Chopping binding off of a book?

[DawnL]

A long time ago, someone mentioned how they prefer to have their books wire bound. They said they take their books somewhere to have the binding cut off, then cut and fit to be spiral bound. Where does one go for something like that? Could I have the binding cut off and then bound it myself?

 

Thanks

[quark]

FedEx's Kinko outlets, Office Depot and Staples will do it for you. I was told at Kinko's that if the spine is thick (i.e. you are trying to cut the binding off a thick book), the result will not be very neat. Your pages will "slope" because their machine is not able to cut it all off in one straight line so they have to position it diagonally. In that case, what you can do is to open the cover and direct a hairdryer on high heat at the line between the cover and the first page. The glue will melt and you will be able to gently pull away the page. Repeat for every other page (shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes per book) and you'll have the binding off without the sloping effect. You can then take the pages to one of the stores to be wire/ spiral bound. Hope this helps.

[Element]

FedEx's Kinko outlets, Office Depot and Staples will do it for you. I was told at Kinko's that if the spine is thick (i.e. you are trying to cut the binding off a thick book), the result will not be very neat. Your pages will "slope" because their machine is not able to cut it all off in one straight line so they have to position it diagonally. In that case, what you can do is to open the cover and direct a hairdryer on high heat at the line between the cover and the first page. The glue will melt and you will be able to gently pull away the page. Repeat for every other page (shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes per book) and you'll have the binding off without the sloping effect. Hope this helps.

 

My Staples told me last week they won't cut bindings off anymore. :( The lady I spoke with said the glue is causing damage to the cutters.

[quark]

The hairdryer method gives me a bit of a high lol. I love seeing the pages come off. Sometimes if you are careful, you can strip off 2 or 3 pages at a time. The glue dries quickly though so you have to keep directing heat to the binding (but without burning the page). Any bits of remaining glue on the edge of the page can be easily peeled off when you are done. Disclaimer: I am not sure if this works with all books.

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

Be careful at office type stores, they provide printer services but are not geared for the heavier types of books. I have been doing this for most of my homeschool career and always go to an actual print/ copy shop. It is not anymore expensive then the office stores but these type of stores are geared for binding and can cut bindings off books well over an inch thick.

[boscopup]

For smaller stuff (like our math workbooks), I've cut them at home with a rotary cutter and rotary cutter ruler. I use a Proclick to bind them. It's a reusable spiral-like thing.

[Ellie]

FedEx-Kinko's tends to be more capable of cutting off the binding than Office Max or Staples. Kinko's has the big ol' guillotine-type cutter that can take on almost any thickness of book; the others typically do not.

 

I prefer to have my books drilled for three holes so I can keep them in three-ring notebooks. If it's a book for the children, I remove each page and let the chld write on it with it lying flat on the table, then put it back into the notebook. A single page is much easier to write on than wrangling with a spiral-bound book. If it's a book for me, I can easily add paper (with my notes or whatnot), or take out a small section from a larger book if I'm using just a small section at a time (such as with KONOS--I take out the unit I'm working on instead of dragging around the whole volume).

[2squared]

I use a print shop as well. The little newspaper in our town has a big cutter, so I go there. A print shop will also have the big machines for 3 hole drilling.

[blondeviolin]

Our Office Depot has a laser-y thing that chops really smoothly.

[rieshy]

Office Max killed my 100 Easy Lessons when they tried to cut the binding off. I had to throw the whole book out- no salvage possible. They were very apologetic and did a bunch of printing for free to make up the $ lost but now my local one won't cut bindings at all.

[Χά�ων]

Be careful at office type stores, they provide printer services but are not geared for the heavier types of books. I have been doing this for most of my homeschool career and always go to an actual print/ copy shop. It is not anymore expensive then the office stores but these type of stores are geared for binding and can cut bindings off books well over an inch thick.

 

I agree with this.

[Guest Officeronin]

Woo Hoo! Something I know about!

 

I used to work for an Insty-Prints franchise while in school as a bindery tech. Cutting the binding off a textbook with a 3 ton cutter is easy. On a glued binding (as opposed to a regular stiched binding), they will just cut a little more off and avoid the glue contacting the blade entirely. Cleaning the blade is no fun at all.

 

As far as rebinding:

 

1. A spiral bind is a very labor intensive process to get all the holes right. Generally, they would prefer to just photocopy on pre-drilled or pre-cut stock. Obviously, they will likely not do this on copyrighted material. Velo binding and comb binding share the same issues. If you do a lot of it, a comb binding machine is a little under $100, but the manual ones last forever, so used should also be fine. Combs are 5-30 cents each, in bulk.

 

2. 3 hole punch is easy -- you can do it at home, if you like. Take two 2 foot hardwood 1x4s connected together with 3/4 inch carriage bolts (don't forget washers or you will split the wood!), sandwich the material between them (evenly and tightly -- the smaller you are, the bigger the wrench you should use), and use a drill press at low speed. (When you have the material sandwiched and tightened, you should be able to pick up the frame, book and all, and shake vigorously without the pages moving at all.) You can use the same contraption as a padding press -- paint white glue along one edge, let dry, and have an endless supply of tear-off notepads.

[Ellie]

Our Office Depot has a laser-y thing that chops really smoothly.

 

 

Lucky you. :-) Only FedEx/Kinkos has that where I live.

 

Once I took a book to a printer (as opposed to the copying services provided by FedEx, Office Depot, and Staples); he had the right equipment, but he also charged more than Kinko's.

[blondeviolin]

Lucky you. :-) Only FedEx/Kinkos has that where I live.

 

Once I took a book to a printer (as opposed to the copying services provided by FedEx, Office Depot, and Staples); he had the right equipment, but he also charged more than Kinko's.

 

Yeah. We just have to be careful we don't get the new hires trying to work the machine. Then there may be pages still stuck together, or it done completely wrong. If it's obvious they don't know what they're doing, we ask for someone else.

[Guest cfidel]

I just returned from Staples where I went to have a binding cut off a 335 page AIMS activities book in order to copy the pages more easily.  Robert, the copy center guy, cut it for me right then, no waiting, and didn't even charge me!  Talk about saving the day!  I knew about the risk of a "slant" to the pages after cutting (I used to work in an actual copy shop), but it wasn't a deal-breaker since this was not any kind of heirloom book.  However, Robert did such a great job that there is no slant to the pages!  Now to 3-hole punch the thing and put it in a binder.

[songsparrow]

I've cut the binding off a bunch of paperback books and workbooks this year.  I used a quilting ruler and a rotary cutter (the same one I use for fabric, only I save my duller blades and use them for paper).  I just lined the ruler up close to the spine, and ran the rotary cutter along the ruler.  With some pressure, you can cut quite a few pages at a time.  You just have to be careful as you get down into thicker books that the spine and pages don't get twisted, so that you're cutting further away from the spine - if that happens, your pages will be different widths.

 

Once I had the binding cut off, I punched the sheets with a ProClick machine and bound them with a ProClick spine (they come in 3 sizes, and will hold up to 0.625" thick).    

[duckens]

This is my new favorite hobby!  I think I've had 5 or 6 books chopped within the past 2 weeks.

 

I go to Copyworks in our local campustown.  Cost: $1/binding.  I have to take cash because they won't let me use a debit for less than $5.

 

Plan ahead for how you want to carry your pages home.  I did not want my pages bound, because I like them loose for copying the ones I need.  For those, I carried a folder to put the pages in.  One of them needed to be drilled for a 3 ring binder.  I took the binder along and put my pages in before leaving the store.

[Madeline05]

I've never done this before! I didn't realize how popular it was. I've always thought that textbooks or workbooks should be spiral bound, I'm sure there's a good reason most of them are not, but it seems to be a really convenient functionality.

 

duckens brings up a great point about keeping them loose for easy copying. Do you think a good alternative would be to get those round metal clasps like the ones inside of binders so that you could always open them up to take out sheets (I wouldn't want a binder though because I like to be able to flip the pages around)

 

[songsparrow]

duckens brings up a great point about keeping them loose for easy copying. Do you think a good alternative would be to get those round metal clasps like the ones inside of binders so that you could always open them up to take out sheets (I wouldn't want a binder though because I like to be able to flip the pages around)

 

If you use a ProClick binding, you can open the spiral and take out pages for copying, then return them to the spiral binding and close it back up.

[carriede]

 

I've never done this before! I didn't realize how popular it was. I've always thought that textbooks or workbooks should be spiral bound, I'm sure there's a good reason most of them are not, but it seems to be a really convenient functionality.

 

duckens brings up a great point about keeping them loose for easy copying. Do you think a good alternative would be to get those round metal clasps like the ones inside of binders so that you could always open them up to take out sheets (I wouldn't want a binder though because I like to be able to flip the pages around)

How about a large envelope?

[SebastianCat]

 

I've never done this before! I didn't realize how popular it was. I've always thought that textbooks or workbooks should be spiral bound, I'm sure there's a good reason most of them are not, but it seems to be a really convenient functionality.

 

duckens brings up a great point about keeping them loose for easy copying. Do you think a good alternative would be to get those round metal clasps like the ones inside of binders so that you could always open them up to take out sheets (I wouldn't want a binder though because I like to be able to flip the pages around)

 

 

 

Is it really THAT cheap?   I had no idea.   I've torn out perforated pages from entire workbooks by hand a few times.   If it's only $1 per binding to have it chopped off, I'll never do that again.

 

Can others share how much you've paid for this?   How about having holes drilled for a 3-ring binder?  (I've done that myself for entire workbooks too, with a regular hole punch a few pages at a time.)   I love the idea of drilling them with a drill press, but that's one piece of equipment DH doesn't have.

[crazyforlatin]

 

I've never done this before! I didn't realize how popular it was. I've always thought that textbooks or workbooks should be spiral bound, I'm sure there's a good reason most of them are not, but it seems to be a really convenient functionality.

 

duckens brings up a great point about keeping them loose for easy copying. Do you think a good alternative would be to get those round metal clasps like the ones inside of binders so that you could always open them up to take out sheets (I wouldn't want a binder though because I like to be able to flip the pages around)

I use binder rings for ease of turning pages and the low cost factor. I don't like a row of binders on a shelf for some reason. And, binders are expensive.

 

I just cut Writing and Rhetoric with a sharp pocket knife, hole-punched them, and used binder rings to keep them together. Kinko's charges $5 minimum to cut books here and I can't spend that amount when the book costs about $17.

[duckens]

 

Is it really THAT cheap?   I had no idea.   I've torn out perforated pages from entire workbooks by hand a few times.   If it's only $1 per binding to have it chopped off, I'll never do that again.

 

I'm sure the price varies by location...but it is a lesson to shop around.  Even if you can find a copy shop an hour away that will do it for $1.00/binding, just plan ahead and do it when you go to that town for a field trip.

 

Drilling holes for a 3-ring binder is 1c/page.  126pages + 2 covers = $1.28.

 

Again, local prices may vary.  We live in a college town, so there is competition of 2-3 copyshops just in campus town, another downtown, and university copy services on campus (2 locations).