Spent 3 weekends on a Coptic stitch spine that kept cracking, and the fix was so obvious

Elizabeth Murphy · 2026-10-07T10:00:03.591641+00:00

Last month I bound a copy of my grandma's recipe cards into a little gift book with a Coptic stitch, and the spine kept cracking right where the signatures met the boards no matter how tight I pulled the thread. I went through two spools of linen thread, redid the whole thing three times, and watched maybe six hours of tutorials before an old binder at the shop in Salem just said "you're waxing too heavy, it's slipping" and that was it. Has anyone else hit a glue or thread issue that turned out to be one tiny stupid thing?

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Spent 3 weekends on a Coptic stitch spine that kept cracking, and the fix was so obvious | Bookbinders - Talk Freely