If you’re like me you generate a lot of paper that is printed on one side. Of course, you could put the paper in the recycling when you’re finished with it but assuming it doesn’t have any confidential information you could give it a new life as a scratch pad first.
My personal preference is to cut 8.5×11 sheets into quarters, but some may prefer halfs. The real trick is knowing what you need to glue the sheets together into notepads. While some people use multiple coats of rubber cement my preference is to do it the real way and use what the priniting/binding industry calls “padding adhesive” or padding glue. The trick is to get the edge you’re going to glue lined up straight and either weight down the edge or put it in a clamp such as this which are easily built or bought. You’ll need to apply several coats of padding adhesive with a brush, letting things dry between coats. Once the final coat is dry you can slice apart the large pad into several smaller ones using a common table knife or a “pad knife”. If you want a more professional stiff backed pad be sure to insert thick cardstock in the stack before gluing where you’ll split the pads. You could even go a step futher and use something like cut up macaroni and cheese boxes for the cardstock backing.
You can usually find padding adhesive where printing supplies are sold. Online it is available from a number of vendors for around $10 a quart.
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