Took me 8 years to figure out I was gluing book cloth backwards

I always had issues with the cloth lifting at the corners after a few months. Last week I was watching an old video from a bindery in Vermont and noticed they put the grain direction running parallel to the spine. I had been doing it perpendicular this whole time. Anyone else have a stupid basic mistake that took way too long to catch?

2 comments

2 Comments

ray3561mo ago

And you know what's wild, I've been doing it the opposite way too without even thinking about it because all the tutorials I watched just said "watch your grain" but never explained why it matters for the cloth itself. The fibers running parallel to the spine makes so much sense when you think about how paper grain works in a book, but nobody ever connects those dots for fabric. I swear half this craft is just learning to stop fighting against how materials naturally want to move.

the_anthony1mo ago

Honestly that grain direction thing gets so many people. For cloth specifically, I started cutting my spine pieces with the grain running parallel and then doing the boards perpendicular if I'm using the same fabric. Something else that helped me was using a thin layer of PVA first on the boards, letting it tack up, then gluing the cloth. Stops the fibers from pulling apart at the corners when they dry. Also switching to a bone folder with a rounded tip instead of a sharp one stopped me from accidentally bruising the cloth fibers at the hinge point.