Book Binding

Many years ago I worked for Minuteman Press and we had several machines that did the majority of the steps in this process.  Just in case you want to try this yourself, the tutorial doesn't tell you the type of glue to use.  At Minuteman we used regular Elmers White glue.  We bought it by the case in gallon jugs.  We had a machine that would punch the holes, another that would automatically sew the parts together, Another machine to cut all of our paper and cardboard for the binding, and another designed to cut the fabric we used for the covers.  Basically all the steps you see in the tutorial.  Except we used machines for about 85% of it.  The hardest part was getting all the pieces of the book in order.  Take 1 from this stack, then 1 from that stack then 1 from the next stack and so forth.  That we did by hand.  Also we printed the content ran it through a machine to fold and cut it.  All in all we would go from whatever you wanted printed and bound to 10 boxes equaling 250 books (Our minimum order) in about 9 days.  If you wanted Leather Bound it would take longer depending on the design you wanted, the type of leather, and if you wanted glued or stitched edges and embossing.  But if you wanted to bind a book for yourself this tutorial shows how to do it.

H/t to Hack-a-day