Perfect Binding
The spine or the book is cut and roughened, adhesive is applied to the rough edges and a cover is glued firmly in place. Bleeds and crossovers are also handled differently on perfect bound books.
Advantages
- Versitile
- Overall look and visual appeal
- Printable spine
- Longevity
- Ability to creatively interleaf pages
Limitations
- Doesn’t lay flat. Not suggested for applications in which hands-free reading isimportant [e.g. cookbooks, technical guides, directories or instruction manuals].
- Minimum thickness of 1⁄8″ inch needed if spine is printed or1⁄16inch if spine isn’t printed.
THE PROCESS
- Folded signatures or single leaves are gathered into a stack.
- The spine side of the stack is milled to remove the folded edges, and roughened toexpose the paper fibers. The edge of each page is left exposed.
- Hot melt adhesive is applied along the spine edge of the book. The glue does notpenetrate; it flows around the exposed fibers.
- The cover is applied to the spine while the glue is hot. It is then pressed onto thespine, and wrapped around the book block.
- Hot melt dries in 2 to 25 seconds.
- The book is run through a three knife trimmer to trim the face, the head and the foot.