All these photos were taken with a phone, so they're a little lacking. But the idea gets across, and that's the point.
First, you fold the signatures and then mark where the sewing stations (holes) are going to go
Then you sew it up. This one's a supported sewing, the thread sewn over binding tapes.
This is a blurry shot of the kettle stitch, found at the head and tail, which is what links the signatures together at the top and the bottom of the book.
Here's a finished sewing. The thread used on this book's a little heavier than what I normally like to use, but it's what I had on hand when I was doing it. And the funny thing about that is that I'd made covers based on the measurements of a book sewn with 18/3 Irish linen thread, which is thinner, of course, and so the spine for this copy was actually too narrow, which resulted in the gutters/hinges bulging outward rather than being all concave like normal gutters. Yes, I love it. And no, no, you can't have it. It's Dana Gioia's book, should I ever end up sending it to him. Or if he asks for it. He doesn't know I made if for him, so there's no reason that he'd ask for it. You can read a little more about that here.
Then you put it in the job backer, or some equivalent press setup. This here is not, in fact, a backing press, but "some equivalent press setup". You'll notice that the threads over the tapes look a bit irregular, and that's a result of my having chosen to cut the spines with a hacksaw rather than poking each hole individually. There's two reasons for that: the first reason is that it would have taken a hell of a long time to poke each one of those holes, and would have increased the chance that some would get out of alignment by a millimeter or so, which isn't that big of a deal, since I could knock things into shape after sewing, but this was easier; the second reason is that the cuts would allow for a little more stability in the spine, as there'd be more surface for the glue on the spine to adhere to, which is a good thing on a book this big. It'll relax with use, but it's overall stronger than it would have been had I chosen to poke the holes.
Reinforcement one: Glue and Super.
Reinforcement two: More glue and a layer of paper.
Then the head and tail bands are applied. Note the disfigured stump of my left thumb. They said it wouldn't have a nail when it was healed, but strangely enough it grew this weird claw. It's a funny story. I'll tell you sometime. Note also that we've used a manufactured headband. We sew our headbands on occasion, on books with fewer signatures than this, and on books with two to five or so signatures, the head and tail bands are omitted altogether, as they don't serve much of a purpose.
Sometimes we hide things in the spine before closing them up forever. The other copy on this page has hollows in the covers where secret things were hidden forever. You have to destroy the book to find the things we bury, and sometimes you destroy the things themselves through trying to find them. There's no way to know what's in there. For one book I took jewelry from my body as I was creating the book and hid pieces in five different places. That one has kinda really thick covers. Most of them have pretty thick covers anyway, but that one was really thick. In case you're wondering, the surface was stabilized (ph neutral), then sealed with flexible PVA before the petals were laid down, follwed by more PVA. So the oils from the petals are encapsulated in glue, and won't affect the pages or the cover. I have, once, filled the covers and spine with mold, so that the book would destroy itself on the shelf, but that wasn't one of these, nor was it a Spork book at all. It was just fun. Fun for me, anyway.
Reinforcement three: A final layer of fabric. This is French linen book cloth.
This one's also French Linen, but a different color, matching the fabric used for the hinges and outer spine on the book.