00:00Every journal I've ever ruined had the same culprit, wobbly, uneven holes punched by hand.
00:05So I went hunting for bookbinding tools that fixed that without wrecking the budget.
00:10Here are the best bookbinding tools under $17, and yeah, a couple of them cost less than lunch.
00:16First up is this wooden bookbinding punching cradle with piercing guide, and it comes in at $15.60.
00:22You plamp your stack of paper into the cradle, line it up against the guide, and punch straight down.
00:28The wood is thick, the notch guide actually lines up where it says it does, and it handles everything from
00:33a fat journal to a chunky photo album.
00:36If you bind by hand, this is the one that makes the difference between looking handmade and looking, handmade badly.
00:42Next, these bookbinding headbands, 48 of them, about 11 and a half inches long, and 930.
00:49They're the little decorative cloth bands that cap the ends of the spine so the pages don't just sit there
00:54looking exposed and sad.
00:56What I like is the sheer range of colors in one pack, so you can match a headband to each
01:00project instead of settling for one color.
01:03For under $10, it's the cheapest way to make a book look finished.
01:08Now this 14-piece scrapbooking and bookbinding kit for 1263 is the beginner starter bundle.
01:14It comes with rulers, templates, and the core tools you need to actually build a notebook from scratch,
01:19and templates mean you're not eyeballing a spine width and hoping for the best.
01:23Everything clicks into one kit, so you're not running to the store for one missing piece.
01:28The rating sits at 4.8 instead of a 5, so 1 or 2 accessories aren't everyone's favorite, but the
01:34kit itself does its job well.
01:36This 5-in-1 stainless steel book cover guide is 623, and honestly it's the best value on the whole
01:42list.
01:43It scribes clean marks on your coverboard so you can cut to size, and it doubles as a gauge, a
01:48ruler, and an alignment guide in a couple of different ways.
01:51Steel means it's not going to bend when you lean on it, which is exactly what cheap plastic rulers do.
01:57One of these earns its spot in the toolbox, and it costs about the price of a sandwich.
02:03And rounding things out is this L-shaped metal spine positioning ruler for 737.
02:08You hook the L around the spine and the flat side gives you a perfect straight line to punch along,
02:13so your holes end up dead center instead of drifting.
02:16It's a small tool doing a small, specific job, and it does that job really well,
02:20which is more than I can say for a lot of gear twice the price.
02:24Three of these five and you've got everything you need to bind a book that actually holds together.
02:29All the links are down in the description if you want to grab any of them.
02:33If this saved you some money and some frustration, hit like, and subscribe
02:37I'll be back with more tools worth not wasting your time on.
