Edge Painting

I had an old professional bookbinder friend, who did bibles, account-books and ledgers etc. They would do marbled fore-edges as follows. Books would be firmly clamped between boards and slowly lowered onto the surface of the basin, on which the marbled colours were floating. Single coloured fore-edges were simply done with a brush. Sometimes spattered effects were made in this way as well. First a flat colour would be applied, once it had dried, they would use a small wire mesh and a stiff brush and spatter a second, often darker colour on.

I forgot to tell, that the flat colours where aniline based inks (aniline dyes dissolved in alcohol or some other volatile solvent).

I think, the used colors are the major part doing edge coloring. Some are not opaque enough, some will stick the paper together, you’ll have to experiment a lot.

Where I work we do edging by cutting down the paper so all edges are even, then clamping tightly between two boards. We then simply paint the edges with an airbrush. We use airbrushing paints thinned with a little water and the standard airbrush nozzle/air compressor combo. Results are generally pretty good, but the color of the paint can be a little unpredictable in terms of how it looks.

I noticed on this entry from underconsideration, the printer used a stamp pad to edge paint. You can see the results: http://www.underconsideration.com/fpo/archives/2009/08/michael-faber-bus...

Has anyone else tried this method with good results?

I’ve used a stamp pad to edge a school project, simply due to page count/size. I think it turned out great.

There are million ways to get the painted edge look. You’ll find it’s a fairly guarded secret out there. I think it’s worth investing the time to find what works for you.

Just thought I’d revise this to see if anybody wanted to share more specific tips and techniques for edge painting. Anybody use a padding press? Other tips for clamping? Other ways of painting besides airbrush? Anybody use a brayer instead?

I did a test the other day and it didn’t come out too badly. I used a regular wide brush and just painted the ink on some clamped together stacks of cards. I used some regular speedball water-based block printing ink, though, and it bled into the card a little. Like I said, it was a test and I used what was within reach. I think with proper Van Son’s or other printing ink it would work out better.

After cutting some sample paper down to business card size. I clamped them down and used a brayer on each edge with Van Son’s rubber based ink. I tried running once, multiple, harder and softer. I found that the harder and less times you run it, the cleaner the effect and less chance the bleeding will occur. The paper MUST be cut perfectly or some edges will not get coverage. It did work - but tricky. I’m gonna try using a letraset marker next and see how much that bleeds.