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Just realized my grain direction mistake after a whole edition of 50 books
I was binding a poetry collection for a local author, using a nice 120gsm paper for the text block. I cut all the sheets and sewed them up, but when I went to round and back the spine, the boards kept warping like crazy. Took me a full day to figure out I'd cut the paper with the grain running the wrong way, parallel to the spine instead of head to tail. I had to re-cut all the paper and start the sewing over, which set the project back almost a week. Has anyone else had a grain direction disaster this big, and how do you double check before you start cutting?
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lily_craig3mo ago
Feel your pain, that's the kind of mistake that haunts your dreams. I mean, fifty books is a whole new level of commitment to the wrong grain. Maybe try the simple bend test on a scrap piece before you commit the whole stack next time.
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barbaraschmidt3mo ago
Haunts your dreams, really? It's just paper grain direction, not a life choice. I've messed it up before and the books still worked fine, just a bit less flexible. People get so intense about perfect craft details sometimes. A bend test is smart, but it's not the end of the world if you skip it.
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leoward2mo agoTop Commenter
Read something the other day from a paper supplier saying grain direction matters more for how the pages turn over time than for just opening flat. But honestly, @lily_craig I think fifty books is enough of a reason to at least do the bend test on one sheet. I did twenty books with the grain wrong once and they sat on a shelf for a year before I noticed the pages started curling weird. Not the end of the world like Barbara said but if you are making fifty copies it is worth an extra 30 seconds per book to check. The bend test is just folding a piece of paper so there's no excuse not to do it when you are already cutting stacks of it.
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