After my failed attempt at stapling the magazine, I stitched the upper bit together where I already had the holes, which didn’t look amazing but worked okay. After doing that I tried stapling the bottom bit, I thought even if it would fail, I needed the holes for stitching so nothing to loose here, and all of a sudden it worked! No idea why, maybe the magazine had become flatter in the few hours in between testing or something. Anyways, it held together so I took the thread out of the upper bit and stapled that too.
7NT front and back cover
I am still not sure though weather this binding is the best way to go, if we making more of this, we need to consider paper options more I think if we want it to hold together, or buy a heavy duty stapler. Overall I am not even sure Riso printing this is the best way to go as one sheet of paper requires four masters, that on top of cutting it to size, folding it and stapling it. It is a lot of work and also a bit of a shame to produce something that’s supposed to be used and handled a lot but the more you look through it, the more the print gets smudged and the whole magazine looks sort of messy. I don’t know. I am not convinced. I think Riso printing works better for something you don’t touch so much or something that isn’t meant to last for a very long time.