Hi,

I'm looking at the feasibility of Saddle Stitching the ashcan of Black Cadillacs.

I'm aware of this neat device, the Booklet Stapler, specifically the Stanley Bostitch B440SB.

Here's my question: they quote a capacity of 20 pages of 16lb paper.

That's a 40-page game.  Yeesh.  That's not much.

How do I get my page count up?

Thanks,
D

Larger pages? Larger stapler? Another binding solution?

Personally, I haven't found it too onerous to have a very light-weight digital printer do my saddle stitching, it's cheap enough if you're doing enough copies. Of course it'd be nice to do stuff like this in-house as well. How many copies were you thinking of doing? We do runs of under a dozen copies routinely with generic staplers (not intended for pamphlets, specifically), and that works well enough.

If you print it on 11" x 17" paper and the saddle stitcher can do a center fold, 20 sheets would be 80 pages.

By comparison, the thickest the hand stapler we have presently can do is center staple 12 pages. ala, a 48 page book.

(whenever making center folded booklets, 1 sheet = 4 pages).

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com

Hi Eero,

Thanks for the suggestions.  I was originally planning to do this as a coilbound book.  The catch is that I'm doing stainless steel covers (that's not crazy for me - I'm in the machining trade).  Although I'm fully capable of cutting & punching the covers myself, the trick will be to guarantee that the hole pattern lines up with the pages (so that the covers aren't sitting too high or too low).

I decided instead to hinge the covers with a pliable material (say, bookbinders' tape) and saddle stitch the whole affair.

Larger pages are a thought, although that means larger covers.  Not too thrilled 'bout that.

Hi Ryan,
D'oh.  x4, not x2.  Colour me sheepish.  Thanks!  80 pages (lose a few to the cover, I'm sure) puts things into the realm of possibility.

Any sense of how heavy 16lb paper is?  Am I going to make up a few pages by going with flimsier paper?

Thanks!
D

I can't say that I am familiar with 16lb. Standard "copy paper" is most typically 20lb offset bond. Fairly thin stuff.

This 16lb stuff. Is is glossy, coated or otherwise some kind of more dense fiber paper? If its made anything like offset bond, I can only imagine it would seem pretty cheap.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com

Hi Ryan,

I wish that I could provide more info on the 16lb paper.  However, I'm just quoting what Bostitch specs out on their webpage.

D

Hi Darcy,

I'd check into that 16 lb business. Maybe it means something else from the usual weight measures. I use 50 lb for my books which is pretty solid, and 20 lb is about as thin as one should go without having the paper tear like tissue. So if 16 lb is merely thinner than that, I shudder to consider it. But as I say, maybe the designation means something else entirely.

My Numero Uno advice for all printer issues is this: never mind what the website says. Not for options, not for quotes, nothing. Contact a rep directly and get a complete, thorough description of exactly what you need to know, and describe the project to him or her carefully. Have them generate a quote from that conversation.

Best, Ron

Could be the 16lb is mean to refer to a newsprint stock of some sort. Some small newsprint mags are still saddle stitched rather than glued. But those old stitcher models haven't really been updated mechanically in a long time. So much more of the mag industry used to get saddle stitched than now.

IF that is what the specs refer to, than yeah, you better cut that page count down by dividing it by 2 or 3. For offset stocks rather than glossy stocks, I recommend 50 or 60lb bond. We typically use 60lb.

From my experience, unless its an industrial sized stapler and using larger than normal staples, 12 sheets or so it the max. For our POD printing we cut off saddle stitched books at 48 pages for that reason.

Much more than 60 pages or so and you start to get a rather odd looking book anyway. As in, the the curve around the the folded spine is noticeably wider than the rest of the book as the pages lay flat.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com