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This article is the second in a series about making
paperback books by hand. If you don't already know how to make a paperback book by hand and would like to know more, please visit our first primer on this subject,
How to make your own paperback book, BY HAND!
Once you have made your paperback book you will undoubtedly notice that the edges are a bit rough. This is an unavoidable consequence of making the book by hand where precision is never really possible. In the professional printing industry a process is available where freshly bound books, hundreds of pages thick, can be trimmed in one quick pass. The machines work very much like a powerful guillotine that chops through the entire book in one single downward motion. The process is performed 3 times. Once for each edge of the book to be trimmed. The three edges of the book are the "leading edge" (where the reader opens the pages at.) The top edge and the bottom edge. When using one of these machines the trimming process is almost guaranteed to produce a professional result. However, in the small press we seldom have access to these machines, in which case trimming by hand is the next best option. I should warn you right now that trimming by hand is not an easy process and at the time of this writing (05/30/2001) can only be done on the "leading edge" of the book. Furthermore the thicker the book, the harder it becomes. Beyond an inch thick it’s all but impossible. No matter what, if the book is thicker than your cutting blade is long, trimming will be impossible. If you plan to trim by hand please be sure you have the necessary patients and discipline because even a small mistake early in the trim can ruin the book as you cut deeper and deeper into it. One final thing before I move on to how to do a trim by hand. No matter how good you get at this, you will "NEVER" match the quality of a cut that a specially designed machine can produce. With that in mind let’s move on to how it’s done. What you will need You will need an exacto knife, a cutting surface such as a "friskars cutting mat" or a flat piece of compact cardboard similar to the kind that backs paper tablets or Bristol Board pads. Do not use corrugated card board. It will not provide the support for you knife that you will need. You will also need a square plaster trowel that is long enough to span the length of your book and leave several inches of extra overhang. The plaster trowel can be bought from any good hardware store. The reason for the trowel is that it provides a stiff straight edge cutting surface with a handle that elevates your hand above the book, thus reducing the chance of accidentally cutting yourself as well as making straight, precise trims easier to perform. You’ll need a special blade for your exacto knife. It’s a chisel blade that you will need to sharpen to add an additional cutting surface to. To do this you will need a good sharpening stone. These should be available anywhere pocket knives are sold. The need for a chisel shaped blade is to make sure that when you cut this thick book, the cut is as square as possible. Normal exacto blades are sharpened on both sides of the metal forming a "V" shaped cutting surface. As you cut deeper into the book this "V" shape wants to wedge the cut out away from the straight edge making a cut that looks like an angle " \ " when you really want a cut that looks square " | ". A chisel shaped blade is sharpened on one side of the metal only making a wedge shaped cutting surface that is flat on one side. " |/ " It’s this perfectly flat edge that will allow the blade to remain against the straight edge for the whole depth of the cut. Because commercially available blades are only sharpened on one edge in a way that makes trimming a book with them is all but impossible, you will need to sharpen another cutting surface to this blade along one of it it’s edges. This will be determined by what hand you intend to hold the knife with while trimming the book. I’m left handed so I sharpened my blade so that it works while being held with my left hand. Besides this point, the one thing you "MUST" do, is sharpen the blade on the same side of the metal as the original sharpening of the blade. This way you will avoid accidentally making a "V" shape cutting surface. Trimming your book and what you can expect. Once you have all of the necessary materials and a chisel blade that has been sharpened with an additional cutting surface, you are ready to trim your book. (Make sure your newly created cutting edge is razor sharp. This will make trimming much easier) Place the plaster trowel on top of the book and align the edge of the trowel in such a way that it is positioned to trim the "leading edge". A minimum of ¼ inch trim is needed to ensure that all the pages will trim correctly. (Smaller trims tend to develop problems with "Slivering" which means that paper in the book wont cut straight and even, but rather will cut slivers that don’t span the whole length of the book. This creates real headaches as you cut deeper into the book because the paper won’t be evenly trimmed) Press down on the trowel to compress the pages firmly, and begin to gently cut away at the book with the xacto knife, making sure that the blade is always square to the straight edge. Strip by strip the leading edge of the book should be slicing off, and hopefully in a perfectly straight line. As you get deeper and deeper into the book you will notice that the blade uses the upper (trimmed) pages of the book as a straight edge in addition to the plaster trowel. If any problem occurs in these upper pages, then the mistakes will be translated to the lower pages and magnified. It’s this tendency for a hand held blade to wobble that makes trimming by hand so difficult. To further complicate matters, as you trim, your blade will be getting dull. In some cases you will have to stop your trimming to re sharpen the blade. I recommend that you carefully leave the trowel in place and re-sharpen the blade often. A dull blade has a tendency to tear paper rather than slice it. What you can expect if you have done everything right is a smooth, relatively clean trim that will be perfectly straight on the side you started the trim and a mildly wobbly where the trim ended. This shouldn’t bee too noticeable though and will make the reading experience of your book more enjoyable. If things didn’t go well, then you can expect a shredded and very wobbly trim that in many cases is worse than the original rough finish of a raw untrimmed book. Practice. Before trimming a real book, I suggest you make several blank books to practice on that are of the same size and thickness of your planned real book. This will give you the necessary experience, good or bad, that will help you if you decide to trim your book by hand. Why trim by hand? You may be wondering why you would want to trim your book by hand at all given the difficulties involved with this process. I can say that in many cases trimming will be unnecessary. However, a good trim can make flipping through the pages of a book much easier, and if done right can add a measure of professionalism to the finished product. Additionally, you may have material that you don’t want just anybody to see like an employee at a print shop that offers professional trimming for a modest fee. This could include porn or radical political views or family materials that you wouldn’t want share with just any ole’ person, yet you still may want the book to look as professional as possible for your intended audience. In these cases, trimming by hand is your cheapest option. The only other option is to buy a heavy duty paper trimmer like the "Martin Yale 7000E" which sells for about $800.00 on the Internet. (that’s about as cheep as they get) For most people in the small press that is too expensive. So there you have it. Trimming a home made paperback book by hand is not easy, and personally, I do not recommend amateurs attempt this on a real book until they have gotten some practice on blank books first. But if you’re brave and willing to take some chances, then go for it! |