1B5 School Exercise Books

Materials

• paper
• thin cardboard
• fine fuse wire (5 amp) or other fine wire

Tools

• sharp craft knife
• metal ruler
• pencil
• scissors to cut wire
• tweezers
• sewing needle

Instructions

1. To make these four school exercise books (pictured above) download these two files on to your hard drive: the pages file and the covers file. Open them up in your graphics program (I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro).
2. The ruled pages for these exercise books are printed on A5 paper. If you don't have this size in stock then cut an A4 sheet in half. On your printer there will be a paper guide. Use this to ensure your paper sits snuggly in the printer tray. This is important to ensure each page feeds into the printer in the same way. My printer settings are shown below. Select paper size A5 and don't forget to set the orientation to 'Landscape' and 'Center on page'. For printing quality I selected Text and Graphics.
   
   
   
3. Print one side then turn the A5 page over and print on the other side. My first try had the black guide marks spot on but after cutting out the pages I discovered that the red margin lines were wrong. So it may take some trial and error before you work out which way is correct when turning the A5 page over. It can be done though.
4. Cut out the printed exercise book pages. First cut the horizontal lines between the black guide marks only keeping the outside edges of the page intact. Then cut the vertical lines between the black guide lines.
5. Fold each page in half.
6. Stack four pages together one inside the other. You will now have four lots of pages to fill the four exercise book covers.
7. Print out the covers file on to thin cardboard.
8. Cut the covers out in the same way as you did for the pages in step 4. That is horizontal lines first and then the vertical lines.
9. Fold the covers in half.
10. Place a four page stack inside a cover.
11. Two staples will secure the pages inside a cover. Hold the pages inside a cover with a clamp while you make two sets of needle holes along the center fold of the exercise book cover.
12. Cut a small length of fine fuse wire. Bend the ends over at right angles. On the outside of the exercise book insert the ends of the wire through two of the holes. Push the ends down, on the inside of the book, to form a staple. Repeat for the other set of holes.
13. Add staples to the other three books.
    
14. The last thing to do is trim the pages flush with the outer edge of the cover. This will always happen when you stack pages inside one another but a simple trim will give you a nice crisp edge.