Episode: 2103
Title: HPR2103: DIY Book Binding
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2103/hpr2103.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 14:19:50

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This is HPR episode 2,103 entitled DIY book binding.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 11 minutes long.
The summer is with no show in the queue, Ken Russian in a show on his latest hacks.
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Hi everybody, this is Ken Fallon, recording another episode for Hector Public Radio.
Today is called the episode is about book binding.
What I'm on about here is there's a lot of information available freely available on the internet that you can download as PDFs.
I don't really like reading stuff on ereaders.
The reason for that is I just find it easier to read a book, especially a technical book where you're flipping back to something and you're flipping forward and you can skip over sections.
It gives a far better overview in my opinion than a regular old then doing it on a e-device.
Also the e-devices for me suffer from the technical aspect in so far as you want to read somewhere very quickly.
I've got a family life here and when I get 5 minutes read it literally is that 5 minutes and the booting up procedure and inevitably the kids have been messing with the e-readers or tablets and they're off.
It's got all sorts of other junk on it and it's slow to boot up and yeah I know you can have an e-reader device but yeah essentially I'm not a big fan of e-reading devices that I do like the physical copies.
So that brings me to the next thing. There's a lot of books or expenses by God, they're expensive, yes.
What isn't expensive is for 5 euros you can get a room of paper, 500 sheets and with my continuous ink supply system I can basically print off PDFs.
And yes you can go, oh I'm killing the planet, killing the planet, but on the other hand you know the paper is a renewable resource whereas heavy earth metals used in e-reader devices isn't so I'll leave it up to the listener to put a show together on why I'm so evil printing off books.
But one of the things that I do for small how-tos and that sort of thing what I tend to do is print off in booklet form and what that is on an A4 page which is kind of letter landscape.
A4 is made so that it can fold over and fold over and fold over.
So by printing four pages on a sheet you can have a nice little booklet form and I use that quite a lot of work and I have ring binders as well that I use you know thick lever arch ring binders that I use for going to stuff.
It's not as nice or as convenient as holding a book but because then it's only it's only held in two places where you punch a hole.
The other option is when we have here is a you know machine perforation machine where it makes lots of holes and you get those plastic things at the end that's a clamp over the books.
I don't like those either they find the noise of the turning the pages irritating and inevitably they'll fall and one of the fingers that hold the pages together gets busted and that's not ideal.
I do like the concept of book binding you know a physical book that's bound.
So I was thinking about that and I came across a web page that had a that basically was about book binding and whatever but essentially it comes down to what I've done here.
And I tried my first experiment yesterday with a free and open source book from a robot framework and I printed that off tried it.
And to be honest yesterday evening I thought the project was actually going to be a bit of a disaster but then I woke up this morning and the thing had dried and yes it's a book.
It's a pretty crappy bound book book nonetheless.
So I print off a booklet form so a four and so to on each sheet of paper and landscape there's two portrait pages and on the back there's two portrait pages.
So if your page goes from one to a hundred pages the first page will be one.
So on the first page that comes out of the printer you have page one and page a hundred and then on the other side is page two and page 99 and then the next sheet paper that comes out is page three, four and 98 and 97 and so forth.
And what that leaves is a sheet of paper that you can cut on the middle.
And essentially that's what I did. I got two pieces of planks, two pieces straight edges and used these clamps here.
Yeah they're just just wood clamps from the pound shop and then clamped it over the center section of the book.
And then I used my trusty old jigsaw which I'll just unplug right now.
I find that an evil evil devices.
Exposed and exposed blade.
And then I just simply tried to go to straight and then as possible to cut the pages into.
Now I do have a small little guillotine thing but that kind of doesn't work for I'm up to a book printing a book here that's about 600 pages.
So that's a big amount of paper.
So the amount that you would put into a photocopier when you reload and that sort of thickness.
Yeah an inch, so 25, 30 millimeters or something like that.
And so when you cut it the first time it'll inevitably be a bit jaggedy.
So try and cut it as accurately as possible.
And then I fold the two of them, the two pages on top of each other and tap them down, tap them so that they're square.
Put down the planks again and then just come along with the jigsaw again and trim off the whole the whole back.
So once that's done I went down to the builder's merchants.
I actually had this stuff and it's a bow skewer tape which is a tape that you use to put on if you've got chalkboard or hipsplats here.
I think you call it drywall in the US.
There's a piece of tape.
It's about an inch or 25 millimeters, 25, 30 millimeters wide. Hold on, I'll open up.
And it's got all go a little like a sewn mesh with one millimeter or one millimeter squares of like plastic mesh netted to each other.
And it's slightly sticky on one side and it's used as a way for the plaster to be bound in between the joints.
So you come along with a plaster in between the joints and then you can paint over that, giving you a nice, giving you a little bit of structure for the plaster to adhere to.
So that's once it's hardened then you can paint over.
Now I'm using that on the back as a binding of the book just to give it something to hold on to rather than traditionally what you would do is you would take maybe a few centimeters of about a half a centimeter of paper.
And sew it together and then bind those all together and then glue them together and sew them all together on the back and then use the glue as just a way of hardening it up.
But I'm doing it kind of the other way around. I'm using this tape and I put the tape on and then move the clamp back a little bit so I've just cut it now and I expose it out about two half an inch, two centimeters.
And then I put this tape on just flat at the back for a start along the spine of the book and then I come along with my super cool PVC glue which is used to fit plastic pipes together.
And this would recommend it on the interwebs because it is flexible and allows you to flex it.
So what they say to do is apply this just put on the mesh which kind of sticks by itself then apply this and then that's absorbed into the paper.
And about 10 or 15 minutes come back apply another coat and do that. I did four coats on the first book but it was actually too much so three would be more than enough.
And then after the first coat I folded down the overhanging mesh so that it just came on the front page and the back page and then I'd do that down as well.
And then what they recommend you do after that is you make a you know cut out a cardboard piece of paper and you stick it to the front and you basically attach a cover somehow but I'm not that bothered to do that to be honest.
I just want to be able to read these books and kind of have them and then you know this has to be a fairly simple rough and ready sort of way of doing books.
And you know they went into a whole deal where you could get some cardboard and then cover with a t-shirt and whatever I'll send you the link to it.
But I'm afraid all my artistic flare could be put on a head of a very small pin.
But anyway so this is rough and ready but it kind of works and it means there's rather than having to pay 150 euros for essentially five euros.
I've got a well five 10 euros. I've got a book that is delivered faster and is usable from the work. So in the morning I'm doing two more books now and I'll basically have them ready to rock in the morning.
So there you go. That is a sort of John Colp type show out here in the garden doing something DIY-ish.
So tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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