I recently got into watching YouTube bookbinding as a way to fall asleep at night. Then I found a local book and stationary studio for hobbyists to learn as a community. It’s not something I have time for right now, but it’s the kind of hobby I’d love to try one day.
It's a really neat hobby. It's great for gifts, especially if you take the high quality artistic approach. I like to do simple "perfect binding" because it saves money (materials are probably around a penny per page), gets me the book faster than buying it, and makes all my books consistent in font, size, and cover style.
How do you handle printing? I've got a color laser (that I'll generally run B&W), but it seems like "pigment inkjet" is actually the correct choice for the paper+ink combo.
What's your experience / recommendation?
My technical workflow (for personal books) is `Makefile` + `frontmatter.tex` + `chapter-*.md` + `endmatter.tex` and some unholy abomination of pandoc or whatever that'll stitch it all together and some other software to run imposition, etc.
I'll (at some point) take a look at what you're doing, but it's a really neat hobby- I've been doing 1-2 books at a time (~50-100 pages) w/ kettle stitching and hard-cover (with ribbons of course!).
...looking through your recommendations, but don't see mention of pigment-based ink/printers or short-grain paper (ChurchPaper was where I got some of mine from). Is the ET-8550 "the one" that you've found? Having something "large format" for printing is tempting, but it'd probably be better to outsource at $1-5/page compared to a more compact printer. What about drying out or long-term storage of inkjet / print heads?
re: the Guillotine, I've been tempted by seeing some hydraulic manual cutters, but it seems like big space investment... how have you experienced it? They're saying 400 pages (a whole ream?) on the one you've linked but that seems like a stretch.
My understanding is that ink tank printers can be cheaper per page, but lasers can be faster and possibly more durable. I think professional machines tend to be laser printers. I haven't had a problem with the heads drying out but I try to use my printers at least weekly.
I like the Epson ink tank printers and have been happy with them. I usually use cheap generic ink. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there are better options though.
I mostly do perfect bound books so I can use normal printer paper, center the pages, and it will be in the correct grain direction. Otherwise you'll have to order through dedicated specialty paper suppliers and also might need a larger format printer. In a pinch, you can ignore grain direction but the end result definitely isn't as good. Once I run out of my current cover paper, I'll probably order coated on 1 side short grain paper from some specialty paper supplier.
I also use a one sided laminator on the cover which makes the cover much more durable.
I think the manual cutter works well enough for me. It does work at 400 pages with some muscle. Upgrading to a programmable cutter would be the next step for me, but it would only be needed if you're making 5+ books a day.
You could print smaller booklets in half-page format and use stapled or sewn binding, for a more durable and higher-quality result. That could be done without needing a larger-format printer. It might be especially appropriate for shorter text such as individual articles, and this was often the historical practice with e.g. octavo books which were quite popular back in the day.
Wowee, a dedicated machine! I built my own lying press with wooden cutting boards, and neatened out the edges of my text blocks with the blade of a chisel/single bevel utility knife that could be laid flat. I used an old application called Cheap Impostor that converted PDFs to printable signatures for me.
I was writing an honors thesis then, and DIYing my old books was much more interesting (and relaxing) way to get a book that I'd otherwise have to wait a month to get via interlibrary loan. Don't ask me where I got the scanned pages from...
> Calls to the help line about sports betting, including daily fantasy sports, have jumped 314 percent since Ohio legalized the practice in 2023, becoming one of the 39 states to do so after a federal ban was struck down in 2018. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has said that he regrets signing the legislation that allowed sports gambling to be legal in his state, a position he reaffirmed in a recent interview. Mr. DeWine vowed that he would “absolutely” sign a law repealing sports gambling, if there were enough votes in the legislature to make that happen.
> The number of people telling Ohio operators that they’re considering taking their own life has more than doubled since 2022, corresponding with the legalization of sports betting.
It’s funny because the Therac-25 failures led the FDA to care about software defects. Before the Therac-25 incidents, software was considered a black box component.
It’s almost as if we’re an entirely reactive species that can’t think ahead forward on solving problems that aren’t as a result of some massive tragic event
So I wonder then *curiously* what kind of massive tragic event we’re going to have to have before everybody wakes up and realizes superhuman artificial intelligence is something they need to pay attention to politically
>> It’s almost as if we’re an entirely reactive species that can’t think ahead forward on solving problems that aren’t as a result of some massive tragic event
That's not a characteristic of the species but of specific tendencies within Western civilization. There's certainly people ringing all sorts of alarm bells for digital technology, the climate, food production, etc etc, and they are very often dismissed as "alarmist".
And then there's the motivated reasoning of industrial interests. Think tobacco, asbestos, oil, leaded gasoline, and so on. It's not that we don't know the possible harms, it's just that monetary interests trump the need for health and safety, a.k.a. "health and safety gone mad".
It doesn't denote primarily political usage, although that is my interpretation. Here are a few given examples:
> The Clippers so far have been reactionary in the playoffs. — Los Angeles Times, 13 June 2021
> The demise of the style was spurred by a reactionary resurgence of Classicism. — Regina Cole, Forbes, 1 Jan. 2023
> However, the signing had been in the works for weeks and was not a reactionary move in the wake of Sjöberg’s injury. — Daniel Boniface, The Denver Post, 14 Mar. 2017
>But in most people, facial bloating and undereye puffiness are usually just reactionary. — Georgia Casey, Allure, 6 Feb. 2026
I'm increasingly convinced of the need for professional licensing for software engineering. You get a degree, and sit through that ethics course, and take an exam to get a license, or you don't get to practice. Do unethical things, enjoy major liability.
Software engineers can do just as much damage as civil engineers, automotive engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc...but the industry overall has a disgustingly casual attitude.
The law is just someones else encoded ethics for a moment. You don't want your moral to change with the current administration. An ethics course is about thinking about ethics, it is not a mind-altering propaganda action.
¹ https://matthodges.com/posts/2023-10-01-BIDEN-binary-inferen...
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