A Wizard's Bookbinding Jig

My name is Jake Fee, and you can find me at https://fee.cool/. This is a project I worked on during the Christmas break of 2024.

Books and Stitches

I teach at a school where we lead book groups for students. These groups can have up to 20 or so students, and it is not always easy to find books for everyone to read along with.

PDFs, however, are easy to find. Printing off pages and stapling them together works okay, but it's much more fun to bind a book in a more permanent and crafty way.

Books and Stitches

I teach at a school where we lead book groups for students. These groups can have up to 20 or so students, and it is not always easy to find books for everyone to read along with.

PDFs, however, are easy to find. Printing off pages and stapling them together works okay, but it's much more fun to bind a book in a more permanent and crafty way.

I like the look of Japanese stab-binding books, and I also think that it is quite an easy bookbinding stitch to learn.

image source

image source

They can get quite complicated, but the basic idea is to punch a few holes and sew them together. Unlike a hardcover book, the binding here is very visible. I admire crafts like this that have no secrets. Other crafts like this are basketry and visible mending: there is no attempt to hide any of the elements of the stitch or weave.

The Jig

The thing about bookbinding is that it should be pretty precise. The book that we will be reading is A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, and the file I have acquired is about 200 pages. That means printed in booklet form there will be about 50 sheets of paper to bind together, and all the binding holes have to line up as perfectly as possible!

So, my goal is to create a small tool that can align the correct hole-spacing for a series of sheets.

The Jig

The thing about bookbinding is that it should be pretty precise. The book that we will be reading is A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, and the file I have acquired is about 200 pages. That means printed in booklet form there will be about 50 sheets of paper to bind together, and all the binding holes have to line up as perfectly as possible!

So, my goal is to create a small tool that can align the correct hole-spacing for a series of sheets.

Version I

So, my thought is to have three parts: a front, middle, and back. You can see I've created a 8.5"x5.5" blue rectangle here to simulate a piece of regular printer paper folded in half.

The yellow rectangles will be the top and bottom of the jig, and the C-shaped piece will be the middle. I'll glue them together like a sandwich so that a booklet can be placed inside, then holes punched through the green dots.

Version I

So, my thought is to have three parts: a front, middle, and back. You can see I've created a 8.5"x5.5" blue rectangle here to simulate a piece of regular printer paper folded in half.

The yellow rectangles will be the top and bottom of the jig, and the C-shaped piece will be the middle. I'll glue them together like a sandwich so that a booklet can be placed inside, then holes punched through the green dots.

I think the red dots could be used for bolts or for ties, or just for alignment.

Version II

Upon further reflection, I think the previous version is way too big and a bit ugly.

In this version, I've scaled it down a bit, made nice curves, and changed the shapes of edges. All stacked together, you can see that the back piece is a bit taller and the C-shaped piece has some curved corners so that a booklet can slide in easier.

Version II

Upon further reflection, I think the previous version is way too big and a bit ugly.

In this version, I've scaled it down a bit, made nice curves, and changed the shapes of edges. All stacked together, you can see that the back piece is a bit taller and the C-shaped piece has some curved corners so that a booklet can slide in easier.

After lasering this out of 1/8" MDF board and gluing it together, I think it looks great! You'll notice I kept the smooth sides facing inwards.

A booklet slides in nicely! One thing I am concerned about is that there is no easy way to hold the booklet in place while hole-punching. It doesn't slide around too much, so I don't think it'll be a problem, but if you're not paying attention it might slip out just a bit. I wonder if there is a way to pinch or clamp the booklets inside the jig?

The jig works great, but I'm a bit concerned that the holes are infringing on the text! When this book is all bound up I think it will be difficult to read the text close to the binding.

Onto the next version!

Version III

I have two goals with this version. First, I'd like to save as much material and space as possible. I'd also like to move the binding holes slightly closer to the edge of the booklet. The previous version had binding holes 0.5" away from the edge, and I'm going to cut that down to 0.25".

As you can see, this is all much thinner. I was worried that a piece too small would be fragile, but in the previous version I could tell that after gluing the jig together it was very sturdy. So I feel okay making these pieces much thinner.

Version III

I have two goals with this version. First, I'd like to save as much material and space as possible. I'd also like to move the binding holes slightly closer to the edge of the booklet. The previous version had binding holes 0.5" away from the edge, and I'm going to cut that down to 0.25".

As you can see, this is all much thinner. I was worried that a piece too small would be fragile, but in the previous version I could tell that after gluing the jig together it was very sturdy. So I feel okay making these pieces much thinner.

If you look closely, you can see I'm going for a similar kind of corner overlap as in the previous version. I like the back section being higher, the C-shaped section having a curved corner, and the front section being a bit shallow. Here's a view of the corner, zoomed in:

Onto the laser cutter! These are the settings I usually use for 1/8" MDF: speed 120, power FULL, and only 1 pass. It's important to arrange your steps so small things are cut out first and big shapes are cut out last! As the big shapes are cut out, they can settle or fall slightly askew from the rest of the material, which can misalign the rest of the cut.

This works great! Even when it's full, the poking is really easy. I experimented with adding two middle pieces instead of just one, so as to poke through more papers at the same time, but it was much harder to make a hole all the way through. So I'll stick with a single 1/8" piece in the middle.

Version IV

The last version worked great, but I sort of hate wood glue and I don't like the process of gluing little fiddly pieces of MDF together.

I wonder... if I can stitch the jig together instead?

Version IV

The last version worked great, but I sort of hate wood glue and I don't like the process of gluing little fiddly pieces of MDF together.

I wonder... if I can stitch the jig together instead?

Ready for the laser!

Adding these little stitching holes changed the cut time from about 6 minutes to about 9 minutes!

Unfortunately just stitching these together leaves them a little loose, but sticking the layers together using a bit of a cheap gluestick works perfect.