My wife has a Zutter device that does wire binding and she has done up my Mel Bay music books that fall apart if they get opened flat.
I also have her bind up the loose music sheets down loaded from The Session, ect.
These Zutter things are made for the scrap book crafters but are very versitle.
(I have no commercial interest in that business, just FYI.)
http://www.binditall.com/
Handy if you have one, I suppose. For me, it’s easier to just have the books spine cut & wire bound at the Fed Ex (Kinko’s) stores.
What the usual charge on that type of thing?
I’m not sure about music books, but I had my local Staples do a composition book that I use as a dance journal that was getting a bit full (as I paste stuff into it). I took it apart myself if I remember correctly (it was just a matter of removing the string), but they cut the pages even and then bound it, and I want to say it was less than ten bucks. I plan on having the same done for all my music books one of these days so they lay flat.
I actually had them do it with a plastic coil, though. I was concerned it wouldn’t be as durable as metal/wire, but it has held up to being tossed around in my dance bag, on the floor, etc. (On the other hand, I tend to bend up wire coils, like on notebooks, so they don’t work so well) The girl at Staples said she uses the plastic binding for making her own sketchbooks and they hold up fine for her as well. So that’s an option. I think I looked at the plastic in the first place because it came in bigger diameters than the wire.