Cutting Books

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by Valloric

I once used a chainsaw to cut the binding. True story!

So me and my father were cutting down a tree in my grandmother's back yard when it suddenly occurred to me I could use this to cut the binding. This probably had something a lot to do with the wine we had for lunch.

You might want to code this equation into Sigil:

(operating chainsaw) + (consuming alcohol) = (recipe for disaster)

[rogue_ronin]

Originally Posted by yekim54

You might want to code this equation into Sigil:

(operating chainsaw) + (consuming alcohol) = (recipe for disaster)

Naw. As long as he's coding it, it should be:

(operating chainsaw) + (consuming alcohol) = (recipe for fun!)

Why guarantee disaster when you don't have to?

m a r

[Tom2112]

Depending on how many you have to do, I would suggest purchasing your own guillotine cutter. I just bought one for less than $100 on ebay.

Search ebay for:
12" HEAVY DUTY INDUSTRIAL GUILLOTINE STACK PAPER CUTTER

If you're planning to cut more than 100 books, this will save you money in the long run compared to paying to have it done. Also the cutter works very well. It is quick and easy, and that makes it worth twice as much.

[freecia]

Originally Posted by Tom2112

Depending on how many you have to do, I would suggest purchasing your own guillotine cutter. I just bought one for less than $100 on ebay.

Search ebay for:
12" HEAVY DUTY INDUSTRIAL GUILLOTINE STACK PAPER CUTTER

If you're planning to cut more than 100 books, this will save you money in the long run compared to paying to have it done. Also the cutter works very well. It is quick and easy, and that makes it worth twice as much.

Do you have a review, esp. on how much pressure it takes? I'm thinking of going the Kinko's route since it is cheap and space is what I'm trying to create with doc. scanning.

[Tom2112]

Well, there's not much to review about it. A stack paper cutter operates a lot like a normal paper cutter. It has a flat area to the left that is where you set your originals and line them up. Then the cutting blade is to the right with a lever attached. There are two important differences between a stack cutter and a plain old paper cutter.

1) the stack cutter has a clamp that holds the stack tightly, so the stack doesn't move while you cut. This way you get nice clean and straight cuts every time.

2) the stack cutter has a very heavy duty blade made to cut through hundreds of sheets of paper at once, rather than the 10 to 25 sheets cut by normal paper cutters.

As for the amount of force required to use the stack cutter, it takes a good amount of pressure to cut a typical paperback's binding off. But the cutting lever is long and gives a good mechanical advantage. I would bet any normal adult (assuming they don't have any hand / wrist / elbow / shoulder problems) could do it without a fuss.

The stack cutter I bought from ebay came from China, and the instructions were in Chinese. This wasn't a problem because it was pretty obvious how it worked. The cutter comes unassembled, but that was no problem either. There are two bolts that go through the blade assembly that hold it onto the flat paper-line-up area. Lastly, you slide the cutting lever (basically a pipe with a rubber handle on it) onto the cutting mechanism - easy peasy.

[freecia]

Thanks! Will keep it in mind then. I saw a video of one and it looked like the reviewer really had to exert a lot of pressure. Like it was a bit of a workout. Which is fine but if I get one, it would be because the volume isn't cost effective to outsource. That'd be one sore arm with the model he demo'd.

[kazbates]

What I've started doing is using a crafting heat gun to soften the binding glue on the paper back and then carefully pull off 10 sheet (or 20 page) sections. I then take the sections and trim the glued edge off with my paper cutter. I have a standard guillotine style cutter that I used in my classroom, but it does the job. Since I'm scanning your run of the mill mass market paperback, the whole process takes less than 1/2 hour and I didn't have to buy anything new since the document reader scanner and OCR software we purchased were so expensive. As a side benefit, I don't ruin the book cover and can set the pages back inside and close with a metal binder clamp for storage, although, I don't know how long I'll actual hold on to them since I now have a digital copy. Unfortunately, I have trouble letting go of some things.

[Jack Tingle]

Originally Posted by kazbates

What I've started doing is using a crafting heat gun to soften the binding glue on the paper back and then carefully pull off 10 sheet (or 20 page) sections. I then take the sections and trim the glued edge off with my paper cutter.

Over the years, I've come to believe that high power heat guns (think paint strippers, not hair dryers) are one of the essential tools almost anyone should own.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[Polyglot27]

There is a photo by Snorkledorf of a fairly compact guillotine on this thread. His setup looks quite neat.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...light=scansnap

[Tom2112]

My biggest problem now that I have a guillotine cutter is getting the very old pages of my books to scan through a sheet feeder! I have some novels from the 70s that the paper is just terrible and it jams up all the time. Ugh! So much for automation. LOL

[Iain]

There are two main problems I've found with 70s and pre-70s books. One is that the paper is coarser and stickier than more modern books (either because it was made that way or because it has deteriorated) and this makes pages more likely to stick together and double feed.

The second is that the glue appears to be less consistent in how far up into the book it's gone. If you get a page turning in the scanner, then my experience is pretty much that it was stuck or partially stuck to another one.

There are some tricks with this; you can cut a little further into the book, is an obvious one. But when the book is cut look at the cut edges. Sometimes you can see the glued pages as a line. Bend the book. When pages are stuck, you can feel a different sort of resistance. Next you can riffle the pages. I think this may even help the sticky paper syndrome.

My approach (being a geek) has been to write some software which runs the scanner and, having assembled a (large!) tiff file lets you rescan pages which have misfed in the main run. (iaindowns.wordpress.com if you're interested!).

Iain
Good luck.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Iain

There are two main problems I've found with 70s and pre-70s books. One is that the paper is coarser and stickier than more modern books (either because it was made that way or because it has deteriorated) and this makes pages more likely to stick together and double feed.

The second is that the glue appears to be less consistent in how far up into the book it's gone. If you get a page turning in the scanner, then my experience is pretty much that it was stuck or partially stuck to another one.

There are some tricks with this; you can cut a little further into the book, is an obvious one. But when the book is cut look at the cut edges. Sometimes you can see the glued pages as a line. Bend the book. When pages are stuck, you can feel a different sort of resistance. Next you can riffle the pages. I think this may even help the sticky paper syndrome.

My approach (being a geek) has been to write some software which runs the scanner and, having assembled a (large!) tiff file lets you rescan pages which have misfed in the main run. (iaindowns.wordpress.com if you're interested!).

Iain
Good luck.

Iain has some excellent suggestions. I've found "riffling" (or fanning) the pages does help prevent pages from sticking together but some books used some really rough surfaced paper and the pages just seem to drag others right along. When I run into that, I mutter sweet nothings under my breath (sometimes louder), fan the pages in eight directions immediately before feeding them to the scanner and just watch the scanner (specifially page numbers as each page is spit out) so I can see when a multifeed occurs. My scanner will detect misfeeds but it is often difficult to determine how many pages were involved in a multifeed unless I saw it happen.

Glue seepage that the guillotine misses are a pain in the...ah...neck. Older books seem to be more susceptable to the problem as well as books that have too small a gutter to allow chopping off a large enough slice of the spine to make sure all the glue gets removed.. When undetected, two or more pages that still have even a fine line line or spot of glue will cause my scanner to jam, often mangling the pages. While what Iain suggests to detect pages still glued together frequently do work, I've found the only sure way to avoid the problem is to flip through all the pages before feeding them to the scanner. I've done this often enough that I can have the next batch of pages flipped through before the previous batch has finished scanning (and I have a fast scanner).

Most books I have little or no trouble with but there will always be the ornery ones that will make me wonder why I ever embarked on this project. After a while, I developed a "feel" for which books are going to be troublesome and can act to minimize the grief.