Folding the signatures and drilling

Folding the signatures

Our books are perfect bound, that is, they have a spine that is square. We typeset the texts in PageMaker, which has a Build Booklet plug-in that handles the page imposition for us. Using "2-up perfect bound" as the layout choice produces sheets with two pages on each side, numbered so that when folded, the pages are consecutive, thus forming a signature.

Students fold their own signatures by hand, using either a bone folder, available at art-supply stores, their fingernails, or any hard object that makes a sharp crease. When the signatures are folded and stacked, the spine-edge should not be "poofy," but readily compressible to the width of the paper itself.

Drilling

We have made a jig for compressing the book and holding it in place while drilling, but two people who trust one another could probably do without it -- one to compress the pages and hold them in place just with his or her hands and the other to drill (the trust required is that someone's fingers won't get drilled through...).

Three holes are drilled, all about 3/16" in from the spine, one centered and the outer two about an inch from the top and bottom of the book.