May 2004: Fully Concealed Wire-O Covers

Wrap Around Cover

A fully-concealed Wire-O book cover uses three scores (top) to form the spine and inside back cover. When closed, the wire elements are hidden from view. When open, the book maintains lay-flat capability (below).

One of the main advantages to Wire-O binding is the many available cover options. You can choose either a soft cover, usually between 10 and 12 points, or a hard cover, creating a highly desirable "cased-in" Wire-O book. Either choice allows you the ability to print on the spine for easy retrieval on a bookshelf.

In addition to "standard" two-piece split-back covers, semi-concealed, fully-concealed and wraparound cover designs are widely available. These designs allow Wire-O-bound books to have the layflat characteristics that make this binding style so useful, but with a cover that hides the binding elements. Wraparound covers can even be designed to wrap around the face of the book, providing a second printable spine.

Planning Tips
Like other cover styles, fully-concealed covers require a little advance planning to turn out properly. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

First things first: Have a pre-production sample produced - A pre-production sample is the most important tool you can use when planning fully-concealed covers. Fully-concealed soft covers require scores to be carefully planned in order to create a spine size sufficient to wrap around the binding element. A pre-production sample also helps determine the proper wire size, while offering you piece-of-mind by removing the guesswork from the planning process.

Covers should be of sufficient stock weight - Your cover stock should be thick enough to avoid the "embossing" effect that can occur when covers are squeezed against the binding element. Covers should be a minimum of 10 pt., although 12 or 14 pt. covers are also popular.

Cased-In Wire-O Cover

This highly functional cased-in Wire-O bound book hides the binding element and presents a clean, attractive appearance.

The Eckhart Advantage
At Eckhart and Company, we offer a plethora of production and decoration options for your fully-concealed Wire-O applications. Our fully-automatic Bielomatik binding machines can perform cover feeding, punching and binding inline for the most efficient production available. And our production capabilities are just the tip of the iceberg! We offer screen printing, die cutting, foil stamping, embossing, UV coating and laminating capabilities to give you plenty of in-house design freedom and make your Wire-O books truly distinctive.

Back Issues:

• April 2004  Turn Your Mechanically Bound Book Into a Display Piece

• March 2004  Large Diameter Spiral Wire Binding

• February 2004  Perfect Binding

• January 2004  Our Capabilities

• December 2003  Turned Edge Advantages

• November 2003  Semi-Concealed Wire-O

• October 2003  The Advantages of UV Coating

• September 2003  Mechanical Binding Inserts

• August 2003  The Advantages of Prototypes

• July 2003  Calendars

• June 2003  Index Tabbing

• May 2003  Plastic Comb Binding

• April 2003  Mechanical Binding Options

• March 2003  News From BookTech

• February 2003  Plastic Spiral Binding

• January 2003  Serving Our Customers

• December 2002  Wire-O Covers

• November, 2002 Spiral Wire Production

• October, 2002 Wire-O Binding

• September, 2002 Mechanical Binding Basics

• August, 2002 Cased-In Wire-O