Bookbinding HOWTO Step 3: Piercing the holes

Before we start sewing everything together, we’re going to need several holes in each booklet to pass the thread through the folds. Instead of sewing directly and piercing each one on the fly with the needle -which, by the way, is hard unless you’re from planet Krypton-, we’re going to prepare each booklet beforehand so that we end up with every sewing point properly marked on every single one of the folds.

You can devise whatever method you come up with, but I think the easiest way to do these holes is making a pile of paper, clamping it and using a knife to cut through until you reach the center of the folds. These are the tools of the trade: a couple of clamps, some rubber bands and a pair of strips of whatever material you find that can be used to hold the paper firmly. In my case I use two metal pieces that were left over from one of the shelves I have in my junk room.

You could build some kind of wooden structure to do the same thing that would be more handy, but this works for me. At least for now.

So, the process is fairly simple: stack the booklets making sure you don’t have any of them upside down and place the strips so that approximately 5mm are left at the side of the folds.

Then use the rubber bands to hold things together. They should be tight, but some leverage should be left to make the final adjustments.

That is the knife I use, by the way. Nothing special. Just a long bread knife. Once you have the rubber bands on you can gently align the booklets one more time. It’s your last chance to shape the book, so you should be thorough. I use whatever I’ve got at hand to flick the booklets into their final position: a wooden stripe, a notebook and even the knife you see in the photo. You should be gentle and neither bend the booklets nor leave marks during the process. Once you’re done you can use the clamps to keep everything in position during the next phase.

Finally make the cuts in one or two moves of the knife. The more you make, the better your book will be in the end. The problem is it also takes time to sew through every line of holes. Two cuts isn’t enough unless your making a really small book. For an A5 book such as these, 3 cuts is the absolute minimum if you don’t want it to be extremely fragile. I’ve tried with 4 and 5 lines of holes, but the extra time used to sew the book gets longer and longer. I don’t really think it is worth the effort.

Normally I make one of the cuts right in the middle, and the other two at the opposite sides, more or less at 1 cm of the border. I usually don’t align the outer cuts at precisely the same distance as a security measure. If by any chance one of the booklets gets flipped upside down while I’m sewing them together, the asymmetry of the cuts is a good visual warning.

Once you are done, you can remove the clamps and you should be left with something like this. A nice stack of booklets ready to be sewn. You can see the three lines of holes made after the cuts.

Update: Check out the complete bookbinding-howto series.