I've just spent the last weekend printing a binding book for Origins and GenCon. I'll be at Origins later this week. Anybody who is there who would like to see what you can make at home - and or talk about home printing, drop by my booth - Hamster Press.

You'll know your there when you see the poor little plush hamster pressed between two boards!

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

I'll be swinging by.

I've got a soft spot in my heart for traditional hand book-binding.

I just want to see the Hamster sandwich.

Chris, I'm eager to see it. I'll stop by at GenCon!

I did some book binding in college, but haven't tried it since. I do bind all my books with office equipment -- laser printer, and a comb binder. I'm always interested to see what other people are doing in that area.

We do all our books productions in house.

Well, except for the full color cover. We "could" do that in house as well, but it actually costs less and is FAR less time consuming just to have it printed at a commercial printer at a 1000 quantity. But we group print 4 book covers at once to trim the cost per cover down by about 60%.

The guts if the books we print ourselves on digital duplicators, hand collate (yes, a high speed collating machine is very high on our list of equipment to purchase next) and then bind it with a smaller perfect binder (by smaller, I mean does 1 book at a time..the darn thing weighs 1500lbs) and then do the trimming work using a small commercial paper cutter.

The extremely cheap production method offsets the extra time investment we have in making the books. And we can print and inventory in small lots of just 75-150 books at a time. We *could* do smaller runs, but find doing so doesn't prodvide a good time vs cost benefit.

I've looked at perfect binding machies. They are certainly an option. I believe there is one that costs around $3000. I opted for a smyth sewing machine instead because I wanted to make books that could be opened all the way and not have the pages come out.

The point to all you would be home printers out there is that machines are VERY useful. I'd love to have a gluing machine, a larger paper cutter for cutting book board, a 11x17 laser printer, a color 11x17 laser printer. Which will mean maybe $5000 more in machines. I can't afford that now but someday I will.

I checked out the Guild of Blades web page and they look like an interesting company. Small yet prolific, they've been through the trials of distribution and obviously make enough to have four workers. Well done! You've got me beat all to hell.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

Chris, when you refer to a "perfect binding machine," how does that differ from a thermal binding machine? Just a different adhesive? Or does it have other functions that a thermal binder doesn't?

Here are two products

GBC Therm-A-Bind T100 Thermal Binding Machine
Perfect for the Small/Medium Office - Fully Automatic - Library Quality Appearance $199.99

Perfect Bind - Bind-Fast 5 Perfect Binder Padder, Report Binder and Perfect Binder.
Was $3000 but now is evidentally discontinued. Pity - looked like a nice machine.

I own a thermal binder - it is effectively a hot plate for reheating hot glue. It is useful in repairing perfect bound books so I keep it around. It is not useful to bind a print run of books because it does not fan the pages so the glue gets attached well and does not clamp them together. The bind fast glues and clamps and presumable fans the pages (I've not seen one operated.) It was intended for church or small organization use for short run binding jobs. It looke like the next step up is a $7000 machine (which is way to dear for my blood).

Though the Guild of Blades guys might cringe at the thought - I've used a hot glue gun, some boards and c clamps to do a basic glue bound book. If you don't have cash many of these things can still be done. Mind you the pages still come out so this is far from a perfect solution!

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

Hi Chris,

If by "have gone through the trials of distribution" you mean worked with most of the hobby game distributors, but now self distribute, then yes. We currently do not deal with a single hobby game distributor in North America. We sell direct to the public online and through other venues, which is where the bulk of our revenues are derived. And only recently have we got organized enough to start making some decent inroads with regards to making sales directly to retailers.

I have personally found the current distribution system to be down right hostile to mid sized and small publishers. And certainly not worth contemplating as an indie publisher.

Regarding the Bind Fast perfect binder, be happy you didn't get it. I checked out that model when it first came out and it was not very good. While it looked like a real perfect binder, it was mostly just an overly large and glorified thermal binder. The binder we currently use is a Sulby Minabinder. It is an older model, pre dating the new wave of eletronically controlled machines, and that was exactly what we were after. It has a motor to run the grinder, glue wheel and binding plate, but no programming options whatsoever. But because it is purely a mechanic beast, it is easily fixed by using any of several dozen local machine shops.

What is the difference between a thermal binder and a real perfect binding machine.

1) Thermal Binders are usually smaller desk top machines. They usually require the use of pre bought generic covers that have a glue strip built into them along the spin, or some models let you buy separate glue strips that you can place for use with any other printed cover you have. The thermal binding machine them helps clap a pre scored cover around the guts of a book (the collated, not-yet-bound interior of the booklet) and melts the glue strip to the cover.

2) Perfect binders come from smaller machines (small here being relative...from 500lbs for small one off machines to many many tons and a factory floor for fully automated high volume machines) to very large ones. I'll just discuss the smaller one off machines, as thats about what any small publisher might think to afford. These machines have a clamp system that will hold the guts of the book together, then a motorized track that will guide those guts down a short binding process. That process begins with running the spine of the booklet interiors across what can only be called a paper shredder. This guts up the spine of the interiors greatly, making it so that there are ten times as many hold spots for the glue of the binding, which is where the booklet interiors are run across next. It is run across a hot glue tank with a wheel that effectly rolls hot binding glue across the shredded spine of the book. Finally the book is rolled to a binding plate where the plate, holding a cover upside down, is brought up with a whole lot of pressure to meet the glued spine of the book. Good machines also crimp the cover, sort of folding/rolling it over both sides of the book interiors.

When the binding is done, you have a cover attached very solidly to the booklet interiors all held together in booklet format. Typically after bindering, you then have to take a stack of bound books and place them under a larger paper trimmer and trim the three non bound sides of the book to help trip the cover to the exact size of the booklet interiors. This is how books that are printing that goes to the edge of the paper are made, as they are merely printed on larger paper, then trimmed down to size (trimmed just past the edge of the printing).

Anyway, the Bind Fast machine was severly lacking because it had not shredding process, so the bindings it created were weak and the books could often fall apart with a little use.

Also, while large format laser printers are nice and we'll be upgrading ours soon to a nice model with refillable cartride options, but nothing beats the effectiveness cost wise than a digital duplicator. Our oldest model doesn't print the sharpest, but our ink costs is running us only $.0001 per page printed due to a crazy close out deal we got on a large order of ink. However, even before that it was only costing $.001 per page.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

Digital Duplicator, I want one! I'll check this out on the internet. Ink is my biggest cost now.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

Okay, I'm a home printing whore - I've climbed the mountain (ebay) and seen the light. I've got a Ricoh JP5000 heading my way. It came at a good price - only driven by a little old lady from Passadena. And if what the manufacturer says is true it will take about 1/3rd a cent per page to print. That is a 1/10th of my dry ink costs. So if this works out the machine will pay for itself by the end of the year!

Ryan, thanks for the clue!

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

Hi Chris,

Ricoh. Yikes. We've found that is not neccessary a good brand to own. Not that it has a bad reputation, but rather, Ricoh very aggressively limits and protects the companies it "authorizes" to repair the suckers. When the one Riso machine we have needs fixing, we have a local shop that looks at it for $90 an hour and has always managed to do all repairs within the minimum one hour billing. I can't get a Ricoh technician out to look at the other machine for less than a $250 minimum commitment.

But yeah, even with the occassional repair costs, these machines are great.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

Oh well, live and learn. Still it's cheaper than laser printing.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

To keep this post and thread educationally relevant to other forge readers, what you've seen is how I buy machines. I hear of something and one of two things happens. I research it and decide to wait or I research it and look to buy. I've found ebay a great place to get used equipment cheap. Once I decide to buy I look for a deal and join in the auction (usually in the last minute - no need to run up the price by starting the bidding war too soon!) The thing is that even if I make a mistake (like buying a machine that will cost a lot to repair) it is better than riding the fence. When I've done that I invariable pay more and am less satisfied with my purchase. (I learned this approach to selling from farmers - once you decide to sell the pigs sell them immediately otherwise the cost of their continued feeding cuts into what you will eventually make.)

nuff said.