Book Binding, The Recap

Incase you're late to the game, over the last week I've been binding my Power Girl collection into a hardcover book. Get caught up here:
Day 1: getting ready
Day 2: binding
Day 3: making the cover
Day 4: attatching the core
Day 5: finishing touches
Update 1: other method

So here's a few thoughts.

The board I used to make the cover this time has been great. It's been sitting free for a couple of days now, and is still as straight as when I made it. Compare that to the cover I did for my first book...

...and you'll see the difference it makes.

Still on the subject of covers, the method I used to make it this time worked better too. For the first project, the boards got glued to the core, then covered in paper. This time, I made the cover completely, then glued it to the core. Worked out much better, as this allowed me to get everything straight, and get everything measured out properly. The first book will only open this much:

Whereas the new one opens like this:


I thought a size comparison might be interesting. Here's 20 loose comics next to the 20 bound comics:

Even pressed down, the book still comes out on top


Cost breakdown:
Cover boards: $3.50 (4 books per $14 sheet)
Paper for cover: $3.50 (2 books per $7 sheet)
Thread: $2 ($4 for 10 metres, I've gotten 2 books done, with a little left over)
PVA glue: $1 (rough guess, it's cheap)

So that's $10 in materials. The cloth and tapes are only a few cents so not really worth figuring in to that.

Next project I think will be the 25 issue run of Ghost Rider 2099. It's actually proving tricky to find complete runs in my collection- seems there's always one issue of something that crossed over with another title and I'm missing it (for example, found this morning- my Hawkman collection is incomplete because I'm missing one issue of JSA to complete the Black Reign story). Binding 52 is on the cards sometime soon as well, since I would like to collect Firestorm, Silver Surfer, Spawn and others in as big chunks as possible, so I need to find out how far I can push the whole home-binding thing (52 makes a good sacraficial lamb- it was cool at the time, but not a high priority to read again).