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Hydraulic drive paper cutters are great for high-volume print finishing (I used several in print production for about two years), but I’d be wary of them for th

Hydraulic drive paper cutters are great for high-volume print finishing (I used several in print production for about two years), but I’d be wary of them for this use case: - Waste is high. To trim off a spine, you likely have to take more of the margin than you’d like (if you trim too close to the edge of a glued spine, the risk is higher that you may bludgeon the stack of pages under pressure instead of cutting it). Not great for double page spreads or Computer Shopper’s anaemic margins. - Failure rate is non-zero. If you’re cutting a fresh print run, no big deal, you can reprint if you screw up. If you’re cutting rare magazines, you probably don’t want to lose many to slippage or mis-cuts. - The blade needs regular sharpening, and it’s not something you can easily do in a home workshop, or that you probably want to do (huge heavy razor blades turn out to be quite dangerous). What _might_ help Jason more is a “thermal binding machine”, designed to bind or debind a glued spine. He could (in theory) leave each mag in the debinder for a set time to heat the glue, then pry the pages free. Not a huge improvement over a hairdryer, but at least more hands-free, especially if people could donate or loan multiple machines.

rbanffy 3y ago
What if instead of cutting, we sanded them? The pressure on the surfaces would be smaller and it could remove just enough to debind the volume.
- modernerd 3y ago
  Nice idea but I would be worried about tearing. I don’t know what the actual paper weight is but it looks in the “bible paper and cheap newsprint” range (~40-60gsm), which will probably rip as soon as a belt/orbital sander crosses the glue line into the looser leaves (and you have to cross the glue line to debind, and by nature that line isn’t normally straight, because glue does not melt evenly). You also destroy the spine, making it harder to identify issues at a glance. A thermal binding machine would likely melt the glue in 45-90 seconds without those risks. And you might even be able to rebind after the scan with fresh glue strips using the same machine, assuming you don’t have to cut the cover wrap.
- gwern 3y ago
  I briefly experiment with that for books before switching to a guillotine. It was slower, and made a mess. Even when I thought all the dust/grit was gone, some snuck into the scans anyway. For softer lower-quality aged acid-attacked newsprint-style magazines like this, I imagine the mess would be even worse.

rbanffy 3y ago

What if instead of cutting, we sanded them? The pressure on the surfaces would be smaller and it could remove just enough to debind the volume.

modernerd 3y ago
Nice idea but I would be worried about tearing. I don’t know what the actual paper weight is but it looks in the “bible paper and cheap newsprint” range (~40-60gsm), which will probably rip as soon as a belt/orbital sander crosses the glue line into the looser leaves (and you have to cross the glue line to debind, and by nature that line isn’t normally straight, because glue does not melt evenly). You also destroy the spine, making it harder to identify issues at a glance. A thermal binding machine would likely melt the glue in 45-90 seconds without those risks. And you might even be able to rebind after the scan with fresh glue strips using the same machine, assuming you don’t have to cut the cover wrap.
gwern 3y ago
I briefly experiment with that for books before switching to a guillotine. It was slower, and made a mess. Even when I thought all the dust/grit was gone, some snuck into the scans anyway. For softer lower-quality aged acid-attacked newsprint-style magazines like this, I imagine the mess would be even worse.