THESIS BINDING

Tuesday morning 7.45 am

A student arrives at our bindery with three copies of her thesis, half asleep because she's have been up all night printing, checking, rechecking & checking again the order of pages.

(she could have slept in though by using our new Thesis Online website and converted her file to PDF print ready format free of charge, calculated the cost and uploaded the file for printing and binding without moving from her desk - oh yes and paid for it by credit or debit card over secure encrypted pages)

"I need this by Thursday morning so that I can hand it in to the University on Thursday afternoon. Can you help?"

7.55 am

After taking all the relevant details from the student, the bindery staff receive the pages with the paper work requesting two hard-bound copies and one soft-bound copy to be bound in blue cloth with gold lettering on the spine.

The pages that will make up the book blocks for the two hard-bound copies are given to the sewing department for oversewing with the pages for the soft-bound copy going to a separate area to be 'perfect bound' (glued using polyvinyl adhesive - PVA).

As this is happening the blue cloth is selected and is being gold blocked with the student's details of degree, year and usually the name of the student.

Some students request that we also block the front cover in gold with the title of the dissertation, their name, year and the name of their university.

Once the two hard-bound copies have been sewn, the backs of the book blocks (spines) are glued to consolidate the sewing threads and left to dry.

The soft-bound copy is also glued (perfect bound) and left to dry.

Wednesday afternoon

When the items are dry enough to handle, the two hard copies are trimmed using a guillotine on the three open sides - top, bottom, and foredge (usually 1/8th" or 3 mm - margins surrounding the text, captions, headings and page numbers permitting).

The book blocks are then rounded & backed (this is the process which rounds the spine and adds a curve to the foredge).

The boards for the hard cases and spine hollow (a piece of card to give shape to the back of the bound volume) are then cut to size to make the cases and united with the now gold blocked cloth to make the case.

The book block is inserted and pasted into the case.

The soft-bound copy has the pre-blocked cloth glued and wrapped round the book block. When this is dry enough, the book block is guillotined on three edges.

All three items are left in the press or under weights until ready to be checked by our quality control staff and an invoice for the work is raised in the office.

Thursday morning 7.45am

Our student arrives to collect and pay for their thesis bindings.

Note:

The above process describes our Standard 48-hour service, for the next day Premium service the work is given slightly more priority over other binding.

For the same day service the process is accelerated and we give some assistance to the drying process to enable the items to be handled sooner. This means that the student can collect their bound theses later the same day!

Some students request that we produce multiple copies from an original or they send or give us their work in electronic format for us to print off and bind. Unfortunately only the 36-hour Premium or 48-hour Standard service can be chosen for our print and bind Thesis Online service.