8B1 Wire Bound Notebooks

These notebooks measure a mere 7/16" wide x 5/8" high (11mm x 16mm)

Materials

• paper
• thin white cardboard
• fuse wire (10 amp) or other suitable wire

Tools

• sharp craft knife
• metal ruler
• tweezers
• clamps
• scissors to cut wire
• sewing pin
• small hammer
• sewing needle
• pliers
• round toothpick which is split in half
• good lighting and a magnifying glass (optional but very useful)

Instructions

1. To make these four wire bound notebooks (pictured above) download these two files on to your hard drive: the pages file and the covers file. 
2. Open the two files, saved in step 1, in your graphics program (e.g. Jasc Paint Shop Pro).
3. The ruled pages for the notebooks are printed on to A5 paper. If you don't have this size in stock the alternative is to cut an A4 sheet of paper in half. To ensure that the paper feeds into the printer in exactly the same way use the printer's paper guide. Printer settings are paper size A5, orientation Portrait and select Center on page. 
   Print one side. Turn the A5 page over and put it back into the printer's paper feed tray. Print the pages file again. 
   My first attempt had the horizontal black guide marks spot on but the vertical marks weren't but they were near enough. So it may take a wee bit of trial and error before everything lines up perfectly. It can be done though.
4. Cut out the printed notebook pages. First cut on the horizontal between the black guide marks only keeping the outside edges of the A5 page intact. Then cut on the vertical between the black guide lines.
5. There are ten pages for each notebook. Stack them together and clamp. Tweezers really help here.
   
    
   
6. Print out the notebook front and back covers on to thin white cardboard.
7. Cut out the front and back covers in the same way as you did for the pages in step 4. That is horizontal lines first and then the vertical lines between the black guide marks.
   
   
   
8. For each of the 10-page stacks you now have a front and back cover.
   
   
   
9. The only way I could think of to make the tiny holes was to use a sewing pin and small hammer. Position the sewing pin over one of the ten black dots which are down the left hand side of each notebook cover and gently hit the top of the pin with the hammer. Have a scrap piece of wood underneath to protect your work surface. One hole done. Repeat nine more times. To open the holes up a bit more I pushed a sewing needle into each hole and then pulled it through the hole with pliers.
   
   Pictured below left are the wire binding tools: card of fuse wire, one half of a split round toothpick, pliers, a threaded sewing needle, hammer and a sewing pin. Below right is an 8B1 notebook with all 10 holes done.
   
    
   
10. Cut a 4" length of 10 amp fuse wire. Carefully split a round toothpick in half. Place one half of the split toothpick against the spine of the notebook, flat edge of toothpick against the notebook, and then thread the wire through the top hole back over the toothpick and down through the next hole etc. To finish wrap the top and bottom wire ends over the toothpick and cut off any excess wire. With tweezers bend each wire end at an angle to secure the binding (pictured below is the wire binding on a full size notebook to illustrate how the wire end is bent). Excellent! One notebook done, three more to bind with wire.