Answers.Body: <p>I have now started successfully scanning books and my experience is that you should get a guillotine paper cutter.</p>
  <p>I made a clamp and tried to remove the spine by sanding or planing it down, but it was a mess. Manually cutting through the stack close to the binding is also slow and tricky.</p>
  <p>But it's fast and easy to separate the book into 5mm stacks using a standard retractable utility knife and then cut the remaining parts of the binding off those stacks with a $250 paper guillotine - this is the kind of machine that lowers the blade horizontally instead of around one fixed axis and provides better cuts for deep stacks.</p>
  <p>The best method to manually cut the book into stacks is to either lay the book onto its back, force it open as much as possible and cut between the pages as directly into the spine as possible, or to stand the book upright, open it 180 degrees and cut down with the knife. In my experience the latter method guides the knife better, but if you do cut into the pages anyway, then you tend to rip them (potentially even into the text). For the former method you need to steer the knife for yourself, but if you get off course you still get a clean cut and don't risk ripping the paper.</p>
  <p>With some practice, with most binding styles of modern books, you can also separate the pages into stacks by just ripping the book apart, without cutting. This works with paperbacks and hardbacks. For hardbacks and some types of paperbacks, you rip away the front+back covers including part of the spine. Then you open the book in the place where you want to rip it apart, grab both parts hard and then gently rip it top to bottom. You can do a gentle cut to make ripping easier. If the pages are actually bound (with thread, not just figuratively bound with glue) the ripping process works even better, but obviously you should rip between two stacks of bound sheets and not try to rip one stack apart in the middle (that won't work).</p>
  <p>You should leave through the paper stacks before feeding them into the automatic document feed, the most common cause of jams is not cutting away enough of the spine so the sheets are still stuck together in places. Other than that the sheets produced like this scan perfectly fine with the automatic document feed.</p>
  
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Answers.Body: <h2>Why not use a cutter rather than a saw or a sander.</h2>
  
  <p>In more details, it the title is not enough.</p>
  
  <p>I think a sander is likely to remove wood as easily as it does
  paper, possibly more easily. Thus it is not clear that you will get a
  clean job.</p>
  
  <p>You might get a better result by clamping the pages between two pieces
  of some hard metal, like iron. Aluminum or other soft metals might not
  work as well.</p>
  
  <p>Then, the pages may still stick a bit together, as they would with
  sawing. But it should be enough if all you want is scanning.</p>
  
  <p>However, extending your question to other solutions:</p>
  
  <p>Another suggestion may be to use a cutting press, as was done by
  bookbinders for trimming pages when mechanical paper guillotine, such
  as hydraulic book trimmers were not available. Professional
  bookbinders used to do excellent and precise work centuries ago, which
  was particularly necessary when they wanted to apply a gold finish on
  page edges.  This is still practised by amateur bookbinders.</p>
  
  <p>Basically it simply replaces the saw by a knife. You need just a very simple press to hold the pages and
  compress them. One edge of the press must be flat and wide enough so
  that you can hold a cutting tool against it in order to keep the the
  blade perpendicular to the stack of pages. The cutting edge itself
  makes an angle, as is often the case when cutting with a blade.  You
  cut the page stack progressively in many passes, a few pages at a
  time.</p>
  
  <p>The basic procedure is described in this video,
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9EZhXQ1p1c" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9EZhXQ1p1c</a> , but I am sure you can
  find many others on bookbinding sites, or in books about bookbinding,
  if you look for "page trimming".</p>
  
  <p>This video gives you the essential. But the blade may have a different
  shape. Actually, when I learned to do that a very long time ago, I
  think I used my leather paring knife.  It is a simple blade composed
  of a flat piece of steel about an inch or two wide, sharpened on one
  end by grinding it only on one side (the other side must be perfectly
  flat, as i rests on the edge of the press to guide the cutting). The
  grinding is done so that the cutting edge makes an angle of about 45
  degrees with the the non cutting edge (I was taught to make my own
  blades).</p>
  
  <p>Now, it you are just removing the binding, and not looking for a
  perfect job, my guess is that a cutter could do the job just as well. Just don't try
  to cut too many pages with each pass of the blade.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-10-13T21:24:53.603Z
Answers.Text: I just thought of the possibility to use a hand plane. That's better than sanding for sure and faster than any manual (not guillotine) knife.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Nobody
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Answers.Text: @Nobody I have of course no experience, but it is not clear to me that a hand plane will be faster or cleaner than a sharp knife. I may be much harder ... but the best way to know is to try. My own experience for scanning purpose is only with a hand guillotine, on paper stacks that wre not too thick. I would fragment them when too thick.
Answers.UserDisplayName: babou
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-10-14T15:25:16.410Z
Answers.Text: Well I have no experience using a hand plane on books, but if on paper stacks they remove as much as on wood (which I think is a safe assumption if the stack is properly clamped), then it would need only a couple of passes (5 seconds) to go through the spine.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Nobody
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-10-14T19:39:26.763Z
Answers.Text: @Nobody Experiment only can answer that. Do not underestimate the resistance of a paper stack. I think big books are effective in stopping bullets. At least I am glad my answer is leading to new solutions.
Answers.UserDisplayName: babou
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-10-15T11:13:58.347Z
Answers.Text: I'll report back.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Nobody
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Answers.UserDisplayName: babou
Answers.Body: <p>I actually have found that heavy-duty professional sewing-shears, the longer the better, ye 'claymore of scissors', to have worked better for the <em>majority</em> of books than box cutter or knife, the latter which dull too quickly. Scissors, being two knives stuck together in invocation of the Archimedean lever, are only half reliant on the sharpness of their edge.</p>
  <p>Different books will differ. In the general case, I do not think the sanding approach you describe will be worth the time; with most thick bindings you can find the weak points and dissever them in series. But books are highly various; the art of preparing and archiving them remains a strategic process betimes.</p>
  
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Body: <p>(I hope it's on-topic - I saw a couple of other questions about scanning books to make ebooks)</p>
  
  <p>I want to destructively scan my least favorite books. To do this the pages need to be separated. The best tool for this is a paper guillotine (heavy knife cutting horizontally through a large stack of pages, whole pages at a time). They are expensive and large.</p>
  
  <p>I read that saws tend to mess up the borders of the pages so they stick together, make problems with the automatic document feed while scanning or make the borders harder to remove in post processing.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Has anyone tried to sand down the spine with a powered sanding machine?</strong></p>
  
  <p>I'm imagining the following process:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Cut off cover</li>
  <li>Clamp pages between two pieces of wood with exactly the amount to sand away accessible. Note: This doesn't mean I intend to sand into the wood, it's a visual and tactile guide. It's not that hard to stop the machine in time before a significant amount of wood was lost.</li>
  <li>Clamp the clamp down so the spine looks up.</li>
  <li>Set up dust removal vacuum.</li>
  <li>Take the sanding machine to the spine until the pages are separated.</li>
  </ol>
  
Tags: <conversion>
Title: Destructive scanning: Sanding down spine better than band saw?
UserDisplayName: Nobody
ThreadText: # Destructive scanning: Sanding down spine better than band saw?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2018-10-07)
  
  (I hope it's on-topic - I saw a couple of other questions about scanning books to make ebooks)
  
  I want to destructively scan my least favorite books. To do this the pages need to be separated. The best tool for this is a paper guillotine (heavy knife cutting horizontally through a large stack of pages, whole pages at a time). They are expensive and large.
  
  I read that saws tend to mess up the borders of the pages so they stick together, make problems with the automatic document feed while scanning or make the borders harder to remove in post processing.
  
  **Has anyone tried to sand down the spine with a powered sanding machine?**
  
  I'm imagining the following process:
  
  1. Cut off cover
  2. Clamp pages between two pieces of wood with exactly the amount to sand away accessible. Note: This doesn't mean I intend to sand into the wood, it's a visual and tactile guide. It's not that hard to stop the machine in time before a significant amount of wood was lost.
  3. Clamp the clamp down so the spine looks up.
  4. Set up dust removal vacuum.
  5. Take the sanding machine to the spine until the pages are separated.
  
  **Tags:** conversion
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_0 on 2020-02-05. Score: 0 | Accepted answer
  
  I have now started successfully scanning books and my experience is that you should get a guillotine paper cutter.
  
  I made a clamp and tried to remove the spine by sanding or planing it down, but it was a mess. Manually cutting through the stack close to the binding is also slow and tricky.
  
  But it's fast and easy to separate the book into 5mm stacks using a standard retractable utility knife and then cut the remaining parts of the binding off those stacks with a $250 paper guillotine - this is the kind of machine that lowers the blade horizontally instead of around one fixed axis and provides better cuts for deep stacks.
  
  The best method to manually cut the book into stacks is to either lay the book onto its back, force it open as much as possible and cut between the pages as directly into the spine as possible, or to stand the book upright, open it 180 degrees and cut down with the knife. In my experience the latter method guides the knife better, but if you do cut into the pages anyway, then you tend to rip them (potentially even into the text). For the former method you need to steer the knife for yourself, but if you get off course you still get a clean cut and don't risk ripping the paper.
  
  With some practice, with most binding styles of modern books, you can also separate the pages into stacks by just ripping the book apart, without cutting. This works with paperbacks and hardbacks. For hardbacks and some types of paperbacks, you rip away the front+back covers including part of the spine. Then you open the book in the place where you want to rip it apart, grab both parts hard and then gently rip it top to bottom. You can do a gentle cut to make ripping easier. If the pages are actually bound (with thread, not just figuratively bound with glue) the ripping process works even better, but obviously you should rip between two stacks of bound sheets and not try to rip one stack apart in the middle (that won't work).
  
  You should leave through the paper stacks before feeding them into the automatic document feed, the most common cause of jams is not cutting away enough of the spine so the sheets are still stuck together in places. Other than that the sheets produced like this scan perfectly fine with the automatic document feed.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2018-10-13. Score: 1
  
  ## Why not use a cutter rather than a saw or a sander.
  
  In more details, it the title is not enough.
  
  I think a sander is likely to remove wood as easily as it does
  paper, possibly more easily. Thus it is not clear that you will get a
  clean job.
  
  You might get a better result by clamping the pages between two pieces
  of some hard metal, like iron. Aluminum or other soft metals might not
  work as well.
  
  Then, the pages may still stick a bit together, as they would with
  sawing. But it should be enough if all you want is scanning.
  
  However, extending your question to other solutions:
  
  Another suggestion may be to use a cutting press, as was done by
  bookbinders for trimming pages when mechanical paper guillotine, such
  as hydraulic book trimmers were not available. Professional
  bookbinders used to do excellent and precise work centuries ago, which
  was particularly necessary when they wanted to apply a gold finish on
  page edges. This is still practised by amateur bookbinders.
  
  Basically it simply replaces the saw by a knife. You need just a very simple press to hold the pages and
  compress them. One edge of the press must be flat and wide enough so
  that you can hold a cutting tool against it in order to keep the the
  blade perpendicular to the stack of pages. The cutting edge itself
  makes an angle, as is often the case when cutting with a blade. You
  cut the page stack progressively in many passes, a few pages at a
  time.
  
  The basic procedure is described in this video,
  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9EZhXQ1p1c> , but I am sure you can
  find many others on bookbinding sites, or in books about bookbinding,
  if you look for "page trimming".
  
  This video gives you the essential. But the blade may have a different
  shape. Actually, when I learned to do that a very long time ago, I
  think I used my leather paring knife. It is a simple blade composed
  of a flat piece of steel about an inch or two wide, sharpened on one
  end by grinding it only on one side (the other side must be perfectly
  flat, as i rests on the edge of the press to guide the cutting). The
  grinding is done so that the cutting edge makes an angle of about 45
  degrees with the the non cutting edge (I was taught to make my own
  blades).
  
  Now, it you are just removing the binding, and not looking for a
  perfect job, my guess is that a cutter could do the job just as well. Just don't try
  to cut too many pages with each pass of the blade.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: I just thought of the possibility to use a hand plane. That's better than sanding for sure and faster than any manual (not guillotine) knife.  
  > **username_1**: @username_0 I have of course no experience, but it is not clear to me that a hand plane will be faster or cleaner than a sharp knife. I may be much harder ... but the best way to know is to try. My own experience for scanning purpose is only with a hand guillotine, on paper stacks that wre not too thick. I would fragment them when too thick.  
  > **username_0**: Well I have no experience using a hand plane on books, but if on paper stacks they remove as much as on wood (which I think is a safe assumption if the stack is properly clamped), then it would need only a couple of passes (5 seconds) to go through the spine.  
  > **username_1**: @username_0 Experiment only can answer that. Do not underestimate the resistance of a paper stack. I think big books are effective in stopping bullets. At least I am glad my answer is leading to new solutions.  
  > **username_0**: I'll report back.  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2024-10-07. Score: 0
  
  I actually have found that heavy-duty professional sewing-shears, the longer the better, ye 'claymore of scissors', to have worked better for the *majority* of books than box cutter or knife, the latter which dull too quickly. Scissors, being two knives stuck together in invocation of the Archimedean lever, are only half reliant on the sharpness of their edge.
  
  Different books will differ. In the general case, I do not think the sanding approach you describe will be worth the time; with most thick bindings you can find the weak points and dissever them in series. But books are highly various; the art of preparing and archiving them remains a strategic process betimes.
  
  
  ---
  
  