Preparing your book - thinning the signatures ready to take your work

This part may be hard to describe and understand but there are quite a few Youtube videos to help. I prefer to find the signature closest to the middle of the book to begin. 

Open your signature and count how many pages there are, counting just the left hand one for now, until you get to the right hand page of the next signature. Say it comes to 14. Aim to remove no more than 1/4 of this number (get it down to 10) to begin with. Return to your signature where you started and carefully tear down the middle, close to the stitching, from top to bottom and remove both of the sheets.

Before progressing further and ending up with too thin a signature, count back towards the middle of the previous signature. Using the top left hand side of the signature you are working in and looking at, in this case entitled Sardines, count it and the page below,

entitled Capture the Flag, as one pair:

The back of Sardines and the back of Capture the flag will eventually be glued together to create one sheet. Keep counting until you come to the right hand side of the next signature as your final pair. In this case the back of Variations will glue to the back of Tails which is the right hand side of the signature below it:

Making sure each side of a signatures is glued to the sheet after or before it,  prevent them from falling out as you work on your journal. It sounds far more complicated than it is, hence looking on Youtube.

It took me an absolute age to get to grips with this procedure and I often ended up with a single sheet that didn't have another to pair it to. Whatever you do, DO NOT tear these out, just glue them to a neighbouring pair, forming a triple sheet. 

Now you need to glue your pairs of pages together, each pair forming a new thicker single sheet. I tend to use UHU or Pritt for this as anything too wet like PVA glue will cause the pages to ripple. Then you are ready to decorate how you wish.