Loading…
4
Unpopular opinion: I ruined 3 signature books this spring by pressing too hard on the nipping press, and a $12 tool is what finally tipped me off
So I was in my basement shop in Boise last April finishing a set of 3 Coptic books for a wedding, and every single spine came out with these flat crushed signatures near the sewing holes. I just figured my paper was too soft or my thread was too thick, so I switched both and still got the same squashed look. What finally tipped me off was a $12 set of brass feeler gauges I grabbed at an auto parts store for a totally different project. I slid one under the press board while I was tightening it and saw I had like zero gap left, meaning I was cranking the thing down way past flush. Turns out I had been treating the nipping press like a clamp for wood glue, just going until it felt tight, which was flattening the fold instead of just settling the signatures. Now I stop when the gauge barely drags, and my last 6 books have had round, clean spines with no crush marks at all. Anyone else learn the hard way that you can absolutely over-press a book, or am I the only one who was basically making pancakes out here?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
zarak185d ago
That feeler gauge trick is smart but there's a whole other layer to this that almost nobody talks about. The crush marks are not just about pressure, they are about where the pressure lands. If your press boards are thinner than your book block, the board flexes in the middle and sends all that force right into the spine fold. I had this happen with a batch of pamphlet stitch books where I used scrap 1/4 inch plywood, and the boards bowed just enough to pinch the signatures even though my gap felt fine. Thicker boards or a stack of them spread the load evenly, so you can press harder without the middle digging in. Your gauge tells you the gap, but board thickness and flatness decide whether that gap even matters. Worth checking both next time.
-1