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Grain direction fight: I chose wrong and my covers bowed for weeks
I was making a batch of 12 journals last month and stood at the paper store debating between two stacks of book board for like 10 minutes. Ended up grabbing the cheaper pack without checking the grain direction, which ran the SHORT way across my covers. Three days later every single cover had this annoying curve to it. Had to press them flat under my big sewing machine for two weeks. Has anyone else ruined a project this way or am I just the slow learner here?
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rayy8317d agoMost Upvoted
Honestly, grain direction is one of those things that gets blown way out of proportion. You picked a cheaper pack, the covers bowed, you pressed them flat, and now they're fine. So what's the actual problem? Plenty of binders use cross-grained board on purpose for certain projects because it bends easier along the spine when you're doing a tight back hinge. The real issue is that you didn't account for the humidity in your workspace. That's what makes board curl, not the grain. If you'd stored the finished books upright and clamped them for a day, you'd have saved yourself two weeks. Sometimes the "wrong" choice just needs a different handling method, not a full redesign of your process.
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