around it. You then need to measure about 2 - 3mm (depends on the space you want form the text block to each side) from the top, bottom and from one side and draw a line, this is your cutting line. Remember you need to one board for the front and one for the back.

Using any spare card cut out a a piece of card for the spine (if your book requires one). To do this measure the width of the spine on the text block and cut a piece of card to those measurements.

Next take your book cloth or paper and place the card onto, making sure that the pieces are all in line and there is a space between the front and back pieces and the spine, I normally leave a space just a touch bigger that the thickness of the card.

Mark where the card is on the cloth and apply glue to one side of the card and place back on the cloth where you have drawn your marks.

Once the card is stuck to the cloth you need to work fairly quickly as the card will start to warp (depending on the type of glue you have used). 

Cut away the excess material leaving about 1 - 2inches around the sides to fold over the card. Don't worry to much about the material being straight as the end papers will cover it.

Starting with one the edged apply a layer of glue and fold the material over onto the card making sure that it is smoothed and there's no bubbles. Next glue down the opposite side before moving on to the other sides i.e glue the shortest sides first before the longest sides.

At the corners fold over the material and create a crease at the edge of the board (pictured below) this will create the corner when you fold the other side over.

Apply glue to the other side and fold it over onto the board making sure that folded piece of fabric from the previous picture stays tucked underneath. Do this to all 4 corners.

Make sure that you crease the material on the spine.

Once you have glued everything down place the cover under some heavy books or in a press for about 24 hours so it has enough time to fully dry and prevent warping.

That's it!! now you can glue your text block into the cover.