Loading…
8
A guy at the Cleveland show said my spine rounding looked like a wet noodle, so I changed one small thing
I was binding a 300 page rebind at the Cleveland book arts meetup back in March and a retired conservator named Hal watched me round the spine for about two minutes. He said, and I quote, 'that's a wet noodle, son, you're rolling the whole text block instead of just the shoulder.' I switched to tapping the spine with a flat hammer every few passes instead of one long roll, and the boards sit flush now. Anyone else get torn apart by an old guy at a meetup and secretly be grateful for it?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
reesemiller9d ago
That line about feeling the paper move through a screen is so true. When you're rolling a spine you can kind of tell yourself it feels right even when it doesn't, but a hand on the block catches the slop right away. I had the same thing happen with a sewing frame, I was pulling way too tight on the cords and a woman at a guild meeting put her palm on my block and said the sections were choking. Two seconds of contact did more than a month of watching videos at 2x speed.
4
taylor_hayes259d ago
Learned more in two minutes from a stranger than in three years of youtube tutorials. That part gets me. All the bookbinding videos show the same smooth rolling motion and none of them mention the shoulder thing. Its because you cant feel the paper move through a screen. Hal could put his hand on your block and know in five seconds. That kind of feedback only comes from someone standing right next to you.
3