Comb Binding: How to assemble your own rulebooks

Introduction

The internet is awash these days with excellent rules for wargames.  In many cases these are sold by companies that are geographically remote from the purchaser.  Buying physical copies is awkward on 2 points.  Firstly, a parcel might take quite a while to arrive, especially if the publisher is a part-time effort by a one man band or if a package has to cross international boundaries.  Secondly, postage costs are increasingly expensive.  Again, this is especially so where international deliveries are concerned.

Fortunately, there is often an alternative.  Many publishers offer downloadable PDF versions of their works; these can be bought (and delivered) almost instantly at any time of day or night; distance isn't a factor either.  But what do you do with a PDF copy?  Well, some buyers are happy to view the documents on a tablet computer or similar device.  That's simple enough, but I prefer hard copy for myself.

Once upon a time, I would have printed out the document and stapled the top corner, or punched holes and put the paper in a ring binder.  While either of these methods will work, they are limited.  It's hard to staple more than a few sheets of paper (unless you have access to a seriously big office stapler!) and even if you manage, a stapled copy is awkward when turning pages and the paper quickly becomes tattered.  Ring binders are often much bigger than needed for the document, so unless you have a huge amount of storage space then they probably aren't the answer.

Comb Binding

For this example, I'm going to show you how I bind a copy of "Kooky Teenage Monster Hunters".  This is from Ganesha Games in Italy.  It's a supplement to the "Fear and Faith" ruleset, which in turn is based on the very popular "Song of Blades and Heroes".  That's not really important, though...

Here is everything that I'll need.  I've printed out the PDF rules (double-sided, because it uses less paper and will take less shelf space to store).  The front and back covers will be protected by acetate sheets.  These are optional, but add considerably to the durability of the rules, so I'd strongly recommend using them.  I buy my acetate sheets from a local office supplies company, where they only cost something like 10 pence each.

As well as the paper, I need a comb-binding machine and a plastic comb.  My machine is an old DocuBind model; I bought it through eBay some time ago.  It was sold with several large boxes of combs in various sizes and colours, so I have more combs than I could possibly use in a lifetime.  Total cost was a few 10s of pounds, though I cannot remember precisely how much.

So, here's how we do it.  For this (relatively thin) document, I've chosen a small diameter comb.  Note that the small combs are a lot harder to use than the larger ones, in my experience!

Firstly, the "rack" is extended and the comb is fitted on to it.  On my machine this needs to be done by hand, one hook at a time.  That's a little bit tedious, but not too bad.

Next, I start punching the pages.  The acetates are quite thick, so I'll punch them individually.

As each sheet or group of sheets is punched, it is slid directly onto the hooks of the comb.

With paper, this machine can punch 10 or 15 sheets at the same time.  That makes it very quick to assemble even quite a large document.

 Once the final page is in place, the back cover acetate is added and the rack can be retracted.

Final step: lift the document away from the binding machine.

And there we have it: the finished document.

Afterthoughts

Total time spent from downloading the PDF to finishing this article: 2h 20m.  Most of that was spent having coffee, talking to my family and other such mundane things.  Even slowing down to photograph each stage, I probably managed the binding itself in under 10 minutes, including time to get the machine out of storage and put it away again.

If this all sounds like too much work then you could probably find a local print shop or similar business who will do the job for you.  That'll cost, of course.

One last thing: if you're planning to print and bind a lot of booklets then you'll find that all the combs look identical when the documents are on a bookshelf.  Consider early how to label them so that you can find the one you want from a sea of identical bindings.  Believe me, it can be a problem!

Now I'm off to read "Kooky Teenage monster Hunters"...