vince’s ear

I think I have a new addiction. The other day I posted a method of “perfect binding” a paperback book using minimal tools and materials, and a printer. I highly recommend trying this if you love books and/or if you love crafty projects. But I must warn, you’ll get hooked…

I ran into Project Gutenberg about a year ago. I’ve found so many free books I’d like to read, but didn’t really feel like sitting in front of a computer to read them, especially the long ones. I also happen to be cheap so I either get a book at a library, or not at all. $24 for a paperback? Forget about it. But now I can make my own books for less than $3, and it only takes about 20 to 30 minutes.

Here is a picture of the jig I made, in case you want to make one yourself. Except for the 2 bolts, everything was found around the house:

I wanted to share with you some links. The first is the DIY Book-binding site. On it, I watched a video (below) which not only made the project look easy, but convinced me it actually was. The guy went through these easy steps and in no time came up with a beautifully bound paperback book, which got me onto the project right away.

In case anybody out there isn’t into the paperback idea, I also ran into a bunch of sites with detailed instructions on how to make a nice hard-bound book. These books, when finished, really show how you can make more of an art than a craft out of these book-making projects, and really are great looking. You can bind them any which way you want and put some of your personality into them with decorate cover papers or jacket designs all the way down to the type of paper you use.

Here is a list of some of these hard-back book-making sites I found to be useful:

davethedesigner.net

briansawyer.net

papierdesign.de

A slide-show demonstration

A huge list of book-binding websites

And the most invaluable video I’ve seen on the subject: