Putting your guide book into a binder?

Does anyone cut apart their guide book and put it into a binder? I am thinking of doing this with my Teton guide book (not just for climbing, I also want to bring parts of it with me to work for reading and it is big!). I feel kind of guilty taking apart a book...

If you do this, how did you cut it apart? Utility knife near the spine? Any tips for keeping it as neat as possible?

A printer's shop usually has a hydraulic guillotine cutter that can do really clean cuts. You can call a shop and ask. Kinko's usually has cutters that can do about 200 pages max. A real print shop can do 500.

DIY- You can use two pieces of wood and some vice grips to clamp it down at the spine to keep it tidy and either use a utility knife or I've heard of people using a belt sander to just grind away the spine glue. You could also try a bandsaw? Be sure to clamp the book together first before trying any of this.

Good luck with your project.

Leave it intact and just photocopy it?

Scan it and put it on your smart phone?

Seems there are less destructive options.

Yes, photocopying is the obvious approach that I have used in the past. But it is hard to prevent distortion near the spine, and there are many pages that I might like to have.

Thanks for the 'clamping' tip Jwong, I wouldn't have thought of that!

Something else I have done for simpler rock-climbs is take a photo of the page and then you can zoom around and read it on the screen. That worked pretty well, but don't forget to take a photo of the descent page too, since that information is often not included right with the route. I always have a fear of relying on a device, though. Paper is more durable.

Guess this won't work so well for your case but I've moved to buying PDF's instead of books. I pint my own books and usually only take the pages I want and then re-print them when I get home. Call me wasteful or a pirate but about half the time I just give my printed book to someone at the crag on my way out and print another next time. I feel like the good karma cancels out the bad.

supertopo.com is a great source for .pdfs.

Well maybe not so great, they don't seem to have the Tetons.

As for feeling guilty about ruining a book, that's understandable. But maybe think of it this way, if you lugged it all around hither and yon, it would eventually fall apart anyway. Guidebooks take a lot of abuse, or at least they should if you're doing it right!

Dmm makes a guide book carrier, so that may help saving the guide books from being torn apart?

A print shop should also have a paper drill to 3 hole drill the book for a binder.

I've used binders for guidebooks many times over the years. For example, my Black Canyon guidebook is in a binder because it was getting thrashed and falling apart anyway plus I had pulled pages out of it and laminated pages, sometimes with packing tape, when going to do a route in a hurry.

I just cut the cover off with a knife and the glued binding pops apart pretty easily. Then I hole punched the pages to fit in. You can also use a household drill to do the same thing and go through the hole book.

I like the binder because I can add beta, topos, pictures, route updates, etc. from the Mountain Project or elsewhere.