[Noisebridge-discuss] Binding Notebooks on the Industrial Sowing Machine?

[John Magolske]

Hi,

* Mario Landau Holdsworth <mariolh at gmail.com> [121229 14:05]:
> If you don't mind showing some tips, I'll be very grateful and
> hopefully show you how to make your own moleskine notebooks. Here's
> my project idea: I recently bought the cheapest variety of Moleskine
> notebook and noticed that it is bound with a single stitch down the
> middle. I'd like to make my own notebooks using some recycled paper
> and cardstock covers.

I can't make it in to the space for this, but will relate my
experiences with book-making via sewing machine here...

I've hand-stitched notebooks using a sewing machine (my own portable
Elna) -- not running the machine under power, but rather turning the
wheel by hand so as to have more control over sewing in a straight
line. Also, I was a bit concerned about the possibility of the needle
breaking with it coming down fast onto a stack of paper which seemed
noticeably thicker & tougher than fabric. I pre-folded & creased each
page along the spine to make it easier for the needle to pierce the
stack, and also to make the pages open & close more easily. The stack
of pages + cover was held together with binder clips while running
them through the machine.

I stitched from the inside, as where the needle exits there's a bit
of "puckering out". This way the center of the book has nice clean
stitching, and the puckering out on the spine can be covered up with
tape (first tie off / glue the threads on the spine side). For tape,
there's some great Linen book tape I found at FLAX art & design [1]
here in SF made by Neschen, a German manufacturer of products for book
care & repair. It's called "filmoplast T" [2], and is a very nice
self-adhesive linen (hmmm...their website says "rayon" now...) tape
in 5 & 3 cm widths and variety of colors. I suppose Gaffer tape would
work nicely as well.

Also, be sure to align the grain [3] of the paper so that it is
parallel to the spine, otherwise the pages will be hard to turn. Most
paper is "Grain Long", so as an example, folding 8.5x11" letter-size
pages into a 8.5x5.5" booklet is not optimal (though it happens all
the time). Depending on how particular you want to be, one solution
might be to go down to Kelly Paper [4] and have them special-cut some
sheets to have the grain going in the necessary direction.

I'd be curious to know if anyone else has attempted book-making on a
sewing machine, and if they had any luck doing so under power. Would
also love to get my hands on a real book-stitching machine!

[1] http://flaxart.com/
[2] http://www.neschen.com/documents-en/book-care-repair/product/89-filmoplast-t
[3] http://printwiki.org/Grain
    http://www.xerox.com/printer-supplies/paper-stock/paper-grain/enus.html
[4] http://kellypaper.com/store/sanfrancisco

Cheers,

John

-- 
John Magolske
http://B79.net/contact