Not Railway Related, but Relevant

My weekly coffee with an old friend of mine got me going.  Grant was talking about making up some nice proper note books  - the sort with leather binding and such.  As soon as he said the word "clamp" a light came on and something in the back of my mind came together.

Every time I get a new magazine out of the mailbox or open up a new parcel from a shop I end up with more - more scrap paper.  They all come with a packing list or a postal address printed out on paper - about an A4 sized piece of paper.  So I've been "waste not want not" and folding them in quarters and cutting them up with a large carving knife.

The back of the bits of paper are clean - no printing.

So they make for great note paper and I sit them on the kitchen bench top and grab them for writing shopping lists, notes and all sort of things.  I also have a bunch on my modelling bench for notes and figuring and such.  Basically - they have cost me nothing.

What the light going on at coffee about the word "clamp" is that this is needed when making notepads - my style of notepads.  So with the above bunch of bits of paper which was all higgledy piggledy I went to the workshop area, sat down and then tapped the bunch of papers down on the bench so as to line them all up on the top edge.  This of course make one edge all over the place, but who cares.

But one edge gets to be all lined up and tidy.

So a couple of bits of wood, in this case my paint stirrers and a pair of clamps were gotten out.

I carefully placed the wood either side of the bunch of paper, leave about 1-2 mm of paper sticking out.  I then tightly clamped it all together.

Once clamped, I got out my bottle of white glue, Selleys Aquadhere, and a small paint brush and thickly painted this all lined up edge of paper.  I slopped it on well and proper.

I then sat the whole ting upright so the glue wouldn't drip and left it overnight for it to dry properly.

So I went down this morning and took the clamps off and I now have a nice notepad that wont blow around in the breeze.  

Just like a bought one it is and it only cost be a few cents worth of glue!

So now when I make my scribbled notes about trains and groceries, the paper will not be found on the floor or all over the place - it will come from my nice sort of neat notepad blocks.