DIY Book Forum

I'd love to smyth-sew my books for durablility & laying flat ability but it takes too long unless I get an expensive machine, so I was thinking of maybe getting an automatic paper folding machine that can staple into booklets as well (like this one www.unicorn.net.au/products/19/54/664).
I would then quickly sew the stapled booklets to make a book block, then have a traditional cover to look nice  What do you think?
I want to find a way of making the books quickly but still look very traditional -is it possible?  
PS. would need to use stainless steel staples for durability

I'm new to this forum, so even though this is a dusty topic, I bet finding a good way to fold paper is still an issue for people who are making books.

I've tried two different postroom paper-folding machines, and in my experience they're awful. Now, admittedly, I'm folding A5 pages in half, which seems to be smaller than these contraptions like, so your mileage may vary. But after far too many misaligned or entirely crumpled pages, I gave up on these things altogether.

I've been folding each sheet by hand, but of course that's very time-consuming, so I was very happy to have the brain-wave of using a card-creasing board to pre-score a couple of pages at once. It's not machine-fast, but it's a lot more accurate and reliable than the mechanical folders were, and still a number of times faster than lining up and folding each individual page.

I wrote a post about it on my DIY Book blog:
http://www.hamishmacdonald.com/books/DIYbook.html

(Yes, apologies that the title of the blog and the associated podcast are so similar to this website and forum. I only became aware of Andrew's estimable work a few days ago.)