Book Cutters: Guillotine --- or Bandsaw?!

[ivowel]

Dear experts: I need to scan a whole lot of scholarly journals (and
sometimes books), mostly soft-cover. They are at a minimum 50 pages,
but can be 500 pages. I need to separate them, and then run the papers
through an automatic document feeder.

Having used guillotine cutters at my local staples, I cannot see them
cutting reliably 500-page journals. Never having tried it, a small
bandsaw from home-depot would seem to be ideal for such tasks.

Has anyone tried it?

regards,

/iaw

 

[CSM1]

Dear experts: I need to scan a whole lot of scholarly journals (and
sometimes books), mostly soft-cover. They are at a minimum 50 pages,
but can be 500 pages. I need to separate them, and then run the papers
through an automatic document feeder.

Having used guillotine cutters at my local staples, I cannot see them
cutting reliably 500-page journals. Never having tried it, a small
bandsaw from home-depot would seem to be ideal for such tasks.

Has anyone tried it?

regards,

/iaw

Printers have a powered Guillotine cutter that will cut 500 or more sheets
of paper or a book cover.
Here is an example of the machine.
http://www.officezone.com/cut6550e.htm

Ask around local print shops. And ask at Staples, they may have a book
cutter behind the counter.

A band saw would work but I think you would get zagged edges on the paper,
plus you may not get a straight cut unless you used a fence.

 

[Norm Dresner]

|
| Dear experts: I need to scan a whole lot of scholarly journals (and
| sometimes books), mostly soft-cover. They are at a minimum 50 pages,
| but can be 500 pages. I need to separate them, and then run the papers
| through an automatic document feeder.
|
| Having used guillotine cutters at my local staples, I cannot see them
| cutting reliably 500-page journals. Never having tried it, a small
| bandsaw from home-depot would seem to be ideal for such tasks.
|
| Has anyone tried it?
|
| regards,
|
| /iaw

Most saw blades (band, radial & table, and chop) will not cut a stack of
paper well unless it is compressed tightly between two inflexible covers
like plywood sheets.
Norm

 

[Danny]

To add to CSM's post, those loose peices chards of paper will
accumulate eventually possibly causing problems with image quality and
paper handling in the future.

I've worked with other companies who had a similar need to remove pages
from large books and magazines to be scanned. Although they were doing
a much larger volume per day (100,000 +) and on a different model
scannner- the same principles would apply. (just scaled down)

They found that using an industrial guillotine powered by hydraulic
machines gave them the cleanest cut and lowest amound of debris... if
you're only doing a couple hundred pages- total, then it shouldn't be a
problem to go with either cutting technique... even a paper cutter like
the one's found in classrooms would suffice

hope this helps.

Danny

 

[rwatson767]

Has anyone tried it?

I tried this once. I cut away the spine and the glue used to hold the
pages to it. Ater that the pages just fell away from the rest. Nice and
clean.
But I agree. A good place like Staples or an OfficeMax will have a
cutter that will easily handle several hundred pages.

Bob AZ

 

[ivowel]

thank you for the info.

staples lists 17 paper trimmers and cutter units on its website.
everything below $150 can only cut 30 sheets of paper. at 200 sheets,
we are in the $1,000 category. And this is not enough to cut a book
that has 600 pages (or 300 sheets). I will have to cut 1" journals
regularly, and occasionally the 1.5" journal.

officemax seems to list nothing suitable under its "paper trimmers"
category that can do more than 30 pages.

if I cannot find something that is reasonably priced and does this sort
of job, I wonder if I can find a mechanism that strongly presses a
journal-book between two metal pieces, so that it cannot move, in which
case a very fine band saw with a guide should still work. maybe I want
a laser saw ;-).

regards,

/iaw

 

[Dave]

thank you for the info.

staples lists 17 paper trimmers and cutter units on its website.
everything below $150 can only cut 30 sheets of paper. at 200 sheets,
we are in the $1,000 category. And this is not enough to cut a book
that has 600 pages (or 300 sheets). I will have to cut 1" journals
regularly, and occasionally the 1.5" journal.

officemax seems to list nothing suitable under its "paper trimmers"
category that can do more than 30 pages.

if I cannot find something that is reasonably priced and does this sort
of job, I wonder if I can find a mechanism that strongly presses a
journal-book between two metal pieces, so that it cannot move, in which
case a very fine band saw with a guide should still work. maybe I want
a laser saw ;-).

regards,

/iaw

I believe the advice about Staples, Office Depot and any printers was to
ask if they could do this for you with equipment they have. I can't
imagine it would be too costly and I think a printing place would
definitely have this equipment.

Hope this helps,
Dave

 

[T Shadow]

Dear experts: I need to scan a whole lot of scholarly journals (and
sometimes books), mostly soft-cover. They are at a minimum 50 pages,
but can be 500 pages. I need to separate them, and then run the papers
through an automatic document feeder.

Having used guillotine cutters at my local staples, I cannot see them
cutting reliably 500-page journals. Never having tried it, a small
bandsaw from home-depot would seem to be ideal for such tasks.

Has anyone tried it?

regards,

I use an old radial arm saw. Hold a board over it and pass the blade across
it. Soft cover only so far. With a band saw or table saw where you'd have to
move the book. Making a clamp to hold the book together would probably be a
good idea. Then you'd need to add the clamp to the cut depth needed. Sliding
chop saw might be an option, depending on money to spend and other future
use.

Paper makes an even worse mess than sawdust. Shop vac for dust extraction
and clean up highly recommended. Might be some fuzz left but it hasn't been
a problem for flatbed scanner. Haven't actually noticed any left on the
scanner.
YMMV
If you decide on laser, get a good fire extinguisher too. ;^)

 

[James McNangle]

Dear experts: I need to scan a whole lot of scholarly journals (and
sometimes books), mostly soft-cover. They are at a minimum 50 pages,
but can be 500 pages. I need to separate them, and then run the papers
through an automatic document feeder.

Having used guillotine cutters at my local staples, I cannot see them
cutting reliably 500-page journals. Never having tried it, a small
bandsaw from home-depot would seem to be ideal for such tasks.

Has anyone tried it?

Vision Australia have a power guillotine and an auto scanner in their Talking
Book Library (courtesy our foundation). When they demonstrated it to us it took
a couple of seconds to cut the back off a book (approx 300 pages hardback), and
another minute or two to scan it. Then they have an OCR program which prepares
a usable transcript from the scan without any correction, and enables them to
convert the book to talking book, big print or even Braille, all more or less
automatically.

The whole setup certainly wasn't cheap, but you may be able to find someone who
would do the job for you as a service.

If you used a bandsaw I strongly suspect you would have trouble feeding the
result through an automatic scanner.

There are serious Copyright considerations in any such project. Vision
Australia have a special dispensation, but can only supply the result of their
activities to the visually disabled.

James McNangle

 

[George E. Cawthon]

Dear experts: I need to scan a whole lot of scholarly journals (and
sometimes books), mostly soft-cover. They are at a minimum 50 pages,
but can be 500 pages. I need to separate them, and then run the papers
through an automatic document feeder.

Having used guillotine cutters at my local staples, I cannot see them
cutting reliably 500-page journals. Never having tried it, a small
bandsaw from home-depot would seem to be ideal for such tasks.

Has anyone tried it?

regards,

/iaw

A band saw would leave a ragged edge. A good
guillotine leaves a smooth edge and weighs 100s of
pounds. You must not have used a regular hand
operated guillotine as used in older printing
shops? It would cut your finger or arm off in a
split-second. The blade is usually 30-36 inches
long and and several inches high. You tighten a
bar down to compress the paper and the blade pulls
down next to the bar. You can cut a 3-4 inch
thick stack of paper easily; maximum thickness
probably varies by machine but would be at least 6
inches.

Find an offset shop (if there are any) or any shop
where they buy standard large sized sheets and cut
paper to size.

 

[Geo]

if I cannot find something that is reasonably priced and does this sort
of job, I wonder if I can find a mechanism that strongly presses a
journal-book between two metal pieces, so that it cannot move, in which
case a very fine band saw with a guide should still work. maybe I want
a laser saw ;-).

Or you could do it with a bookbinders press and plough:-
http://www.aboutbookbinding.com/binding8.html
as used to cut the pages originally.
I have used one for several bindings and they can produce a razor-sharp edge but
you may not be able to spare the time to hand-process each journal.

Geo