Book cover press

This can still be done commercially. The cost of the dies (brass) is expensive, so generally to be competetive and keep the unit cost down, you would normally be producing these in quantities measured in the tens of thousands. There are plants that do all of this in-house - gluing the cover fabric/material to the pre-cut boards (front, spine, and back) and gluing on the endsheets to create a complete cover, ready to be affixed to the body of the book - all in one continuous operation.

This is very specialized equipment. The colors for something like this are usually all foil-stamped onto the cover material.

There are also trade binderies in a lot of major cities that can do this for you in lesser quantities. Just realize that there is usually going to be a large up-front cost for the dies and makeready. Once that is in place, running the materials is very efficient and that up-front cost is amortized out over the number of copies created.

If your up-front cost is $2,000 and you are creating 50,000 books, that cost becomes $.04 per book. If you are only creating 500 books that cost becomes $4.00 per book.

Rick

The type of Press used is called a Blocking Press, in modern Terms a Foil stamping Press.

I have some pics of the setup here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38719257@N08/8180812570/in/set-721576220247...

I am looking to do this in short runs for my own personal private press publishing exploits.

Would a 13x18 foiling Heidelberg be able to feed the wrapped cover with it’s windmill grippers?

Should I look into making a frankenpress out of an arbor press and a die stamping set like this: http://www.directindustry.com/prod/anchor-lamina/die-sets-for-presses-73... ?

Colts Armory / Thomson Laureate presses were used to stamp covers circa 1900. Foil stamped on cloth, wrapped on board. “The Art of American Book Covers, 1875-1930” by Richard Minsky has discussion and nice color examples.