Bookbinder glue is safe – PVA (polyvinyl acetate) used with a brayer can do nice things. It’s the C in PVC that’s dangerous, not the vinyl part.
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Kelly Paper sells several colors of the duplexed Neenah paper. If you can get to a store (they’re all over) you can get as little as one sheet. They usually give you up to 5 sheets of any one paper as samples. 
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Thanks, I was hoping that was the case with PVA!
Just noticed some black and brown Cahirs at Dollar Tree this morning, wonder if they’d be any good for this?
Would you please explain what the flame test would be and how you determine something is PVC by it? (If I understand you correctly. My GF is suppose to ship this week and I’m excited to start playing with it.
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Oh and the Cahir notebooks look great! I might try a few of those, they look as nice as moleskine, IMO. 
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The caution is a good note – no plans to use the burn test as my only gatekeeper in general but in this specific case I was just wanting to confirm the Moleskine CS statement that my notebook was chlorine-free (it was).
And, thanks! I am really happy with the Cahiers. I’ve been doing some test engraving on one of my hardback watercolor sketchbooks and so far I am not impressed with the results. I need to test more settings but I am not getting anything that looks like the super-clean engraved books we’ve all seen – possibly because the cover material has changed. At this point, I 100% prefer the look of the Cahiers to anything I’ve managed to do with the hardback Moleskines.
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I got great results on Moleskine Cahiers Black using a manual engrave, speed 1000, 4-6 pews, 450 lines per inch, 1 pass. PS thanks for the great idea reliablepants.
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Looks great! These settings are a bit different than the ones I’ve been using, looking forward to giving them a try.
It doesn’t look like much, but it feels so nice… almost like its etched in leather.
I didn’t account for the alignment issue. Perhaps a good way to print this is to put a piece of paper in, print on that, then carefully place the notebook over the paper?
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I would suggest that you make a bounding box the size of your notebook, make it a different color and center your lettering in that.
Then put your paper in, secure it WELL, ignore the engrave and lightly score the bounding box (1power, 500 speed). Then set your notebook on the paper and line it up with the scored outline (MAKING SURE NOT TO MOVE THE PAPER OR THE IMAGE IN THE GFUI). change the thickness of the material, ignore the bounding box and add settings to the image or text or whatever is in the center and you’re good to go.
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If I was doing any kind of production of the same design, I’d add a jig cut to the design file, cut it out of cardboard (ignoring the design) and drop the notebooks in for engraving (ignoring the cut line).
Since I’ve been doing one-off designs, I’ve just been putting a piece of low-tack washi tape on the notebook cover, using a sharpie to mark the center of the notebook on the tape, and then lining up the center handle of the design bounding box with my mark in the GFUI.
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I love this idea, and so had to shamelessly copy it 
The dark book is the black 5 x 8.25" Square Cahier Journal. This is my new favorite everyday notebook for note-taking!
The lighter book is the 4 x 5.75" Samut Kraft Notebook. This is the perfect compact size for keeping in my pocket all day to jot down quick notes and ideas.
Settings I used:
- Speed 1000
- Power 15
- LPI 450
- 1 pass
- Focus height .130
On the thinner cover of the Samut, it just started to bleed through at 15 power, but you can only tell if you hold the back side up to light. I think it’s worth it for the nice dark effect though.
I ended up making multiple copies, and used a simple masking tape layout guide with cheapo magnets to do it quickly and consistetly:
Cheers to the OP for this amazing idea. I’ll be making many more of these in the future!
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Hey! What were the setting did you end up using for this field notes book i really like the contrast. i have a similar notebook i would like to test this on. Thanks
IS that the same material as their soft covers?
That’s the only notebook I use for work and I’d LOVE to engrave it. But worried about the material giving off harsh fumes.
the cahiers is a different material.
Bummer. Ok - research and then a test later.
not saying it won’t work on that book, just that the settings could be different if it does.