I’ve been looking for a good notebook I can use to sketch out ideas and plans. I wanted something sturdy enough to survive hard use in the shop, which would lie flat without trying to close up on me while I was working in it.
My first stop was Amazon.com. The best option seemed to be a hardcover, spiral bound, sketchbook. Definitely a possibility, but not as sturdy as I’d like. Looking in brick-and-mortar stores around me I found something similar at both Staples and Barnes and Noble. In each case, the price worked out to be around 16 cents a page. While at Staples I noticed that an 80-page sketchbook was almost the same price as a ream of 11”x17” paper. If I used the whole ream at half size, it would give me 10 sketchbooks worth or paper at a whopping 1¼ cents per page. I’ve done some bookbinding in the past, so the next logical step was to make my own notebook. A trip to Staples and an old T-shirt netted me everything I needed in terms of materials.