Report cover with clamping slide bar

Abstract

A document formed of a stack of papers bound at the spine is equipped with a slide bar that achieves locking engagement with a document cover formed of a plurality of sheets of material. The sheets of document cover material are joined to each other at a binding margin. The sheet of cover material that passes around the spine of the cover forms a back cover beneath the stack of papers and a narrow, margin panel or strip that overlies the adjacent edge of the other sheet of binding material, which forms a front cover. The slide bar has a pair of jaws that terminate in distal tips that face each other at an angle of least forty-five degrees across a gap defined between the distal tips of the jaws. The slide bar is inserted onto the binding edge of the stack of papers and the cover encompassing them in a direction parallel to the binding edge from either the top or bottom end of the stack. The narrow margin panel atop the binding edge margin or the stack of papers fits within and is captured by the distal tip of one of the clasp jaws adjacent thereto throughout its length and throughout the length of the binding edge of the stack of papers. The capture of the narrow binding margin panel by the distal tip of the clasp jaw engaged at the junction between the sheets of the material forming the binder prevents the slide bar from being pulled laterally off of the binding edge of the stack.