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Perfect Bound / Spiral Bound?


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They both fall apart quickly. The spiral bound does lie flat, but the pages fall out as soon as a scout opens it.

 

At our council camp headquarters building, there are different edition handbooks going back to the 50's. Even with people regularly flipping through them, they are all in better shape than any handbook that our current scouts own. 

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We've had both.  Both fail in different ways.  We prefer the standard version.  But key to both is getting a protective cover.  zip lock back is great.  BSA velcro protective cover is great too.    

The 'Perfect Bound' wind up as a collection of sections in a ziplock bag.

joe Bob is right, the handbook doesn't have emough glue in the spine and after 8 trips to the woods it's nothing more than chapters. The spiral book is no better; the pages are so thin they pull out

I wish I had the knowledge, patience, time, and equipment to do book binding repair.

 

It probably wouldn't be all that difficult to deconstruct a perfect bound book and bind it much more durably

or

to take a spiral bound book apart, laminate and repunch the holes to reinforce, and then reassemble with a more durable coil.

 

Is there a merit badge for that?

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I wish I had the knowledge, patience, time, and equipment to do book binding repair.

 

It probably wouldn't be all that difficult to deconstruct a perfect bound book and bind it much more durably

or

to take a spiral bound book apart, laminate and repunch the holes to reinforce, and then reassemble with a more durable coil.

 

Is there a merit badge for that?

 

FedEx/Kinkos has the exact template for the spiral scout handbook. Simply copy a good template page for a better spiral bound book and they can put the page(s) through their cutter and *poof* you have a new page insert. Getting it inserted takes practice but you can do it in 3 minutes if you really try.

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I had a parent who bought the spiral bound book.

 

Took out the spiral.

 

Taped both sides of ever page on the spiral edge.

 

Hand punched 3 holes for a 3 hole ring binder.

 

put it in the 1/2 page sized 3 hole ring binder.

 

He now has a page reinforced, page removable, page writeable, lay flat, hard covered scout handbook.  :)

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My son's spiral bound 13th Edition arrived in the mail yesterday.  Ordered it from scoutstuff around 1-1/2 weeks ago.

First impression is it seems much more visually interesting than my 9th edition I got in 1980 (my mom saved it and gave it back to me when my son got into cub scouting)  

Nice looking photos and graphics

but also visually cluttered and I think probably hard to find stuff in...

I've got to admit I'm not impressed with the paper.  I'll guess that these covers and many pages will be kinked, torn, and probably falling out in short order.  

How easy it would have been to select a more durable paper!

I'm not sure about the spiral, it looks like it will hold up ok, and not get bent like the old wire spirals I had in school, and cause the notebook to not open nicely.

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oh, I had another thought I forgot to add....

all of the sign offs and logs are collected together in the last 25 pages or so, The rest of the book is just reference stuff.... nothing new here I guess

But it would be easy enough to copy or pull these log pages out, reinforce the holes, or bind them into their own volume.... or even copy them onto some good water resistant and tough paper and just buy a new copy of the reference stuff if ever needed.

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BLW2, growing up, our troop had a pocket requirements booklet (standard BSA issue) that we used for T2F. That was an era when every boy was expected to have a wallet in his pocket, and this little booklet would fit there tidily.

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Did you have the "Centennial Edition" by any chance?  I was hoping someone who has that version, and the one who has the current version could compare sections. I know I complained that a lot of "basic" information from my day ( I too used the 9th edition) was left out of the Centennial edition. I had to creatye handouts for IOLS.

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no, I don't have a copy of the centennial edition....

 

One more update

The new spiral bound doesn't fit well in the handbook cover sold by the scout shop (ordered at the same time as the new book.  It barely closes.

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I have had nothing but the perfect bound for all of my scouting days.

I didnt have a single page fall out. I take pretty good care of my belongings. (not saying others dont)

 

Saying all that to say this. I prefer the perfect bound, but the suggestion of replacing pages is nice in the spiral bound.

But.... it not fitting well into the handbook cover sucks.

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no, I don't have a copy of the centennial edition....

 

One more update

The new spiral bound doesn't fit well in the handbook cover sold by the scout shop (ordered at the same time as the new book.  It barely closes.

 

That's what duct tape is for.... duh!

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We've had both.  Both fail in different ways.  We prefer the standard version.  But key to both is getting a protective cover.  zip lock back is great.  BSA velcro protective cover is great too.  

 

... personally ... I dislike the spiral bound as it does not fit on book shelves, the spirals bend and get yucky, pages tear, etc.  But that's my experience.

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