PSA: I've been trimming my book cloth with the grain the wrong way for 5 years

Was making a batch of 6 notebooks for a local shop last month and noticed the cloth at the spine edge was fraying on every single one. A guy at the craft store asked if I was cutting with the cloth grain running vertical along the spine. I'd been cutting it horizontal the whole time like it was paper. Now I have to re-do all 6. Anyone else find out they've been doing some basic prep step backwards for years?

2 comments

2 Comments

uma_mitchell831mo ago

Didn't some bookbinder say grain direction affects how long the spine lasts?

umamurphy1mo ago

Honestly, that thing about the grain direction is such a pain to learn the hard way. But I gotta gently push back on one thing you said - you mentioned trimming the cloth "like it was paper" and that's not quite right either. Paper has a grain direction too, it's just less obvious than with book cloth. If you cut paper the wrong way the pages won't lay flat and can buckle when you glue them. I found that out after making a whole batch of lined journals where the pages all curled up at the edges. So yeah you're not alone in learning this stuff through fixing mistakes.