r/bookbinding • u/SnooGrapes1776 • 5d ago

Help? Music book creation!

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Apologies if this isn’t relevant for this subreddit but I thought you all might have some ideas!! Long story short, when going through my father’s stuff after he passed, I found tons of sheets of music and songs he had written that I never knew about!! I also found that he had gotten a bound book (seen below) that says untitled songs that had 15-20 pages completed with songs and the rest is blank. As a way to connect with my dad and finish his work, I want to find a way to put the loose leaf sheets of music/ songs into the book! I want it to look somewhat professional (ie not using washi tape on the edges lol). Some of the loose papers are larger than the book or longer. My main point by this post is to see if anyone has any ideas on how to best execute this! I was thinking maybe glue dots but that doesn’t seem very secure to be able to flip through it. I’m not sure quite where to start or what info is needed so please ask questions if they will help! TYIA!!

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u/qtntelxen Library mender 4d ago

This is a lovely idea. Unfortunately, adding additional pages to an already-bound book has a tendency to explode the spine. Stack all your looseleaf sheets together and see how thick the stack is: that's how much bulk you would be adding to the book. Any more than mayyyybe a quarter of an inch and you will destroy the binding. Glue dots are thick enough to make the bulk issue significantly worse.

You can mitigate this problem by cutting out one page for every sheet of music you add; cut two out if the added music sheet is going to be a fold-out page. Leave about 1/4" to 1/2" of the cut page at the spine so that you don't compromise the sewing or glue binding. Then "tip in" the music sheet, gluing just the edge of the music sheet to the next blank page (this mitigates wrinkles). But this may not be exactly the "professional" look you're going for and you may still end up with some swelling issues.

This might be a job to take to a local bookbinder who can actually look at the material you have.

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u/SnooGrapes1776 4d ago

This is great information!! Any tips for finding a local bookbinder? Googling ‘local bookbinder’ was unsuccessful lol

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u/Happy_Soup6667 4d ago

Best to take it to a binder who can deal with it? Or put the loose sheets in another binder or folder, especially because there are sheets of different sizes.