Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Coiling Binding Music Books

Okay, so I messed around with this and hopefully came up with something helpful. Here it is in a couple easy steps.

The first picture shows the strip of card stock cut and folded, ready to be inserted and glued. Insert the lower part of it first as it's a bit harder to get in between the coils. Attach the edges with a dot of glue, put a paperclip on until dry. Do the top one and you're done.

Spiral and coil bound books can sag if the covers protrude past the edge of the pages at the bottom. To prevent this, insure that the bottom edge of the cover and bottom edge of the pages are flush at the bottom.

They can also sag if they are not held tightly on the shelf. To prevent this you can use a heavy bookend to squish them together or cut pieces of thin plywood or corrugated cardboard to put between the books. Or both. You'll still need some pressure on the ends to keep the books from sagging but somewhat less if you use spacers like that between them.

I had one of my christmas books coil bound. It cost more than I thought it would. In future I will only do this with important books.

This is a great solution. Very creative! To make it even easier. Attach the label to a twist tie, then attach in a similar manner. That way the glue step is on the counter and you don't need the paper clip.

Oooo, nice. So, punch a hole in the ends for the twist tie to go into? I was also thinking, after I already posted this of course, that tape could be applied to the label for added strength, so the paper wouldn't tear. That would work especially well with the twist tie approach.

Another option is to use tyvek instead of paper for the label, and it shouldn't need the tape. I like the idea of using twist ties, or perhaps small zip ties, as I think you'd be able to fold the book back on itself still, if needed.

If you want to take the time and get fancy, you could color code the labels by genre.

I thought I'd mention another tip if anyone is interested in making labels from tyvek. Tyvek is commonly used for temporary wristbands, so it is very available in this form. I learned this when taking a precision color textile dyeing class, where we used these wristbands to create labels for our color tests, and zipties to attach the labels to the swatches being dyed. The adhesive section on the end of the wristband is cut off, the labels cut to size and notes were written on them in fine sharpie.

If I get around to trying this as a label on a spiral bound book (I think I already have need of this!), I'll post a picture.