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Took me 11 months to figure out why my signatures kept cracking on the fold
I bind mostly small runs of poetry chapbooks, usually 20 to 40 copies at a time, and for almost a whole year I kept getting these hairline cracks right along the fold of the first and last signature. I tried everything I could think of. Switched from 80lb text to a lighter stock, changed my bone folder technique, scored the fold with a dull awl, even blamed my grain direction twice and re-cut a whole batch. Nothing worked. Then in March I was at a bindery swap in Ann Arbor and an older woman named Ruth watched me crease a test sheet and said, "you're folding against the grain, honey, look at the light." She held it up to the window and sure enough, the fibers were running the wrong way on my cover stock. I had checked grain on the text block a hundred times but never once checked the endsheets. One afternoon of re-cutting and the cracks were gone. Eleven months of head scratching over something that took her four seconds to spot. Anyone else ever get humbled by a grain direction mistake you swore you had already ruled out?
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emma_young8d ago
Figured grain direction was just for the text block until Ruth showed you the light, huh.
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