My uncle said to skip the grain direction on spines - big mistake

My uncle who used to bind in the 80s told me grain direction on spines was overrated. I believed him and went ahead with a 300 page book for a client last month. The spine cracked like crazy after just 2 weeks and the pages started falling out. I had to rebind the whole thing for free and lost about 15 hours of work. Has anyone else had a relative give them outdated advice that backfired?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo_schmidt27d ago

Uncle's been out of the game so long he probably still thinks you can bind a book with rubber cement and good vibes. Bet he also tells people the internet is a fad.

abbyg141mo ago

oh did you read that article on bookbinding forums about how grain direction actually affects paper expansion with humidity changes? i saw a whole thing about it the other day. your uncle probably learned from people who thought you could just glue anything together and it'd hold up. but modern adhesives and papers are different i guess? it sucks you lost that much time though, at least you fixed it before the client got really mad.