Crazy week - perfect grain direction ruined one job but saved another

Had a run last Tuesday where I glued up a text block with the grain running the wrong way by accident, then Wednesday I did the same thing on purpose for a vintage restoration and the spine flexed perfectly. Has anyone else seen grain direction make or break a project like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

nancy9292d ago

Wait, you really think grain direction is just some luck thing? I've been bookbinding for years and that's the whole foundation. Grain direction isn't a coin flip. It's physics. If your text block flexed wrong with cross-grain, that's not bad luck. That's a structural fail waiting to happen. The spine will crack eventually. The vintage restoration working out doesn't prove anything special either. Some old books have loose spines or different materials. That one time thing doesn't mean cross-grain is fine. You gotta test every paper beforehand. Fold it, see which way it bends easy. Put that parallel to the spine. Always. No shortcuts. I messed up once on purpose with a sketchbook. Wanted it to lay flat. It worked for a month then the signatures started pulling apart. Never again.

charlie372d ago

Grain direction isn't a coin flip" - exactly! I learned this the hard way when I tried to cheap out on a batch of notebooks. Used whatever paper was on sale without checking grain. Six months later every single one had wavy pages and the spines were all wonky. Never again, man. Testing with a simple fold takes two seconds and saves so much headache.