Electronic books have firmly entered modern life, almost completely replacing traditional ones. It is understandable - you can read this or that work you like anywhere right from the screen of your phone or tablet. At the same time, there is no need to carry around a weighty and space-consuming publication. At the same time, there are people for whom a book is not just a source of information, but a living being with its own soul, smell and history. It is important for them not only to read the text, but also to enjoy the process, turning pages and making notes. Electronic devices do not provide such an opportunity. Not always liked work can be found in the library. Therefore, printing it out from a computer and binding books with your own hands will help to make an individual author's work. Also, this useful knowledge will allow you to make beautiful photo albums, author's notebooks and diaries on your own.

Binding types

Creating a book from scratch is a rather laborious process. But it is not as complicated as it might seem at first glance. Even high school students can master it. In the future, this skill will help you independently draw up term papers and theses without resorting to the services of printing houses.

There are several ways to bind publications at home. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let's take a closer look at each of them.

1. Binding with cord or rings. This way of connecting pages together is the easiest. For its execution, it is only necessary to punch the required number of holes with a hole punch and thread a connecting tape or special fastening rings into them.

1. Scrapbooking. This type of binding is also quite simple in execution, but is suitable only for small creations up to 16 pages maximum. Its essence is to fasten pages with paper strips.

This type of binding is more suitable for albums than for books.

1. Book binding, consisting of five subspecies:

• sewing with wire stitch;
• sewing with pottery threads;
• adhesive seamless bonding;
• adhesive seamless bonding with edging;
• sewing with a wire vtachka.

The main advantage of this technique is the strength of fasteners, presentable appearance and durability.

There are also hard and soft covers. For hard paper, cardboard endpapers are used, and soft paper can be used for the cover of thick paper.

Making a book yourself

Before you start binding the prepared text, carefully study the master class presented below. It will help you deal with the subtleties and nuances of notebook binding pages.

Step-by-step instruction. We print the text on A4 paper and fold each sheet in half, collecting a notebook from them. Each notebook consists of four pages folded in the middle.

We will collect the creation of eight notebooks.

To do this, you can use a special press or use heavy household items. For example, press them with a clean cutting board, on which you put a bucket of water.

While the future book is under pressure, we make a template for piercing holes. The pages of the book will be stitched through them.

Using the template, we mark up blanks.

We pierce holes in each notebook using an awl.

We prepare the braid for binding, fixing it on the edge of the table with tape.

We sew notebooks together, carefully following the numbering of pages. For convenience in work, we use some kind of load so that the parts do not travel on the working surface and do not move one relative to the other.

The ends of the threads are tied with a regular knot.

Starting from the third brochure, we fix the thread as shown in the photo.

We fix the book block with a knot.

We coat the PVA spine so that it sticks together and in this position we let the block dry.

After that, glue the flyleaf.

Now we need to align the book. To do this, we use a clerical knife, a piece of plastic, plywood, a string. The board will serve as a kind of ruler, so make sure that it is even. A traditional measuring instrument will not work, as it will be difficult to hold.

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How to bind a book yourself

(Hard cover)

W Why bind books yourself? Well, for example, you wrote a novel, a collection of poems or memoirs, and you want to give them to friends, but you don’t have money for a printing house. Or you downloaded your favorite book from the Internet and want to have it not only in electronic form, but also in ordinary paper.

I ran into the problem of hardcover when I prepared for printing a collection of local lore by I.M. Ulyanova in two volumes (about the village of Unezhma on the White Sea) and wanted to print it in a printing house at her own expense in a small circulation - no more than 50 copies. The collection had a large number of color pictures, and it turned out that it would be unreasonably expensive. Then I decided to print it myself - at home, on my own laser printer. The cost of printing was quite reasonable and I successfully printed the first few copies, intending to give them to a bookbinding shop. I wanted a hard cover, always with a dust jacket, so that the book looked beautiful. It turned out, however, that the cost of hardcover exceeds the cost of printing, and here I had to think. All together (print + binding) turned out to be too expensive ...

There was only one way out - to bind it yourself. After listening to the advice of my husband, Aleksey Pilipyonok, who had the Young Binder set as a child, and finding a couple of articles on the Internet (which, as experience showed, were not very good), I set to work. The first pancake came out lumpy (some essential details were not reflected in the articles found), but the second one turned out to be quite durable and beautiful, at least I was pleased with the result.

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Books you can make yourself.

Of course, it is impossible to achieve typographic quality at home, but if you need a book not for sale, but as a gift option (as was the case in my case) or for home use, then it is quite suitable. In addition, its "gift" can be emphasized by playing with the color of the cover and its design - there is a lot of room for imagination here.

Required tools:

1. Two boards

2. Two clamps

3. Metal file

4. Glue brush

5. Scissors

6. Paper knife

Necessary materials:

PVA glue.

Thick white thread or not too thick white rope.

Gauze-like material, but more rigid. It can be bought at the Fabrics store - a similar material is used to strengthen the sides of jackets, etc. Gauze is also good, but it is difficult to cut straight.

Cardboard (any color) - for hard cover. The cardboard should be very dense and almost rigid. If such cardboard is difficult to buy, you can use ordinary cardboard, but then you need to glue it in two or three layers.

Colored paper (for pasting the cover). Any paper will do. The best is not too thin and not too thick. Let's say something in between whatman paper and wrapping paper (in terms of density).

Fabric roller for the spine (it is called captal). Look at the spine of any hardcover book you buy and you'll see exactly what you need. You can buy it in online stores selling printing products, or in specialized stores for applied arts. At first, for lack of captal, I used a braid with a similar canvas from the Fabric store. Then I managed to buy what I needed. The captal is a purely decorative detail that covers the inside of the spine, so you can do without it.

Spine with a roller (captal); captal bought in a specialized store.

Before starting work, carefully See how a store-bought hardcover book is made. Look inside the spine, you can even take apart an old unnecessary book. The first time I advise you to try on the "waste" so that it would not be a pity to throw it away. The second one can be done already.

Stage #1

So, you have a thick stack of printed pages. Their format can be any (in my case - A5). Now you need to align the edge as evenly as possible. You can align by tapping different sides of the stack on a flat table, making sure that no page sticks out.

When the edges are smooth enough, very carefully (so as not to knock them down) put the stack on the table or on the board (so as not to stain the table with glue), with the spine towards you, so that the edge of the stack protrudes slightly beyond the table (then it is more convenient to smear ). From above, very carefully (again, so as not to knock down the edges), put some kind of temporary load. Then thickly smear the spine with PVA glue and let it dry slightly (2-3 minutes is enough).

You can, of course, print a book from "notebooks", as is done in printing houses - most printers allow this. But then there are two problems.

It will be necessary to sew each notebook by hand, which will take time, especially if the book is thick and each contains, say, 10 notebooks (one notebook usually has 16 sheets).

It will be necessary to trim the edges, because. in notebooks they will never be even. My experience has shown that it is impossible to trim the edge evenly at home, so I settled on printing in separate sheets - the edges then look much better. The binding turns out to be strong enough, does not “break”, and practically does not “eat up” the left margin (so that when printing, the left and right margins can be left the same).

When the glue is slightly dry and moving the pack is no longer so scary, remove the temporary weight and carefully move the future book a little further from the edge of the table or board so that the spine no longer hangs. Put the second board on top (so that the spine does not stick out, but is pressed from above), clamp everything tightly with two clamps and leave to dry for several hours. (It is believed that PVA glue dries completely in 12 hours, but at this stage 3-4 hours will be enough). This initial gluing is necessary in order to make it easier to cut - so that the stack of sheets holds together more firmly and does not move.

Stage number 2.

Remove the clamps and again move everything to the edge of the table, so that the boards protrude 3 centimeters beyond the edge of the table (so as not to inadvertently saw the table), and the edge of the paper stack protrudes 2 millimeters beyond the edge of the boards. Clamp everything with clamps. Mark the protruding edge with a pencil at even intervals (I make them 2 cm). In places of marking with a metal file, make cuts with a depth of 1 mm. Make sure that the cuts are even and strictly perpendicular to the spine.

Now you will need glue, a brush and a rope. The rope is inserted into the cuts, its thickness should be such that it enters the cuts quite tightly. If you use threads, they must be twisted 5-6 times. The rope, if too thick, can be untwisted into pieces. Cuts and rope are needed to strengthen the spine - they hold it firmly enough and the spine does not “break”, as often happens in glued store books. Without it, your book may fall apart.

At this stage, you need to have pre-cut gauze and rollers (captals) at the ready. Cut the gauze like this: the length should be 1 cm less than the length of your spine. The width is equal to the width of the spine + 2 cm along both edges. If, say, your spine is 21 x 2 cm, then the gauze should be 20 x 6 cm. but two, the width of each is equal to the width of the spine. I lightly smear the edges of the captals with glue so that they do not get enough sleep.

There should also be a strip of paper at the ready, which is glued to the spine over the gauze and captals, so as not to get your hands dirty with glue, smoothing the gauze to the spine. This paper can be any, it will not be visible. I use brown wrapping paper. Its dimensions along the length are 7-8 mm less than the length of the spine, and the width is equal to the width of the spine.

When everything is ready, start the process:

Thickly glue the spine with the cuts, making sure that the glue flows into each cut. Insert the ropes into each cut (I also smear them with glue beforehand), so that their ends stick out by 2-3 cm. Pull the ropes over the protruding ends so that they sit snugly in the cuts. Again, smear everything with glue and stick gauze, then captals. Again, smear all this on the outside with glue and stick a strip of paper, smoothing it to the spine, so that everything is well glued together. In this form, everything must be left overnight so that it dries well.

Stage #3 (next day)

The inner block of the future book is ready. Remove the clamps, cut off the excess ends of the ropes with a knife.

Bookends

Next, let's take care of the flyers. They must be made of thick Whatman paper, because. bear half of the structural load - it is on them (and also on gauze or onboard) that the cover rests. (By the way, they can be colored, not necessarily white). If your to niga A5 format, then the flyleaf - A4 format, folded in half. Its outer edge needs to be trimmed a little, because. from the side of the spine, the ends of the ropes protrude slightly, they will interfere with the sticker of the endpaper (it is impossible to cut them completely flush with the paper).

When the flyleaf is folded, fitted to the book and trimmed, glue the strip at the fold (3-4 mm) with glue and stick it on the block. Then turn the book over and paste another. Leave under pressure for at least half an hour, but for now you can do the cover.

Cover

First, cut out the cardboard. This is a solid base cover, consists of three separate parts - two identical-sized crusts and a spine. The crusts should be 8 mm higher than the height of your glued block (so that they stick out 4 mm on each side), and equal in width to the block. Those. if your block is A5 (21 x 14.8 cm), then the dimensions of the crusts are 21.8 x 14.8 cm. The spine should be equal in height to the crusts (21.8 cm in the case of A5), and in width - equal to the thickness of your block. It can be made of thinner cardboard.

Choose a paper of a suitable color, cut it out:

In height, it should protrude beyond the cardboard crusts by 2-3 cm on each side. In width (dancing from the middle): spine width + 8 mm spacing on each side, + width of cardboard crusts on each side + 2-3 cm on each side (see photo). It would be nice to make markings on the inside of the paper, it greatly facilitates the layout.

Next comes the sticker. Smear glue on one side of the crusts and spine, stick, press. Diagonally cut the edges of the paper (with an indent of 3-4 mm from the corner). Smear the protruding edges with glue, bend them into crusts, smooth them, paying special attention to the corners. At this stage, it is better to leave the cover under the load for at least an hour. In principle, the cover is ready.

Then there is the question of its design. Even if a dust jacket is planned, the author's name and title (or, in my case, volume number) should still be written on the cover and on the spine. How to do it? Not everyone can absolutely exactly make an inscription by hand. I've tried stenciling, but it's not accurate. The decision came as follows: to print on the printer a slightly modified fragment of the dust jacket with the author and volume number, and then stick it on. Simple, but looks, from my point of view, quite well.

We paste the printed name on the cover. It is better to do this with a pencil markup - so that the inscription on the spine is in the center, and nothing has moved anywhere. The cover is ready.

Then comes a not difficult, but crucial moment - to glue together the inner block and the cover. This moment requires great precision, so fitting is necessary first. Insert the block into the cover so that the edges of the cover stick out evenly, and ALWAYS make pencil marks on the corners of the endpapers.

Smear one edge of the gauze with glue, glue it to the endpaper. Now smear the entire flyleaf with the gauze with glue. To prevent excess glue from sticking the pages, a sheet of paper can be laid inside the endpaper. Raise the book (while the cover lies on the table), turn it over with a smeared endpaper down and glue the endpaper to the region burner, starting from the edges - combining the edges of the flyleaf with pencil marks. Make sure that the book does not turn out "upside down" in relation to the cover!

The cover with the block glued to it on the bottom side is still on the table. Now glue the gauze on the top side, glue it to the endpaper, then smear the entire second endpaper. My experience has shown that it is most convenient to simply “put” the cover on the flyleaf without lifting the book from its place. Usually, in this way, the edges of the flyleaf are most evenly combined with pencil marks, but still this needs to be checked and until the glue has dried, align them.

You can run a wooden template along the spine (or the corner of a plastic ruler), but be careful not to tear the paper. This gives the spine a "sharpness".

Now you need to put the book under a heavy press all night so that it dries well.

By morning, your book is completely ready.

A dust jacket is just a sheet of paper (its dimensions are easy to calculate). The only point to consider here is that the final dust jacket design should be done after the first hardcover is ready - only then will you know the exact size of your book. (With the A5 page format and the height of the cardboard crusts is 21.8 mm, the height of the dust jacket is exactly 22 cm (the paper with which the cardboard is pasted over also gives thickness).

With an A5 book format, the length of the dust jacket is slightly longer than A3. I print it on two sheets of A4 (good quality paper is needed) and glue it from the inside with adhesive tape. On the sides (which will be bent inward) I glue the white stripes to the required width. Since the dust jacket is motley, the gluing is almost invisible from the outside.

. year 2009

I would like to talk about two enough simple ways to bind magazines and books, as well as separate sheets from various magazines with articles you need, for example, about cooking. Over time, such book-bound magazines will make an excellent library. In the years of stagnation, when good books were in short supply, I collected "fiction" published in the magazines "Technology of Youth" and "Ural Pathfinder", in which the stories and novels that interested me were published with sequels. The methods of binding that I want to offer here, I have not yet seen anywhere in the literature. Of course, I didn’t come up with them myself, but I spied on one specialist from the city of Priuralsk.

How to bind a book at home

Usually, when binding, individual sheets are stacked, in which, stepping back from the edge of the spine, holes are punched, drilled or pierced, and then the sheets are sewn using these holes. However, as a result of this technology, part of the text is difficult to read, especially on those sheets on which the text is located very close to the edge of the sheet from the side of the spine of the future book.

The book, formed from sheets using the technology proposed below, is to some extent spared from such a drawback. At the initial stage of binding work, in both cases, the same operations are carried out: the sheets are stacked, trimmed along the lower and leading edges, the upper edge can be trimmed later. After all, as you know, sheets even from the same magazine, but from different issues, usually do not match in format. Then the stack is compressed using a press, vice or clamp. The simplest clamping option is two even boards (two metal corners), bolted on both sides (Fig. 1). Clamp the stack (from the side of the spine) in a vise so that the narrowest sheet peeks out of the vise by about 5 mm (see Fig. 1). Then, the spine is cleaned with a large file, removing strongly protruding edges of the sheets, and then the transverse grooves are sawn through with a hacksaw or a jigsaw in the spine (the number of grooves is at your discretion) to a depth of 1.5 ... 2 mm. This is the main feature of the proposed binding technology. After all, if the sheets are punched or drilled at such a distance from the edge, then the threads threaded into the holes will inevitably break through the edges of the sheets. So you can place holes from the edge of the block at a distance of at least 1 ... 1.5 cm, which will certainly lead to a "capture" of the text.

Having made cuts, the block (package) is installed with the spine up. Next, the spine is smeared with PVA glue (or bustilate), diluted thinner, so that it penetrates into the gaps between the sheets, as well as into the cuts. Then, pieces of nylon or other strong thread are placed in the cuts so that the ends go beyond the spine by about 2 ... 3 cm (Fig. 2, a) or (as you like) the spine is pulled together with one long thread (Fig. 2, b ). In conclusion, the entire spine is once again smeared with glue. When the glue dries, the ends of the threads are cut off and the block is made into a light cover, that is, they simply glue a thick paper cover to the spine and paste the endpapers. (Bookends are the first and also the last double sheets of the block, connecting it to the cover. - Editor's note.) Sheets will not jump out of such a book, as from cheap paperback books. In a similar way, the aforementioned store books that have crumbled are also strengthened. But still, in both cases, it is better to make a hard cover instead of a soft cover.

When making a hard cover, a piece of fabric or gauze is glued onto the spine of the block using a polyvinyl acetate emulsion (Fig. 3), so that parts of a piece of fabric 2 ... 3 cm wide extend beyond the side edges of the spine. pieces of finishing tape with a roller on the edge (bright fabric patches folded in half will do). However, you can capitalize and not do it. Next, cut out two cover covers from cardboard. The width of each cover must be equal to the width of the glued block. There are many different options for making caps, but I want to offer what I think is the simplest one. Having cut out the cardboard covers, I select a beautiful fabric, oilcloth, leader, etc. A blank of the book’s clothes is cut out of the binding material, not forgetting to provide 2 ... 3 cm allowances-fields from the top, bottom and front edges. The distance between the covers is equal to the spine width plus 2x8 mm (Fig. 4, a). Between the covers on a workpiece of material, you can glue a lag - a strip of thick paper or drawing paper (the width of the strip is equal to the width of the block). The lids are carefully coated with PVA and glued to the workpiece of clothes, smoothing well so that there are no bubbles. Then the edges of the workpiece are wrapped on the covers (Fig. 4, b), glued to them, and the finished cover is dried under pressure.

We are preparing two endpapers, each of which is a white sheet of paper folded in half. We glue one half of the sheet to the cover (Fig. 6), and the other to the outer sheet of the block, and the endpaper is not completely glued to the sheet, leaving a 1 cm wide strip adjacent to the endpaper fold without glue.

Everything is finished, and the book is put under pressure. Of course, I do not know professional terms, but it seems to me that I have stated everything clearly.

I also want to offer journal binding method. It is somewhat different from the traditional one, when holes are formed along the spine edges of the magazines, for example, with a hole punch, and the magazines are pulled together with a cord. It is clear that in this case part of the text is not always readable. My notebook method is devoid of this drawback, since the entire binding is made on the outside of the spine.

First, put all the magazines in a pile and mark the places of future punctures in the roots along the ruler (Fig. 7).

Then they take the last issue of the magazine and with a large needle, follow the marks, sew it through the middle, forming three or five stitches (Fig. 8, a). I note that with such firmware, the “native” metal clips of magazines can even be removed. The next magazine, laid on top, is stitched in the same way, but in the opposite direction. After each firmware, the thread is pulled, removing the backlash (slackness). Having finished the firmware of the second magazine, the thread (with a needle) is connected with the end of the thread protruding from the lower magazine (Fig. 8, b). It is clear that the third magazine is stitched similarly to the first, and at the end of the seam, its thread is connected with the thread of the seam of the second magazine, prying the first stitch of the seam of this magazine with a needle.

Many people are addicted not to reading, but to writing their works (prose and poems). As soon as work on a literary creation ends, the question immediately arises of how to bind a book with your own hands at home. Book binding at home is also of interest to those who download literature from the Internet and print it on A4 sheets. In fact, designing a book in the best possible way is not as difficult as it seems at first glance. Moreover, there are many ways to cope with this task on your own.

All people who had to order book binding in the workshop admit that such a service costs a lot of money. But if you learn how to bind printed publications with your own hands using improvised tools, you can save a lot.

DIY book binding

First of all, you should consider a method that allows you to make a hardcover for a thick book. What is needed for this:

• file for metal;
• 2 boards;
• 2 clamps;
• paper knife;
• scissors;
• glue brush;
• thick white sewing thread or rope;
• PVA glue;
• material that resembles dense gauze (this is how the sides of jackets are sealed);
• thick cardboard;
• colored paper that will be used to design the cover of the book;
• captal.

Everything you need for self-binding

The work of creating a binding consists of the following stages:

1. The preparatory stage, without a doubt, can be called the most responsible, since you will have to align all the pages that the book will consist of. To straighten the edges, take a stack of pages and tap it several times on a hard surface. The pages aligned along the edges must be laid on the board, and the spine of the future book should “look” at the master. The edge of the stack should protrude slightly from the edge of the work surface.
2. On the pile should be very careful, so as not to knock it down, put some kind of weighting agent. Then you should take a brush, dip it in PVA glue and thickly grease the spine of the future book.
3. 2-3 minutes after the glue dries slightly, you need to remove the weighting agent from the stack, and then move the stack of pages away from the edge of the work surface so that it no longer sags. After that, a second board should be placed on the pile, tightly squeeze everything with two clamps. Everything must be left in this state for 3-4 hours. This time is necessary for the PVA glue to dry completely.
4. After removing the clamps, you need to move the stacks of boards to the edge of the surface again, and so that the board protrudes 3 cm beyond the edge of the table. In this case, the paper stack should protrude 2 millimeters beyond the edge of the board. Again, everything should be fixed with clamps.
5. Next, take a pencil and draw a protruding edge with it. You should get several two-centimeter intervals. Then you need to take a metal file and file it with these marking tools (the size of each cut should not exceed 1 millimeter). All cuts must be the same.
6. At this stage of work, glue, a brush and a rope are taken. The thickness of the latter should be such that it fits snugly into the cuts. If threads are used instead of a rope, then a kind of rope must be twisted from them.
7. Let's start cutting gauze and captals. The length of the pieces of gauze should be 1 cm shorter than the spine of the book. The width of the gauze should be equal to the width of the spine, but 2 centimeters should be added on the sides. You should also separate 2 captals (the width of each matches the width of the spine). The edges of the captals should be lightly greased with glue. You should also prepare a strip of paper. Its length will be 7 millimeters less than the length of the spine. The width of the strip is similar to the width of the spine.
8. They take a brush, dip it in glue and begin to thickly apply it to the spine with the cuts made. In this case, it is necessary to ensure that the glue gets into each cut. The rope or threads twisted into a bundle also need to be impregnated with glue. Insert a rope into each cut, but so that its ends protrude by 2-3 centimeters. For these tips, you need to pull well so that the rope (harness) is fixed in the cuts. Then you need to apply glue to the spine, stick gauze after that, and then captals. On top of the captals, apply glue again and stick a strip of paper. The paper is carefully smoothed to the spine of the future book. The glue will dry overnight. Once it dries, we can assume that the inside of the binding is ready.
9. At this stage of binding the book, you need to remove the clamps and cut off the ends of the rope (twist of threads).

After the work done, you can start making endpapers. They can be made from both plain and colored paper. How to determine the size of the flyleaf? The answer is simple - if the book is made in A5 format, then the flyleaf should be in A4 format, folded in half. At the same time, the outer edge of the endpaper should be slightly shortened, because the ends of the ropes protruding near the spine will interfere with sticking the endpaper.

Before sticking the endpaper, you should make sure that it has the correct dimensions. After that, you need to glue the strip near the fold with glue and stick it on the block. The same should be done with the second side of the book. After that, on the almost finished cover, you need to put a weighting agent and start creating the cover.

How to make a cover?

1. First of all, you should deal with cardboard, which will play the role of a cover seal. First of all, it needs to be cut. On a sheet of cardboard, mark 2 crusts and a spine. The width of the crusts should be equal to the width of the blocks, while their length on each side should exceed the length of the block by 4 millimeters. How to cut decorative paper: in height, it should be 2-3 centimeters longer than the crusts (on each side). The width of the cover paper should exceed the spine by 8 millimeters on each side. As for gluing, it should be done as follows: one side of the crusts and the spine is smeared with glue, after which they are glued and pressed. Then the edges of the paper are cut diagonally with an indent of 4 millimeters from the corner.
2. The protruding edges are then smeared with glue, folded into crusts, smoothed. Then you need to put a weighting agent on the cover, which can be removed after 1 hour. Design the cover according to your personal preferences. It can be decorated with applications, glossy paper, voluminous compositions, etc.

other methods

If the book is thin, then its binding will be easier. For example, if the book consists of forty sheets (or eighty pages), then the sheets must be folded in half and stapled in the middle with a rotary stapler. Such a book will resemble a school notebook.

You can also buy a thick notebook on springs with perfectly clean sheets. The spring should be removed, and a book should be printed on blank sheets, and then hemmed back. To do this, the spring must be gently compressed with your fingers, pressing on each of its teeth.

There is another method of making a book, but first of all, you should print out the pages from which it will consist on a printer. Then you need to divide everything into several stacks, consisting of 20 pages. Use a hole punch to make holes in the pages. The holes must be at the same distance from each other, otherwise the book will turn out to be crooked. After that, it is recommended to prepare a tight binder folder, the sheets into which are sewn using metal staples. When buying such a folder, you should pay attention to the size of the staples - all sheets should not be stapled back to back, otherwise the book will be difficult to use.

If a person often has to make book bindings, then for this work it is recommended to purchase special equipment, for example, a binding machine equipped with plastic springs. Such a machine costs no more than thirty dollars. The equipment is capable of sewing up to five hundred sheets, and it is very simple to use it. Also on sale you can find machines that sew sheets onto metal springs, but they will cost more. In addition, machines with metal springs can staple up to 130 sheets at a time.

To make books, you can also purchase an apparatus called a metal binder. The machine can staple a maximum of 600 sheets at a time. Such equipment costs no more than two hundred dollars. The machine tightly compresses the pages with metal staples along the block. By the way, metalbind staples can be used repeatedly. Once opened, the metal bracket can be used to flash other books.

Of the listed ways of designing books in bindings, everyone can choose the best for themselves!

Some time ago, I wanted to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I tried to read several translations and none of them suited me. Therefore, it was decided to read in English! It is quite difficult to find these books in the original in our bookstores. And if there is, then only the first part of the cycle. E-mail is a little easier to find. But I prefer to read from paper (I will definitely buy an E-ink reader - I like it very much), so I print books.

The first two books looked like this:

I read them with great pleasure, but they did not look very good. And I decided that Life, the Universe, and Everything"needs to be done in a book.

Process with pictures and comments under the cut. Beware, there are a lot of pictures.

Seal

It would seem, what could be easier than printing a book? But there are several important points here.
First, you need to choose the right paper. All paper, which is produced industrially at the pulp and paper mill, has a clearly defined direction of the fibers. The absolute majority of readers have access only to printers that can print on sheets no larger than A4 format. Almost all paper of this size (I have tried about 20 brands) has grain direction along the long side (short-to-short-side bends much worse than long-to-long). Try it for yourself and you will immediately understand what we are talking about. We ideally want the fibers to be along the short side. Unfortunately, the packaging of ordinary office paper is not labeled for this parameter. Of those 20 marks, all were "inappropriate". Quoted because the result does not deteriorate much, and I believe that if you do not have the right paper, then it makes no sense to worry and print on the one that is.

Secondly, the pages on the book sheets are not in order.

We will make a classic book. This means that in each notebook of the book block we will have 16 A5 pages - 4 A4 sheets sealed on both sides and folded in half.

We start by creating a layout. I used OpenOffice Writer (hereinafter - OOW). We select the desired typeface and font size, set the margins, number the pages. I draw your attention to the fact that the font size should be larger than desired. A little later it will become clear why. Save and export to PDF.

OOW cannot print pages in random order. That is, if you set page numbers 16 and 1, then it will print the first page first, and then the sixteenth. But Foxit Reader, which I use to view and work with PDF, does everything as it should. In the printer settings, select the landscape orientation of the sheet, and in the FoxitReader print settings - two pages on one sheet. This is where the increased font size comes in handy, because the actual page size will decrease.

Every two lines indicate the order in which the pages of one notebook will be printed. First we print one side (8 pages), then turn the paper over and print the second side.
I can have a calculator.

Printing more than one notebook at a time can be risky. First you need to understand the features of the paper feed of a particular printer. Yes, and then we will work with notebooks. So printing one notebook at a time is our choice.

Assembling the book block

Here's what we got:

In my case, this is 8 notebooks.

There are many ways to make binding and stitching a book block, I will talk about those that I use myself.

Let's get started.

First you need to bend the notebooks in half. This is where sheets with the correct direction of the fibers would be especially useful to us. You can bend each sheet individually, or you can bend the whole notebook (4 sheets). I prefer the second option. It seems to me that this way the notebook turns out to be more solid. The spoon in the previous photo is not left over from lunch - it is very convenient for her to press the fold line.

The next step is desirable but not required. It would be nice to clamp the bent edge of all notebooks in a special press. But without fanaticism, otherwise there is a risk of crumpling notebooks.

While the notebooks are under pressure, we need to mark out the template for punching holes. We take a piece of cardboard. We designate the edges (210 mm - according to the sheet format). For sewing the book block, we will use a tape 5 mm wide. In order for the book block to be very strong, we will sew it on three ribbons. We take the distance between the holes for the tapes 6-7 mm. And along the hole at a distance of 10 mm from the edge. Everything is clearly visible in the picture.

We mark the fold of each notebook.

We pierce holes from the inside with an awl. Here's what we get outside.

We take pieces of tape and glue them at the right distance from each other with tape. Glue to the very edge of the table. That's the most convenient way.

With which notebook (from the first or last) to start - it does not matter. The main thing is not to confuse their order. Page numbers should be carefully monitored. Otherwise it will have to be redone. I want to immediately draw your attention to the fact that until the very moment of gluing the book block, we can change everything we want.
Here you can take a break, relax a little. Because sewing the block is a very important part of assembling the book.

We sew! For sewing, I use embroidery thread. They are strong, docile, colorful, thick enough and very easy to find. Have you ever seen a book sewn with lilac thread? I didn't see either. That's why we take the bright one. Individuality is one of the reasons to do all this.

The use of cargo is highly desirable. Notebooks will not move one relative to the other.
Ribbons are sheathed on the outside.

So we almost sewed two notebooks. We fix the thread with an ordinary double knot.

From the third to the last notebook we fix the thread in this way.

We fix the last notebook with a knot again.

Our book block is almost ready!

We use either a clamp like mine, or a regular heavy weight on top.
We fix the block so that the edge protrudes a little. We coat with PVA glue (clerical is quite suitable). Glue is needed quite a bit, just enough so that it penetrates a little between the notebooks. And we clamp it under the load so that the notebooks stick together. You don't need to pull hard.

Next, glue the endpapers. If we used ordinary office paper for printing, then for endpapers we need to use thick paper, from 130 g/m2. The endpapers will unite the binding and the book block into one whole.

It is important that everything is completely dry. While it dries, we need to get ready to trim the block.

An old plastic folder, a piece of laminate, a clamp and a knife. If you have the same knife, be sure to change the blade to a fresh one. The knife must be very sharp. No, not sharp, but ACUTE. We clamp the completely dried block as shown in the photo. We press with all our weight on the edge of the laminate, where the knife lies. Trim the edge with a sharp motion. 3-4 sheets per pass. You can’t relax, otherwise the block will “leave”. It may not work out right the first time. And, I'm afraid that it will be difficult to do without such a design. Can't hold a simple line. If you have friends in the printing house, you can ask them to cut on the guillotine.

Here is such a beauty.

The next step is to complete the assembly of the book block. First, glue a layer of gauze on the end. It is also good to use filter paper. The goal is to reinforce the butt so that the book lasts a long time.

To protect the corners of the book block, you need to stick captals on them. These are pieces of tape in which one edge is thicker than the other. You can stick a little more than you need. Then we'll cut it.

We leave everything to dry.

Making binding

For binding, we need two cardboard boxes. In size, they should be a few millimeters larger on each side than the cut book block. Binding cardboard can be bought in art stores (there, however, it is sold out quickly) or you can disassemble the archive folder. I did so. Strictly speaking, I have these cardboard boxes from one of the previous bindings.

This time I decided to make binding with fabric. For the first time, you can (and should) take a piece of old wallpaper. It will be beautiful and everything will stick perfectly. If you decide to take the fabric, do not forget to iron it.

Between thick cartons lies a strip of thin cardboard. This will be the end of the book. The distance between them is 4-5 mm. For reliability, we glue the middle of the structure with filter paper. The fabric is marked. The cardboard is glued to the fabric.

The binding is ready!

Putting together a book

Oddly enough, this is one of the easiest steps.
We try on the book block and binding to each other. We mark the best position.
Between the folds of the flyleaf we insert sheets of clean paper so that the glue does not spread. We glue the endpaper and cover with glue. We use a brush so that there are no dry places.

We perform the same operation on the other side.

We put the book under the load.

After a couple of hours, take it out and let it dry completely.
Our book is ready.

We read, have fun and remember the main rule "Don" t panic!

Mai ashipki

Or what could have been done differently to make the result better.
I took too light and loose fabric. Darker and denser would be more elegant.
The flyleaf turned out in folds.

I poured too much glue. And the paper for the flyleaf was not thick enough. Ideally, only traces of the tapes on which the block was sewn would be visible.
The first pages from the outer edges are a little rippling. This is due to the large amount of glue and due to the direction of the fibers.

Conclusion

Of course, it would be easier to just type and read. Or read from the screen. But I just love the process of creating a book. You can choose the font, paper, binding design, and not use what the publisher will offer. It turns out a unique book. This, from my point of view, is one big plus.

The disadvantages include sufficient labor intensity. One book took me almost a whole day.

And I apologize for the uneven photo quality. The lighting changed a lot during the day.

I decided to somehow try my hand at forex, downloaded a bunch of e-books, settled on one very good one and quite voluminous in terms of the number of sheets (400 pages).

I decided to print the e-book and make a hardcover.
I had an e-book in .dejvu format

The most important thing is to print the pages as they should.

Print settings:

printing 2 pages on one side of an A4 sheet is A5 format.

We make the necessary fields so that you can seamlessly sew. I also made a markup - a vertical line between the sheets, for the convenience of cutting an A4 sheet in half.

Print sheets on both sides. But before that, I experimented a bit so that everything prints out as it should. I fed each sheet into the printer manually. This took me about 20-30 minutes.

We cut the sheets into and sort into pages.

Aligning a stack of sheets. We got all the sheets separately (not notebooks).

We proceed to fastening the sheets together into a book block.

To do this, we need a small, naturally, home-made press and PVA glue.

The press, as you can see, I made from 2 pieces of a floorboard and 2 studs (from car rods), in general, from what was at hand.

It looks as shown in the photo.

We align the stack of sheets and clamp it into the press. We generously coat the side to be stitched with PVA glue several times and let the glue dry completely. This is done to initially hold the sheets together and make it easier to work with the block. After gluing, it takes some time to dry.

We take our book blank, and where we glued it for the first time, we make cuts to a depth of 3-4 mm.

I abundantly soaked the pieces of thread with PVA glue and pushed them tightly into the cuts.

After I finished with the threads, I once again generously smeared this surface with glue. I put a cloth on the glue and pressed it tightly. The fabric was smeared with glue on top.

In this form, I put everything in a warm place.

It remains to make endpapers and cover.

Since I don’t have a book for an exhibition, but purely for myself, I decided not to bother with a hard cover, but used a cover from an old book of a suitable size.

After drying, the outer edge of the book block must be cut off to align the sheets, make a flyleaf and glue the cover.

We cut the edge of the book without removing it from the press, placing a piece of plywood for rigidity.

I made the flyleaf, again, from what was at hand - from thick business card paper (where the business cards were printed) - 2 A4 sheets. It is possible from whatman paper.

Having folded the sheets of paper in half, I glued them like this: the first spread on one side in the first sheet of the book (and the second side is for gluing to the cover, we glue it a little later). I did the same with the last spread of the book.

What was printed on the business card went inside, so all this disgrace is not visible.

We wait a little while the glue dries, after which we glue the cover.

Glue the spine together with the first spread of the book to the cover.

After all these manipulations, I put the book under a large pile of other books for several hours.

Dried up! The book is ready!

The flyleaf stuck well, evenly.

The cover says a lot...

It actually turned out pretty funny!

A book about forex trading, and on the cover there is an inscription: "Pioneer's library, personal happiness, etc ..."

Cover for many years...

I made books about a year and a half ago from the date of publication.

Now on the Internet I meet better ways of binding books, where sheets are printed with notebooks, and then sewn together with threads. And you can also do it yourself at home.

The article "" describes in more detail how to make such a binding. I recommend reading it too. It also tells about making a cover for a book.

As an option, thin books can be made with a soft cover and stitched all the sheets at once. I shot through books up to 30 sheets in 2 places with a construction stapler. It didn't turn out too bad either.

Good evening.

Finally, the hot weather drove me home and gave me some time to write the next topic.

Of course, the result will not look like a book at all. Unfortunately, I did not have any decent material at hand that could be inserted into softcover. But someone might find it useful nonetheless.

First, traditionally, a few words about fibers.

The fibers in office paper are arranged as shown in the photo. Why is it good? This is good because if we have a bunch of sheets, then when we sew them, our “book” will open and flip well, because the paper fibers will be located along the spine.

It should be noted that OpenOffice Writer has one very interesting feature (I would be very grateful if someone wrote in the comments if there is such a thing in MS Word). He knows how to set the fields mirrored. The picture will be clearer:

Thus, we can set the internal margins a little more than the external ones, because we will need them for stitching.

We will need:
1. The sheets themselves (I took a blank from my old training screw-up-not-scary-stitched block).
2. Jigsaw. You can take a hacksaw with a thin blade. But the jigsaw gives an even thinner and more accurate cut. However, a thick block will be difficult for them to cut.
3. The “two-wood-with-holes-fastened-two-bolts-with-wing-nuts” clamp familiar to you from the first article.
And, perhaps, there is no way to do without a clamp. Fortunately, all its components cost a penny.

Carefully collect our stack of sheets and clamp between pieces of wood. The stack should protrude 5-6 mm.

We take a jigsaw in our hands and saw. We need to make paired cuts in the form of a divided letter "V". In this case, I have about 60 sheets in my stack and I make cuts to a depth of 3-4 mm. If the stack is larger, then we cut a little deeper - by 4-5 mm (do not forget to set the internal margins a little more!). On the long side of an A4 sheet, 6 paired cuts will be enough.

Now we have a stack of kerf sheets. We take a kapron thread - it is thin and durable. Using the cuts as wedges, we tie the sheets into one block.

We coat the end with glue, make sure that the glue gets into the cuts. We clamp the block between the pieces of wood (do not forget to lay clean sheets so that the block does not stick to the press). We are waiting for it to dry. If necessary, trim the edges as described in the link above.

It turns out such a turn.

If it is too difficult, then take a sheet of drawing paper. In a familiar printing house, we ask you to make a scoring (punching a groove) according to the measurements from the article and glue the cover from whatman paper.

The maximum number of sheets that I stitched in this way is about 130. The block opens easily and is quite strong. Of course, if such a block is deliberately destroyed, then it will collapse. But it's very easy to read. I won’t talk about more sheets - I’m afraid to lie.

Good books for you, high-quality pdf "s and pleasant reading!