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

Mario Landau Holdsworth mariolh at gmail.com
Sun Dec 30 01:54:10 UTC 2012


Thanks everyone for your interest in the project and suggestions! It's
great to know others are also interested.

Alex, those are beautiful notebooks! John, thanks for the awesome materials
ideas.

I took a snapshot of the binding on the mini Moleskine that inspired me,
just because the design seems so simple. See: http://flic.kr/p/dFuXEX

By no means should we feel limited to this, just thought it might be an
interesting starting point. It seems like this would be easy to do on an
industrial sowing machine. For the type of design Alex made you could take
a bunch of these and bind them together.

I think if we prepped some of the material in advance we could make a
bunch, then experiment with different cover designs, etc.

Does anyone have experience with the industrial sowing machine at
Noisebridge? Would you like to try this out Wednesday or Thursday evening?



On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Alex Glowaski <alex.glowaski at gmail.com>wrote:

> I've made a few notebooks for myself/friends/Etsy, sans sewing machine,
> and would love to join this adventure. Have used sewing machines before,
> though not for bookbinding.
>
> You can see my notes for a multi-signature, Moleskine-like notebook here:
> http://www.alexglow.com/notebook-part-i-inside/
> http://www.alexglow.com/notebook-part-ii-outside/
>
> Keep me in the loop, and I'll be happy to share my experience.
>
> Cheers,
> merlin
>
> --
> Make your world!
> www.alexglow.com
>
> On Dec 29, 2012, at 3:09 PM, John Magolske <listmail at b79.net> wrote:
>
> > 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
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
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