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The volunteer work we had to do at church was to bind 400 books. The books, they were pretty thin. They were actually little Christmas devotionals-combined-sermon notes that the pastors want to give out to the congregation. We did this last Christmas, and I’m assuming they received positive reactions, because we’re doing it again this year.

One of the ministry assistants polled other staff members in the office on what type of binding they liked for these books. My mom and the receptionist were the only ones who voted for staples; everyone else wanted comb-binding. But because having Kinko’s bind them would’ve been too expensive (400 books?), the staff did it themselves.

So, my mom and I were asked to come in and volunteer, since they needed all the help they could get. And ironically enough, everyone from the staff who voted for staples ended up having to bind them. Everyone else was elsewhere. (Although MinistryAssistant did ask the senior pastor if he wanted to come to a “comb-binding party”. I’m not sure how he responded.)

We got there at 11 (we were late, because of my filling out that Fry’s application), and got to work:

1. As soon as the pages were printed out on letter-sized 11×8.5in paper (side by side), they were cut in two, so the actual books would be half the size of a letter-sized paper. The back and front covers went through the same treatment.
2. They were sorted into piles, according to their page number, and were collated into two other separate piles. So Week 1 and 2 were in one pile and Week 3 and 4 were in another pile (since the paper puncher they were using could only handle so many pages at once).
3. Whoever was doing the hole punching took a half a book for Week 3 and 4 and hole-punched that. The same thing happened to Week 1 and 2. They were placed in two separate piles.
4. Another person would take the two piles and combined them with the front and back covers (already cut and punched) in the proper order and placed in another pile (alternating their orientation–i.e. one was placed horizontally, and the next was placed vertically, to keep them separate from the other books).
5. The person doing the actual binding took a plastic comb (already cut to fit the height of the book) and placed it on the comb-binder thing. Once in place, they would pull the lever down, which would open up the combs and allow them to fit them through the holes of the pages. Opening them too far would make it harder for the pages to stay on the combs, and not opening them enough would make it harder to get the pages through. Also, keeping them open for too long might straighten them out a little, which makes it easier for the pages to fall out (but you could always fix it by scrunching them a little with your fingers).
6. The finished books had to be banded with a rubber band, 25 each, and placed into boxes.

I first started out by combining the pages and covers together, until the church’s graphic designer* showed up. I went to meet up with her, since there were some problems I was having with the admin panel for the church’s site.** As for the binding machine thing, the person would have to hold the lever down with one hand, while fitting the little plastic combs through the holes. Because doing the second part required both hands, another person would have to hold the lever down for them. This went on until Receptionist discovered that ::gasp:: there’s a lock on the lever! (The guy who let us borrow his comb-binder didn’t say anything about it, so we’re assuming he didn’t know about it either. O_o) So instead doing one book every five minutes, it was two books every minute. (Although we had problems with the lock releasing unexpectedly, firing the comb at the poor user.)

*She’s actually not part of the staff. She has her own company, but we get our graphics, banners, etc. (including the covers for the books we were binding) from her.
**Oh yeah, did I mention? I’m volunteering to help redesign the content of the Children’s Ministry website.

Afterwards, I went back to helping everyone else with the book-binding. There were other volunteers there, but they had to leave, so it was just my mom, the receptionist and myself for some time. I had to go off and do some other stuff for MinistryAssistant (i.e. Photoshop a sermon graphic and proofread a PowerPoint presentation for Sunday), and returned to comb-binding.

I did get a chance to actually bind the books myself, but I found it to be too much of a pain in the bum (I was able to finish one book for every five minutes). My mom took over my job and I went back to combining the pages. And once Lorin got out of school, she helped us out. And once MinistryAssistant was done with her work, she helped us out. Once ExecutivePastor heard my mom complain about the whole painstakingly long process, he helped out (until he had to leave).

So how long did this whole thing take? Well Receptionist started at 9, and Mom and I arrived at 11. We finished at 5. So it took Receptionist eight hours and Mom and I six hours. (Actually, we didn’t have 400 books. We ended up with about 389, since some of the pages were hole-punched weirdly.)

We all decided that we are definitely not going to comb-bind these books for next year. If the other staff members absolutely want it that badly, they can do it themselves.

Modified: December 02nd, 2007